sharp as a thorn.
I held on
to whatever
it had been
at the start of existence,
a stem cell
essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
sharp as a thorn.
I held on
to whatever
it had been
at the start of existence,
a stem cell
Time’s gone weird, hasn’t it? Hasn’t time gone weird? I’m really struggling with it at the moment. I don’t know what day it is. I’m not sure whether it’s day. It’s 2023 next year. It’s still March 2020. It’s the dead zone between Christmas and New Year. It’s been Wednesday for months. I’ll be dead…
I am a maze of swinging doors.
Catch me, I’ll fall. Feel my ink.
Lost in the torn pelt of my wounds,
I’ve dabbled in sores and spirits.
Fruit of fungus
feigner of fauna
fusion of puck and protoplasm
I am 12 years old, looking over the precast-cement fence of my neighbour’s house in Chatsworth, South Africa.
pale sun after rain,
shadows come back shyly—
they’ve been washed
‘When All Looks Bleak, Keep Going, for What Else Is There?’ – The Generation of Dogged Persistence The setting: my kitchen in the early evening, lights filtering through the window and the door open onto the hallway. The atmosphere: cheerful but low-key, with a smidgen of excitement at the prospect of letting (reasonably) loose. The…
That cow can’t walk. She’s all lame. I won’t touch her hooves.
Dried for sale, sea stars remind you
that we haven’t seen the Atlantic
breathing heavily along a beach
for a couple of plague-struck years.
The party is winding down and it’s time to make your exit. You stand in the living room mentally preparing for the torrent of goodbyes you’re now socially obligated to initiate. It is Christmas Eve.
For a dusty Central American beach town, San Juan del Sur has a ton of history. The former fishing village once offered passage to Forty-Niners on their way from the US east coast to California. Cornelius Vanderbilt grew his fortune by running a waterborne transit line for that gold rush: faster than overland travel, the…
I told no one. Not my parents, not my older sister, not my little brother. I locked myself in the bathroom while my mother stirred tomato sauce and tasted spaghetti (we did not like al dente).