Issue #34
www.neonmagazine.co.uk
info@neonmagazine.co.uk
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.
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.