Roadkill
High in a eucalyptus tree, Jeanie was woolgathering. ‘Yo ho, yo ho, a koala’s life for me!’ she suddenly whooped, breaking out from her daydream and pulling a face at Gus, who peered nervously up at his cousin from the base of the tree. Little furrows appeared on his freckle-peppered forehead.
North
North in search of a true-nature tribe the proper study of man became everything a hot hidden Africa, a colonial playground except bullet-proof like sugar spring and lips lined with logic and maps tasks, deadlines, gadgets, whole constellations tuned without a whisper of here and honey and wholy thi
Dream of Harold Pinter
“Call me HP,” he says. “Like the sauce?” His face does not move. We drive on.
The Bees
Poetry: “The bees are going down, you know, it’s a well known fact / statistically but also purely / anecdotally, because the ground is suddenly / pebbled with the dead little things.”
A reflection in glass
Fiction: “I mean, anyone who lives in monochrome might be so preoccupied, their mind curling with sepia-tone daydreams and heavy-lidded prayers.”
Rift Valley
Poetry: “Nothing in the hushed hills, / the mute, grey ascent, to ready us for that / gash of gutted earth.”
Salt
Fiction: “They had come at the wrong time of day, really. The sun seemed to be scorching the air around them. ‘Okay,’ she sighed, sitting up and beginning to stretch to her feet. ‘Let's go.’”
neglect
Poetry: "he moves beyond reach / and I fade into relative neglect …"