Neon Literary Magazine #34 Read online

Issue #34

   

  www.neonmagazine.co.uk

  [email protected]

   

  This compilation copyright © Neon Literary Magazine (2013).

  Do not copy or redistribute without permission.

   

   

  All content copyright © respective authors (2013).

   

  Authors may be contacted through the publisher.

   

  Cover image by Andrew Shoemaker.

   

  ISSN 1758-1419 [Print]

  ISSN 1758-1427 [Online]

   

  Edited by Krishan Coupland.

   

  Published spring 2013.

   

  Contents

   

  Sam Frankl

  Figurehead

  Pin

   

  Eliza Victoria

  Ten Truths

  Somebody Tell The River

  Elegy For The Lost Minutes

   

  Lynn Hoffman

  Afterlives - Alexander Portnoy

  Afterlives - Bond, James Bond

  Afterlives - Delores Haze (Lolita)

   

  Tracey Iceton

  Car Life

   

  Michael Frazer

  Point         Null

  Its / Tail In Fright

   

  Kate Folk

  Where There's Smoke

   

  Heidi James

  The Points Of The Kite

  Standing

  Living Here

   

  Nancy Hightower

  REM

  Magdalene

  Drought

   

  Contributors

   

  Sam Frankl

   

  Image by Leandro Ercole

   

  Figurehead

   

  Kiss me on the mouth,

  'til it comes off,

  or enough to get goin'.

  Or enough to take the soft

  and suck it

  'til the bends come out.

   

  Then

  rest my hands

  across my chest,

  with a little pressure,

  so they can't move,

  and can't shake,

  when you shake me.

   

  Then peel back,

  like wet wood

  from cement flooring,

  with my pelvis

  stuck to yours,

  like mastic

  from a wet gun.

   

  That view,

  looking up,

  you lift

  like a ship's

  figurehead,

  bent back.

  Breasts down,

  neck craned,

  head

  raised up,

  staring at

  the cracks

  in the

  base paint coat

  I've botched

  behind

  my bed.

   

  You're good that way.

  If I could paint,

  I'd paint you.

   

  But I can't paint,

  so I fuck you.

   

  *

   

  Pin

   

  So I run a thick

  thumb over some

  paper-thin crease

  between your hips

  and where your ribs bend in.

  Then breathe some

  heavy breaths,

  down your nose,

  and onto your mouth,

  where they sit,

  on your lips,

  which purse,

  waiting for some

  perfect kiss,

  that I don't think I have in me.

   

  My arms catch,

  like clumsy wings

  that can't seem to wrap you right,

  and fold like scarlet tissue paper,

  crinkling and bunching up

  around dark, moist patches.

   

  And the weight of each

  false pretence

  I lured you in with

  sits on my chest

  with a wet weight.

  And all I can do is pluck at you

  with fingers too fat for their bones.

  And watch the promise of passion,

  which I sowed,

  seep tired and silly

  from weeping wounds

  on your butter body.

   

  That you have yet to say

  a single thing.

  That sometimes silence echoes

  with such force that neighbours spring

  from their beds and call the cops.

  That you can walk.

  That you can move at all.

  That you can peel your flank

  from my hollow chest.

  That in the darkness

  you can fumble

  and find your way.

  All these things mock me,

  and pin me, translucent,

  to the window.

  But,

  that while I hang there,

  light pouring

  through my pinned,

  paper wings

  you can leave,

  without me stopping you,

  that, is the worst of all.

   

  Eliza Victoria

   

  Image by "MG_FX"

   

  Ten Truths

   

  1. Every day I try to mimic the fragility of beginnings – every word measured, every detail attached with meaning, our names offered to each other like a bird, dying and precious.

   

  2. I can feel your name between my teeth, a leftover bone.

   

  3. I love watching children who take the train for the first time, all smiles and big eyes. All around them passengers hang on the railing like withered vines, dying their undying death.

   

  4. I remember: sitting on a stone step after a rainshower, the water seeping into my back pockets. I remember: long walks, soft breeze, every cell of every walking body humming what could be. What could be. What could be.

   

  5. I believe trains and buses mourn their paths, having seen it all before.

   

  6. I have brought joy. I can prove it. There are pictures.

   

  7. I am agitated by the simplest things: mud on my shoe, a pile of unfolded laundry.

   

  8. I believe that as you grow older what you fear diminishes to the specific, but doesn't grow smaller. From death to the lack of space for new china bowls in the kitchen cupboards. Both fears leave a feeling of helplessness, which shouldn't be belittled. 

   

  9. I miss snow the way the mayfly misses dying alone.

   

  10. I want us to begin again, fragile and hesitant: here is your name on the palm of my hand. Here is my hand knocking on your body.

   

  *

   

  Somebody Tell The River

   

  I.

  It is just like water to surround me and still refuse to know me intimately.

   

  II.

  Somebody tell the river

  that I do not want it in our living room,

  that it can take back the fish

  it has left at our door.

  Somebody tell the ocean

  that it is not welcome
here,

  that I have not forgiven it

  for drowning me in '94.

  Somebody tell the sea

  that I can write it in a story,

  and say, simply, He saw the sea,

  stripping it of its colour,

  its breathtaking glory.

  This is how I avenge myself.

  Somebody tell the water

  to be careful. It is not the only thing

  that can kill without bruising.

   

  III.

  At the age of six, my greatest joy was in the familiar. The sacks of rice and sugar, the small ticks on paper, the folded tables, the lunch boxes emptied of leftovers for the cat to feed on. One step following another, every day for many days, the tides coming in and leaving at their precise hours. This is where faith lies, with what is constant. It was raining

   

  when you said you no longer know what to do with your life, when it came to my attention that we are sad. Where is the water when you need it, the swell that can rinse and heal, the waves that can buoy you up? Outside, singing against glass walls and tin roofs. Making a body lose its balance.

   

  IV.

  Q: Define an uncaring deity.

   

  A:

  Omnipresent

  Endless

  Never dies

  Never answers

   

  Q: Define water.

   

  *

   

  Elegy For The Lost Minutes

   

  The woman with the wheelchair-bound husband

  is losing kindness in front of the elevators. We are standing

  in the car she has been waiting for

  for what seems like hours. We are thinking

  of inconsequential things – sandwich, cookies,

  coffee, weekend – clutching our wallets close to our chests,

  while the woman holds what's left of her kindness

  on the palm of her hand and lets it go.

  I thought patients are priority here, she screams the moment

  the doors open, and the elevator attendant offers her apologies,

  a kindness the size of a thimble. We are only capable

  of a little kindness: breakfast served promptly

  at seven in the morning, a window seat offered

  during the bus ride home. A touch of the hand,

  to signify commiseration. The woman looks at us

  with contempt. All of you people can walk, she says.

  Our hands are empty. Here are our legs, we wanted to say.

  But we are not kind enough.

   

  Lynn Hoffman

   

  Image by Ivan Vicencio

   

  Afterlives – Alexander Portnoy

   

  I still get letters and I read each one

  tilting the pages in the bright Judean light.

  These days they say "thank you" or "you told

  the truth" or even "we are beyond that now, alevai!"

   

  On the sunny terrace I conjure visions of my father.

  In my dream, he is loosed, unbound.

  Naked, slick, wintergreenish on the sweathouse bench.

  No suffocating shawl hides the cheerful vulgarity

  of this earnest, simple, careful, conventional man.

   

  We talk, in these dreams, we sometimes cry

  for the sad frightened woman who pinched our lives

  while she choked her own. Her grandchildren may

  not understand the twisted grin with which their daddy said

  "Make yourself happy, but first make your self."

   

  *

   

  Afterlives – Bond, James Bond

   

  No longer with Her Majesty,

  I live handsomely none the less, on royalties,

  the movies, books, the occasional children's toy,

  they furnish a comfortable cottage in Cornwall.

   

  John and I are a quiet couple.

  We've changed our names, our faces, our minds

  about the things that matter and the matter of things.

  I added a bulb and twist to my nose,

  time has puffed out the jaw, I surrendered my taste for gin.

   

  John fixed his eyes, he paints, I knit.

  There are cats and a garden,

  for warmth there is Ibiza, for fun –

  Philadelphia and St Lo and when we leave

  the house, we have our secrets.

   

  *

   

  Afterlives – Delores Haze (Lolita)

   

  It was Lo in the morning? No.

  It was high in the morning, higher

  still in the afternoon, chasing butterflies'

  reflections, the higher hire of his lowing.

   

  His ass in jail, he put a spin, spun a tail

  that followed him right up his end.

  His story makes me pukenlaugh.

  He stole my this, he killed my that

  What bull! That stupid, stuffy cow.

   

  Of all my men, he was the leastest

  blindest, thickest, soaring-boringest,

  my On The Road toad.

  He didn't take much time to kill

  mom, the man and him then us.

   

  Tracey Iceton

   

  Image by "Craitza"

   

  Car Life

   

  He gets into the car. Waits for his wife. He always waits for her like this. He prefers to wait in the car. In the driver's seat. At the controls. Ready for the getaway. It's what he's used to. What he always did, back when he had things to do. For Them.

   

  He slots the key in the ignition, turns it half way. Lights blink. A voice speaks from the dash: Kerry's dad has called to say there's stationary traffic on the A3 where it joins the M1 outside Lisburn…

   

  -

   

  He drives to work. Low sun blinds him. Winks off a stone chip like a disco ball. He counts the numbers down: 12... 11... 10... 9…

   

  He drives home from work. Dark country roads punctuated by dual white spears of light.

   

  Bastards! Get your high beams off.

   

  The lay-by drops away from the road to the left. The lay-by where They'd meet him. Brief him. Give him what he needed: orders, tools, a hood, a gun. No one uses it now. 'Cept him. He swings the wheel, pulls the car up in the shelter of trees dark and stiff like petrified corpses. Drops the seat back down. Unzips his fly.

   

  He parks in his garage. Old habits. Safe habits. Redundant now; no more reprisals. Not since They signed the deal. He cuts the engine. Listens with a bleeding heart to the rumbles that fall and die. Opens the door and gets out. Smells the heat. Sweat pricks in his crotch.

   

  -

   

  He drives the babysitter home at eleven. Keeps his hand on the gear lever. Only inches from her bare knee. She chats away. He feels his belt cinched tight, his gut spilling over it. She giggles. He imagines turning left not right. Taking her to Their lay-by, now his. Getting her in the back. Dragging her panties down over her thighs, over her cowboy boots. Turns right. Drops her at home safe and sound.

   

  -

   

  He drives to work. Rain pelts the windscreen, battering the glass. Making him blink. He counts the numbers down: 12... 11... 10... 9…

   

  He drives home from work. A bruised sky hovers above. His knuckles, tight on the steering wheel, not bruised. Pulls into his lay-by. Climbs into the back. Stretches out. Recalls the babysitter. Her mini-skirt. Her cowboy boots. The lace panties he hopes
she wears. Unzips his fly.

   

  -

   

  He waits to gun the engine. Here she comes. His wife. She gets in beside him.

   

  Put your seatbelt on.

   

  He does it for a quiet life.

   

  Sure, don't drive so fast.

   

  He slows. Drives according to the posted limits. He doesn't drive it like he stole it. Because he hasn't. Doesn't. Anymore.

   

  He takes her to the supermarket. Waits in the car. Retunes the radio. Takes her to her mother's when she's shopped. Waits in the car. Reads the paper. "Girl's body found wrapped in bin-bag in grandmother's attic". New news, not like the old news. Only one dead. Good old fashioned murder. That's all now.

   

  He takes his wife home when she's visited.

   

  Leave the car out, I'll need it for bingo.

   

  He has to park in the drive. He locks the doors. It'll be alright. They've all put up Their bombs and Their guns and gone home for tea.

   

  -

   

  He sits in the traffic. Red lights flash off/on-off/on out of sync. He puts the car in neutral. The engine idles. He idles. Reaches over to the glove box. Flips the handle. Fumbles inside. Finds the packet. Depresses the cigarette lighter. Forgets that it's knackered. Puts the packet back. Sighs.

   

  He collects the mother-in-law from church. Brings her home for dinner. Wonders how she tastes. Too tough. Lets her out on the drive. Parks in the garage. Old habits. Good habits. Just in case. He cuts the engine. Listens with a bleeding heart to the rumbles that fall and die. Opens the door and gets out. Smells the heat. Tugs at his crotch. Goes in for dinner.

   

  -

   

  He collects the babysitter. She gets in the back, lolls out on the seat. Her boyfriend gets in the front. Next to him. A sharp lad. Crew cut. Heavy boots. Harp inked on his neck. Helps himself to the radio. Finds a rock station. Cocky young lad. Just Their type back when...

   

  What's this so, 1.6? Fuel injection, so? Sure, good for a getaway, eh?

   

  He brings them home. Waits in the car. For his wife. For their night out, her on the gin, him on the shandy.

   

  Driving, so I am.

   

  -

   

  He drives to work. Wind bundles the car about. He tightens his grip. Knuckles clean, white scars like snail trails over them. He rides out the storm. Doesn't bother to count the numbers: 12... 11... 10... 9…

   

  He doesn't drive home after work. He drives down town. Finds her on a corner. Asks her price. Asks her to sit in the back. Asks if her panties are lace.

   

  -

   

  He sees the road block. A van. Two cars. A motorbike. Blues and twos.

   

  His heart races. Tell them nowt.

   

  Just an overturned caravan. Nothing to worry about, sir. If you could just turn around there, sir.

   

  They don't want to pat him down. Shoot questions at him. He doesn't even have to get out of the car. Some things are better. Easier.

   

  He passes the lay-by. Doesn't turn in. Sweat's cold on his back, under his arms. Sticky. He remembers the old days. Drives slowly. With greedy pleasure.

   

  He parks in the garage. Cuts the engine. Listens with a bleeding heart to the rumbles that fall and die. Opens the door and gets out. Smells the heat. Looks hungrily at the back seat. Presses himself up against the door. Grinds into it. Wonders if his wife is out.

   

  He rubs it down with a soft rag. Caresses the curves, trails his fingers over the rises and falls of the body. Strokes softly. Breathes heavily. Is glad he has to drive to work tomorrow.