Neon Literary Magazine #40 Read online

  Not, say, like the fate of the dinosaurs.

  There’s no heft to their excavated spoor.

  This shit’s slow, here and now, subsisting

  as it does in the skeletons of film plots.

  You sense it beneath the soap opera

  histrionics blazing your TV screen:

  a quiz show format in its latest guise

  reality stars dead behind the eyes

  new armies of tweeters eager to scorn.

  Anon with a public face.

  We used to

  preserve species in jars on dusty shelves.

  Now they’re stored in citadels of hard drives,

  genome and map for the progenitor.

  Daily we squirrel away bite-size myths,

  toggle through filters on our cameras,

  frame the bestest selfie. Here’s a story for

  keyboard warriors impatient to troll :

  The Young Man Who Googled Himself To Death.

  Reports vary as to the state of his health.

  *

  Consumer Market

  Just then, I thought I saw

  at the Deli counter, your broken jaw

  on sale as exotic meat:

  a fleshy mandible, a pair of feet

  and more besides. Some

  thyroid, spleen, prostate, lung

  all manner of choice cuts

  oozing blood from slits

  your whole body in chunks

  and the butcher in a funk

  with patrons, who can vouch

  to wandering aisles half-mouthed.

  *

  Rings

  under the eyes, a careless blink –

  the mark of an absent wedding band

  as he caresses her with his hands –

  growth rings in the iris shrunk back;

  shrill ring of phone and the missed

  conversation that cost everything.

  *

  My Upstairs Neighbour

  whom I have never met

  whom I recognise by

  their cavalcade of noise

  whom I curse blindly as

  washing machine cycles

  rattle through cutlery

  who manoeuvres speakers

  to best experience

  Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here

  who spoils my Sunday brunch

  with pointed and constant

  scrape of hoover nozzle

  whose disregard for me

  dawned when the ceiling wept

  droplets of bathwater

  whose name’s a misnomer

  whose romping bed betrays

  my blushing in the dark

  Ruth Brandt

  Image by Ron Beck

  Happy Ever After

  At the eight hour mark Alfie’s mother lies on his bed and pulls his pyjamas to her nose. She breathes in the scent of her son; little flakes of his skin which must still lurk there. She bundles up the fabric, squeezing every last atom of him into her, needing to capture any remaining fragments of his life so that she can nurture them within her again. Downstairs a kettle clicks on, or is it off? It doesn’t matter. The room illuminates rhythmically blue. The front door slams. Boots paw the mat. A new voice. She wishes she had closed Alfie’s bedroom door, shut them all out.

  Josh Bubble Smith

  wot the fucks happened wiv alf?

  Like Comment

  10 people like this

  View all 6 comments

  Chloe Spragg sumfing happened?????

  Like

  Matt Winterbottom police round the park fuckin hell 

  2 people like this

  Yasir Husseni Whats up??!!

  Like

  Between the twenty-fifth and fortieth day Alf is spotted disembarking from a vaporetta in Venice; cycling along Regent Walk in Edinburgh; and alighting from a metro train at Avtovo station, carrying a bottle of Russian Standard vodka and tapping ash off a Belomorkanal. His description is consistent: five foot eight (some an inch taller, some an inch shorter), dark woollen coat, bulbous hat; just as pictured in his photo. By the fiftieth day the reports that have been pouring in from all over the place have begun to tail off.

  Each sighting is definitely Alfie; his mother is certain of that. He loves travelling, he loves history and politics. Remember, DI Potter, he is studying those at college.

  When DI Potter leaves, she shrinks into the sofa, imagining the chill of the St Petersburg November air, feeling the ache of lungs unaccustomed to smoke, clenching her gullet to prevent the wave of seasickness that consumes her.

  -

  On the third day there are no sightings. Nor on the fourth.

  -

  On day minus seven Alf sits in Lightwater Country Park with Eleni straddling his lap while she pokes her tongue into his ear. Her dribble tickles his neck and he laughs, smoothing his jeans-contained erection against her fanny. Perhaps they’ll head into the copse where, from certain angles, there’s a chance they might not be seen having sex. Or perhaps they will stumble back to his place and head up to his bedroom where his mum still insists on folding his clothes.

  College has just started and he should be in a politics lesson, or is it travel and tourism? He doesn’t remember anymore since he chose the subjects at random and hasn’t downloaded his timetable, or looked at the book list, or actually ever turned up. A disappointment? Of course, but then Alf has contributed decent servings of disappointment to the world since the moment he broke free from his mother’s womb; an ugly mass with a differing ability that had failed to declare itself on scans.

  “So much for fucking technology,” his father had said in pretty much his last contribution to Alf’s life other than a card sent on Alf’s sixteenth birthday. If Alfred was ever in the Crewe area, he must drop in, it said. Otherwise, as Alfred had now passed from boyhood to manhood, his father guessed that was it. Go for it, son. Get in there.

  Alf’s first operation to reduce the spasms in his malformed leg failed. Never mind, eh; life would ultimately compensate the poor little mite in some way, after all, that’s how it goes, isn’t it?

  His second operation was successful but it left Alf with a pause in his step, a hint of a limp which by Year Three turned Alf into the shark in the playground ocean, a basker who ate first and vomited up indigestible bones. Options? Eat or be beaten; which was he to choose, Mother?

  Since his disappointing GCSE results, Alf has spent his summer providing pools of neon-blue WKD vomit for the moonlight to glint off; far more poetic than barely-digested burger in vodka on the carpet. Used condoms under his bed should have contributed too, except Alf hasn’t actually managed to get one out and on in his six week sex-fest with Eleni. Still, he has jammed the unopened pack of condoms down the side of his bed to prevent sex-squeak, where it loiters, waiting to fly out when his mother changes his sheets. Unused pack versus used condom? Either way his mother’s disappointment is assuaged now that he has a girlfriend to keep him away from that lot. She’s the icing on the cake, Eleni is, proof that her ugly duckling has matured into a cob. Her boy is finally on the road to coming good.

  Alf would have liked there to be more names than just Eleni’s etched on his bedpost. Seventeen and just the one sexual partner. What the shit was that all about, particularly as he has been watching porn since twelve, knows how to satisfy two women at a time, knows how girls arch their backs and grunt with pleasure? But all that stuff isn’t real; watching isn’t doing. Doing is different. With Eleni he doesn’t need dildos or leather. With her he isn’t a spaz. Now his knife stays home.

  -

  On the second day the analysis of CCTV footage begins. There, at a bus stop, is the boy-man. And ten minutes later he is spotted passing Game, pausing for a moment to check the display. And then queuing outside the Odeon. There can be no doubt about this last sighting. His face is clearly shown in the high-definition recordings which also reveal the TV ch
annel watched by the retired couple living in the warehouse conversion across the canal, the time they eat, the way they make love to lesbian blue movies.

  Do not approach this youth

  On the fifteenth day Alfie’s mother is woken by a call. She grabs the phone. By the time DI Potter voices the words analysis, hard drive, brutality, she gets the drift.

  He’s not a bad boy, she explains, thoughts and sleeping-pill induced dreams interweaving. It’s his leg, that’s all. Disabled, bullied youth turns briefly to regrettable violence then redeems himself. That’s where this story heads, surely, to happy ever after.

  Have you heard anything, any news, any sightings? Have you heard? Anything?

  -

  On day minus five Alf is at Eleni’s, a home infused with the scent of moussaka and bouzouki strumming, where the stickiness of baklava lingers on the breath. Everything’s going to be all right from now on. Everything’s cool.

  WHAT TIME ARE YOU

  COMING HOME?

  MUM X

  17:18

  why are you yelling?!!!!

  17:35

  yELLING? i DID NOT i JUST

  ASKED A QUESTION? X

  17:36

  Oops. Any idea? X

  17:37

  Any idea Alfie? X

  17:40

  Any idea Alfie? xxxx

  18:07

  later……….

  22:59

  -

  On the sixth day Alfie’s mother checks her mobile phone, her answer phone, the post, her email, her Facebook, Alfie’s Facebook. She wanders round the house, checks the garden, looks for little notes poked between paving slabs, snapped under windscreen wipers, jammed into the bark of the plum tree. A thread from his trousers, a footprint in a bed. A camera whirrs – chisst, chisst, chisst – as it follows her progress and she is tempted to give it the bird. Instead she straightens her shoulders and heads back inside to check her mobile phone, the answer phone, her email, her Facebook, Alfie’s Facebook.

  -

  Day minus four.

  On r bench xxxxx

  17:56

  Where u? xxxxx

  18:08

  Where r u?

  18:17

  ??????

  18:43

  -

  On the seventh day there is a confirmed sighting at Piccadilly Circus where Alf is spotted by his former science teacher. Ever wary of Alfred Parsons, Mr Gunter stepped into the gutter to let the lad pass. He seemed meek, Mr Gunter reported the following day, not at all the same lad he held in detention for spitting.

  When questioned about the delay in coming forward, Mr Gunter wipes sweat from his forehead before admitting that perhaps the encounter had been a few hundred metres north of Piccadilly Circus, perhaps in Soho, outside Schwang, but please don’t tell his wife. His sporadic visits to the sex club are all that have kept his marriage together these past fifteen years.

  Subsequent enquiries in the area fail to locate Alf. The trail has gone cold.

  -

  On day minus two Alf confronts Eleni. The complete blank in communications. Why? Eleni blinks a lot; she half turns her face away. Why?

  -

  On day eight, the minute Alfie’s mother hears he has been sighted for sure, she heads up to London. She checks his picture on her phone, the photo that pops up each time she dials his number. Even though his phone goes straight to the voicemail full message, she keeps dialling five, six, seven times an hour. She looks at that picture all the train journey, worried that after the eternity of not seeing him she won’t be able to recognise her son.

  She stands beneath Eros, on exactly the spot Alfie might have stood twenty-four hours earlier and, even though it is stupid, she is tempted to bend down and check the pavement for a piece of his hair, or a nail he might have bitten off. She hates the delay caused by Mr Gunter’s weakness for lap dancers, just as much as she hates the young men who walk past wearing skinny jeans, chatting as though there is nothing at all wrong.

  The flick of a coat and the hint of a stooped head and she’s off following. It could be him. She wants to yell out in great big capital letters for real now to attract his attention; shout till her thirty-two point font voice is heard throughout the city.

  ALFIE! ALFIE! ALFIE!

  She tails him up Shaftesbury Avenue, down Charing Cross Road, until somewhere near Temple he turns.

  My son, she tells him. You look like my son.

  The man shakes his head and he is nothing like Alfie, nothing at all.

  On Blackfriars Bridge she stares into the tide sweeping upstream and understands that the only reason for her existing any longer is for Alfie to return to once this stupid misunderstanding has been sorted. He has to come home.

  -

  On day eight Alf makes his way down the steps outside Sea Containers House onto the Thames shore where amber lights glisten on a discarded rubber sole, a comb, a shard of glass. He scuffs at a piece of blue pottery, stamps on a clay pipe bowl the river has failed to destroy. His coat, laden with rain, tugs him down and the lazy wind blows straight through him.

  Under Blackfriars Bridge, dribbles of brackish water creep towards him and a shooting star slices through the night sky. He lights a match for warmth and lets it burn his fingers.

  -

  The day itself is warm. Alf has said he will be waiting on their bench. One last chat, Eleni owes him that. He sits, elbows on knees, fingers clicking. He is ready, knows what to say. She arrives alone.

  He’s got a reputation, she says. Bit of a psycho.

  Hey, he says, laughing it off. This is me you’re talking about.

  Yeah, she says, but you know.

  They mock my leg, he tells her. What am I to do? Let them?

  Yeah, she says. The leg.

  Is that it? he says. It’s over because of my leg?

  Nah, she says.

  Fuck them, eh. He slaps his knuckles into the bench seat. And fuck you too if you believe them, Eleni.

  And they go to the place, the one where they could have had sex without anyone seeing them, probably. And he has his blade with him again.

  And Eleni? Eleni? If he can’t have her then no one can. Fuck them. Fuck her. Fuck the whole fucking world.

  -

  Once upon a time there was a boy.

  Flavian Mark Lupinetti

  Image by G Schouten De Jel

  Division Of Labour

  I don’t like it when my friends decide

  the time has arrived

  for me to thumb down

  yet another car.

  But you're the best, Claire says,

  With your hollow chest,

  your skinny hips, your dimples.

  At the edge of your mouth, that pretty little scar.

  She has a point.

  I do find it easier

  to get picked up

  than Claire and them do.

  Besides, says Beth,

  you sound so embarrassed

  when you ask if

  your friends can ride, too.

  The tiniest bit of colour

  rises in your cheeks,

  and your eyelids flutter

  when you look at the floor.

  You totally sell the

  impression that you feel

  you must apologize for

  these losers clambering through the door.

  Also true. And, to be fair,

  my friends ask only that

  I hitch the ride, make five minutes of small talk,

  and get ready to take the wheel

  They never

  ask me to stick

  the knife in,

  all the way to the hilt.

  *

  Refined

  First day on the job at the Quaker State,

  The newest of the oil rats hang on every word.

  Don the foreman lectures, “Keep a tight grip on the rail.

  Double back your safety harness. Don’t forget to clip your
cable.

  No horseplay on the catwalk. You don’t want to get refined.”

  Forty feet below the cauldrons simmer.

  Fifty thousand gallons each of sulfured Pennsylvania sludge.

  Sweet gasoline mixed in somewhere,

  Elixir for the towers to extract.

  No horseplay on the catwalk.

  Hydrocarbon essences condense upon the soles.

  Metal grates concede no traction.

  “Your eyes will become accustomed,”

  Don promises the men who blink back tears.

  No horseplay on the catwalk.

  At noon Calhoun the crew chief

  Invites the young guys to the river.

  Under canopy of bushes a joint passes down the line.

  Smoking anything on these grounds, grounds for immediate termination.

  No horseplay on the catwalk.

  The older guys all swear that once it happened.

  Different versions differ wildly that describe just what they found

  After draining precious oil into the river.

  Some said only metal shanks from his work boots.

  Others swore that his body stayed intact.

  Graffiti in the shitter drives home the warning.

  There once was a dude who fell in the crude.

  The poem’s remaining lines distilled away.

  No notes about the poet or where the full poem can be found.

  No horseplay on the catwalk.

  *

  Rehearsal

  I have started to learn my lines,