It starts like nothing else does – with a simple marker: felt-tipped, Harlem black, that liquorice smell that is supposed to warn of something toxic to the human survivals; a simple line drawn down the earlobe so that something has been earmarked for something else, set aside like an antique lamp for resale; that craven Velcro way you run from the schoolyard bully, his brutish uncapped marker on the rampage.
Isaac Newton Reinvents the Charcuterie in His Own Cold Meaty Likeness
Such a cinch to move, all those electricals sent down from the fuse box, Isaac Newton reinvents the charcuterie in his own cold meaty likeness if I didn’t know better, unplanned sit-ups in the dark; the court jester before the castle, it is the laughers reverse engineered by able tear duct sheddings, humanzees in the mezzanine drumming up interest – where you end up is the sum of floppy meanderings, painted streetwalkers lining easy street, vacuums to fill in the dusty ballast-less drooping; this sky bridge of Damocles hammocks on the slow dangle, tiki bar umbrellas chasing off the rains in miniature.
Every Band Needs a Train Song
Every band needs a train song before everything goes off the rails as I stand over this sink that has seen better days, look away for a moment and when my eyes return, the sink is gone. I look away again without a thought and when I look back the sink has returned. I finish brushing, spit and rinse before turning out the light. If such things still phase you, you are groping minnows on someone else’s dirty water. Jack-knifing with gassy trucks on the diesel plan. A hint of darkness and I am gone. Back down into the tumbling catacombs of my vaulted lint-trap mind.
I wonder
if Greta was ever Garbo’s real name
or if she knew the dyslexics would would read it and see her as Great before anyone else
so that word of mouth got around
from all the bigs to the smalls
like the nefarious gum lines of some New York travel agent
who wonders why she never left the streets of New York once she got there
falling in love with a city and never a man.
Kain Crescent Park
A slim meander off Robertson to that pavement-painted blue arrow, then four steps up, count them as you go: one, two, three, four… and now you are in Kain Crescent Park looking across the flats to some picnic table by wood’s edge, on the lean and so well forested that ravenous mosquitoes eat better than you; yes, those buzzing little blood-devils, in front of a large uncut stone like the one Jackson Pollock can’t help but lie under.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Ink Pantry, Impspired Magazine, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
You can find more of Ryan’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Harvey Floyd sat on a bench, feeding kernels of wheat to the pigeons that clustered and cooed around his feet. Car horns blared and buses rumbled down the streets. Vibrations from the constant traffic rattled Harvey Floyd’s bones. He twitched and grimaced from the irritations and exhaust fumes swirling around him.
“I need a quiet and restful place,” he said aloud. “Someplace where there is no noise.”
One of the pigeons near Harvey Floyd’s left foot stopped feeding, cocked its head and stared at him with one shiny eye. “Why don’t you move to Spelsbury?” the pigeon said.
“Where is that?” Harvey Floyd asked, not at all startled by a talking pigeon.
“It’s in England.” The pigeon pecked at some wheat kernels by Harvey Floyd’s left shoe.
“How do you know?” Harvey Floyd scattered another handful of grain.
“I just flew in from there a few moments ago.”
“Ah, that explains your accent.”
“Quite so.”
“What’s special about Spelsbury?”
The pigeon hopped up on the bench and sat next to Harvey Floyd. “It has a twelfth-century Norman church with a beautiful square tower and a lovely cemetery. The village is so small you hardly encounter anyone. You will like it there. It is quiet, very restful. No cars or buses. I am sure it is the perfect place for you.”
The pigeon hopped off the bench and wandered away down the sidewalk.
Harvey Floyd went to Spelsbury and with good luck managed to rent a small stone cottage right next to the churchyard. The pigeon was right, Harvey Floyd concluded several days after moving in. Spelsbury was indeed quiet and restful.
Harvey Floyd became a fixture, wandering around the tiny village and taking his daily tea in the Rose and Thorn pub. In the evenings he treated himself to two pints of ale and an order of fish and chips. The patrons he encountered in the Rose and Thorn soon learned of his desire for solitude and said very little to him, which pleased Harvey Floyd enormously.
The cemetery, grassy and green and shaded by old oak trees, thrilled Harvey Floyd. He spent his afternoons walking among the gravestones. Many of them, tilted at precarious angles and covered with mosses and lichens, were hundreds of years old. Harvey Floyd could still read the names engraved in many of the weathered marble markers.
After many months in Spelsbury, and for amusement, Harvey Floyd began making up stories about the people buried in the cemetery.
He found one stone with the following epitaph engraved on it:
Here Lies John Nately Spakes
1620 – 1644
A damned highwayman was he Hanged by the neck From a stout oak tree Never again to rob Either thee or me.
The engraving struck Harvey Floyd as particularly intriguing. On sunny days he sat on the grass, leaned against the headstone and made up swashbuckling exploits of the handsome young brigand. He imagined beautiful and aristocratic ladies swooning with the vapours, and their male companions trembling with fear and impotence, when the highwayman stopped their coaches on the King’s Highways and robbed them of their jewels and money.
One day as Harvey Floyd lazed against the highwayman’s headstone in the warm summer sun, making up a great tale, John Nately Spakes spoke to him. “I am going to rob the coach of Sir John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester, this afternoon and you will accompany me,” said a voice from deep within the ground.
Harvey Floyd felt something grasp his ankles and pull. He began to disappear under the ground. Soon he found himself astride a snorting stallion by the side of the King’s Highway. Another man astride a similar horse rode out of the surrounding oak trees. “Who are you?” asked Harvey Floyd. His voice cracked and trembled with fear. “Are you John Nately Spakes?”
“Aye, that I am.” John Nately Spakes grinned savagely. “Here,” he said, handing Harvey Floyd a large and clumsy dragoon pistol. “The Earl is a bloody rotter. You may have to shoot him if he refuses to give up his purse.”
“Oh,” Harvey Floyd stammered, “this is not at all what I wanted. I seek peace and quiet. Oh, no, this simply won’t do.”
“It is too late for you,” roared John Nately Spakes. “Your swaggering tale becomes your life. But look! Yon comes the Earl’s coach!”
Harvey Floyd looked down the road. A coach, pulled by four horses with flaring nostrils and hooves hammering the road’s surface, thundered his way. The driver snapped the reins over the backs of the horses, urging them onward.
Before the coach reached them John Nately Spakes spurred his horse into the middle of the road. He brandished a pistol. “Hold! Hold!” he shouted and aimed the pistol at the driver. The driver pulled on the reins and put his weight on the footbrake, bringing the coach to a stop. Clouds of dust boiled around it.
John Nately Spakes swung his horse round to the coach door. “Out, out with you! Be quick about it,” he commanded. Two women and one man tumbled from the coach. “Well, now,” said John Nately Spakes, baring his teeth in a vicious sneer. “If it isn’t the Earl of Rochester and his harlots. Give up your purses!” ordered Spakes, waving his pistol in the air.
“Never!” bellowed the Earl of Rochester over the shrieks of the two women. “Driver!” he shouted. “Shoot this blackguard at once!” The driver stood and aimed a pistol at John Nately Spakes who fired his own pistol first. The driver dropped to the coach’s footwell and lay still.
The loud pistol shot startled Harvey Floyd’s horse. The horse reared violently. Harvey Floyd toppled off and landed on the top of his head. He heard the bones in his neck snap and break then blackness closed over him.
The groundskeeper found Harvey Floyd the next morning lying against John Nately Spakes’s gravestone and called the local constable who called the coroner. After a brief examination the coroner determined Harvey Floyd died of a broken neck.
How, asked the villagers, did Harvey Floyd break his neck in the cemetery? The coroner shrugged. Some things, he said, cannot be explained. The villagers buried Harvey Floyd in a secluded corner of the churchyard and forgot about him.
Several months later a pigeon flew in and perched on Harvey Floyd’s gravestone. The pigeon surveyed the cemetery, noted the oak leaves twinkling like emeralds in the afternoon sun as a soft summer breeze swept over them. “I see you have found a quiet and restful place,” murmured the pigeon. Then he flapped his wings and flew away.
Robert P. Bishop, a former soldier and teacher, lives in Tucson. His short fiction has appeared in The Literary Hatchet, The Umbrella Factory Magazine, CommuterLit, Lunate Fiction, Spelk, Fleas on the Dog, Corner Bar Magazine, Literally Stories, and elsewhere.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.
So Long, Marianne, Leonard Cohen had sung when I was a thing of the future and still unborn, intuiting the ways of the world from an unhappy womb.
My father died when I was six months old. My eyes cannot recall his mien, my ears his voice, too preoccupied with the milk that mixed with diluted salt.
“So Long,” she whispered when I became only one, entrusting me to what she deemed trustworthy hands, rescuing me from penury by severing a sacred bond.
And who says food is more important than love! A child gets more sustenance from a maternal hold. Now I feel as starved as when I was an infant bereft of home.
So Long Mariannes, Miriams, Marys and all wretched mums.
Tedium
The drab features of the dullest of days, a frowning sun and a languid moon that’s loath to scintillate, a mast-less ship that has loitered for a hundred years in yonder bay.
The minutes that tick on the mantelpiece the passage of time, deafening my ears, an unnerving similitude of reiterative ills in yonder abyss.
The bland voice that dictates the norm to which homo sapiens has conformed continues to drawl in every soul beyond yonder walls.
The desk that has harassed necks and spines irreverently reclines upon the ground, sluggish with pride, a monument for lives ill-spent in strife in yonder hives.
A Reading of the Film Bee Season
I always associated magic with evil deeds, with hags and cauldrons, with boiling snakes, with sowing discord amid matrimonial seeds, with ruptures, with effigies, with psychic disease, with a trail of misfortunes that never cease.
Kabbalah was one word that filled me with fear, a cultural legacy that ignorance had reared, but it took a movie with Richard Gere to show me how words transcend their spheres to attain a hearing in God’s own ears with a possible response from the Mighty Creator.
What Is? [For my Loulou Spitz]
What is in this white, little paw? A pledge of friendship, A tenacious hold, A grasp of firmness in a very ephemeral world.
What is in this rubber-like, tiny nose that nestles to every item of clothes, that sniffs each fragrance, each odor of socks, and hoard them like bones?
What is in these fluffy, drooping ears that capture the pulse of inward fears, that yearn for footsteps, for the rustle of treats, for fluttering heartbeats?
What is in this proud, arching tail that heralds a storm of greetings, that eloquently commands attention and praise, and orchestrates the art of hailing?
Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a Ph.D. on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in multiple venues including Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.
You can find more of Susie’s work here on Ink Pantry.
TO EXIST BETWEEN ETERNITIES WILD NOTHING LIKE THE EYES OF THE SKY AXIS INFINITY DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE BLISS /COME FORWARD WITH YOUR VISCERA AND VIOLENCE AND SHARE MY WINGS/UNLEASH YOUR SPIRIT BENEATH THE RAMJET ALLEGRO TEMPLE OF THE NIGHT SKY A NEED FOR MIRRORS AND COUNTLESS SKIES/SHAKE YOUR INFINESSENCE SLOT CANYON HIGHBREATH NARCOTIC ERUPTIONS CLOUD NOTHINGS EXOTIC PULSE A NAME BEYOND DESIRE SEMAPHORE SIN PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK TALKING TWILIGHT/ INTO A SPHERE OF YOUTHFUL SYMPATHY RIDES THE THIEF OF YOUTH THIN AIR ADDICTIONS MELANCHOLY BODY SACRILEGE TATTOO HIGHWAY INSOMNIA PUNK/ TEENAGE BLOOD REPETITION OF A THOUSAND HUNGRY EYES/SOMETIMES WE ARE ALL ETERNAL IN THE CONSTELLATION OF MIDNIGHT MOSAIC FACTION/ MY GREEN UNQUEEN GALLERY CRUSH HYPERRITUAL AUTUMN CRY OPULENCE LIKE A TRIANGLE AND A DUEL/SOME TALK TO MEN WHILE OTHERS TALK TO GODS DANCE IT VISCIOUS RIDDLE OF THE SANDS CHAMELEON CHARADE STAR CODE CHALICE/ASK THE DESERT ORACLE THESE POISON DECLARATIONS THE REAL UNREAL CONVERSATIONS WITH A NEW REALITY/DISSOLVE THE ILLUSION IN A SPIRITDANCE/NATURE’S SYMPHONY DRAFT INTOXICATION
You can find more of Rus’ work here on Ink Pantry.
To our cottage on the pond, I ascribe human attributes, And why not: Four generations of Idiosyncratic postures, Favourite chairs, The smiles of grandsons Around each corner, In every splash off the dock, Scent of decades of pine rooms, My father’s shaving brush, Memories in other artifacts We did not buy.
So when we leave, Packing up board games Along with Beth’s shy grin, We ease out onto the lane, Regret visceral Until about the Massachusetts line. The cottage, at first forlorn, Has figured out what’s going on, Recognizes the red kayak, An intruder in the guest room, But, relaxing under its cover of Newspaper, moth balls, Frayed bedspreads, Like an old bear we know, Dozes off for the winter.
2.
Cold October rain Scatters unwilling leaves, Crimson, orange-gold, Before the holiday, Slick paste on asphalt. I pack my painting tools Under the house: The can of grey stain Will not survive the winter. In the tight wood On a hill back from the pond Green clings to green, A few leaves fall unturned.
3.
Late October: SUV’s headed out, mostly Pickup trucks on the lane. They are the surrogate residents On the pond in the off season, The people who shut off the water, Drain the pipes, Winch up docks up onto land, Check in winter for snow on the roof. We have a common concern For a tight seal around the chimney, The grey birch by the Turtle Rock That needs to come down. We discuss The judgment of the selectmen, The Red Sox’ chances for next year, The merits of metal roofing. We entrust them with precious things, Sacred ground, these folk With whom we share a love of place Until we come back again In June.
Robert Demaree is the author of four book-length collections of poems, including Other Ladders published in 2017 by Beech River Books. His poems have received first place in competitions sponsored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire and the Burlington Writers Club. He is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. Bob’s poems have appeared in over 150 periodicals including Cold Mountain Review and Louisville Review.
You can find more of Robert’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I aim a spray of bleach. the bathroom smells strongly of swimming pools.
expecting visitors, I touch my mask, and scrub the toilet spotless.
an attendant, tired and early morning, long on a hot summer’s day.
One shouldn’t fit
on a bus, and seeing the mind inside each of these people. a lady who smells. a man with a book. a kid looking somewhat uncomfortable. the cone of thought backward, expanding all colours and size – infinite large in shape and not knowing collision. thought in there. there’s so much person in everyone’s head that one shouldn’t fit on a bus. like going to a tent in wexford, in growing season. seeing how sunlight makes strawberries.
The overly personal poems
flying our interest like flags at a football match.
animals hidden amongst other animals;
robins in gardens fighting christmas decorations.
camouflage – the rage and futility of display.
Fear of losing
what you’ve managed to get. or reducing your income. or only maintaining it.
fear that the job will be different next year. fear that it won’t be.
that my girl- friend won’t marry me. that she will. that she will
sometimes. all these thoughts driving nails in the soles of my feet. I sit at a table
outside a cafe eating a fried breakfast sandwich. traffic honks,
snarls and sends smoke through my mouth and they finger my collar.
it’s saturday. the weekend a scramble. the weekdays some eggshell which got in the pan. a truck
could be sideswiped, could come off the road.
I wouldn’t get out
of the way.
The train goes thwacking
grown tired of my novel, I stretch, scratch my legs. everyone here is sat down; sleeping or freezing in snowdrifts of quiet conversation.
it’s late. outside the train goes thwacking like a galloping animal over countryside.
in here we’re all sealed in.
it’s very quiet. steel tore the ground like a tight pair of shoes and left it red and wounded and we run across it together in silence ignoring each other.
DS Maolalai is a graduate of English Literature from Trinity College in Dublin and recently returned there after four years abroad in the UK and Canada. He has been writing poetry and short fiction for the past five or six years with some success. His writing has appeared in 4’33’, Strange Bounce and Bong is Bard, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Out of Ours, The Eunoia Review, Kerouac’s Dog, More Said Than Done, Star Tips, Myths Magazine, Ariadne’s Thread, The Belleville Park Pages, Killing the Angel and Unrorean Broadsheet, and has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His work is published in two collections; Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden ((Encircle Press, 2016)) and Sad Havoc Among the Birds(Turas Press, 2019).
You can find more of DS’s work here on Ink Pantry.
In the aroma of Madeira in a glass and the incense of tallow she finds her muse in the day’s snug sunshine, painting the birth of a wren by hand, her heart trembling, coming alive, she’s not too far away from the white blossoms of dogwood trees, and she calls her craft the art of seeing, examining the world around her like an artist with a keen eye capturing animal life like she did the blackbird in flight, wings all aflutter eclipsing the sun, the oak and eagle as her witness. Everyday her life is opened up and with the fine strokes of her paintbrush she sparks a red flower to dance brightly, illumines the tiny movements of a butterfly climbing the window glass, sunlight glowing in its wings
Memory of Hope
Raindrops danced on the red brick terrace and rippled the surface of the cerulean birdbath, my world never silent as I listen to the rhythmic tap of rain on my window, on the patio table; the memory of hope I thought I may never know again, a soft-born light I wished would revise itself inside of me, nudge its synergy with the god in heaven to make me want to live again, a potent reminder that without hope it’s too easy to give up and die. My spirit shyly opened when autumn’s shower outside slowly came to an end, leaving behind a luminous rainbow aura on my bedroom wall.
Eyes of the Painter
Elation swirls inside his heart come the half rising dawn when he undoes his tangled layers of thought and lets the life all around him spill from the tip of his paintbrush onto the canvas, a garden brimful of visual delights living inside him in the rains of November, driven by his visions and the taste of tea leaves on his tongue; every arc of colour, every exquisite detail pure as the beauty of an early snow. In his eyes he steals from a childhood memory, the plumb feathers of a peacock; and a quiet healing in the inner layers of his heart calm him while he is alone for hours, the sound of a symphony on his stereo drifting in from the music room. One day he finds himself growing blind and when his eyesight is gone he longs to paint what he sees in his dreams.
Bobbi Sinha-Morey‘s poetry has appeared in a wide variety of places such as Plainsongs, Pirene’s Fountain, The Wayfarer, Helix Magazine, Miller’s Pond, The Tau, Vita Brevis, Cascadia Rising Review, Old Red Kimono, and Woods Reader. Her books of poetry are available at Amazon and her work has been nominated for Best of the Net Anthology in 2015, 2018, and 2020, as well as having been nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2020.
Prior to writing this review I was listening to a recording of Elgar’s ballet ‘The Sanguine Fan’. Written in 1917 for the benefit of wartime charities, the name derives from the fact that the theme of the piece was inspired by a scene depicting Pan and Echo that a local artist had drawn in sanguine on a fan. There are three things in common between this ‘coincidence’ and the book I am reviewing here: the connection with Worcester, the birth of an artistic creation inspired through the medium of a fan and the fact that the proceeds were to go to a wartime charity.
Leena Batchelor is a Worcester-based poet and spoken word artist, Worcestershire Poet Laureate 2020-21 and Poet-in-Residence for The Commandery, a museum dedicated to the Civil Wars. She is the author of three previous solo collections and uses poetry as a medium to raise funds for various charities, including mental health and the armed forces.
The first thing to say about this book is that it is far more than a collection of poetry. Batchelor, who has a particular interest in fans, has researched her topic assiduously. This has involved visiting specialist museums, consulting the Guild of Fan Makers and reading widely around her subject. The result is a fascinating combination of factual history and inspired poetry which is complemented by many beautifully reproduced colour photographs of fans and a useful glossary of fan types.
The collection begins with this quote from Madam de Staël (1766-1817):
“What grace does not a fan place at a woman’s disposal if she only knows how to use it properly! It waves, it flutters, it closes, it expands, it is raised or lowered according to circumstances. Oh! I will wager that in all the paraphernalia of the loveliest and best-dressed women in the world, there is no ornament with which she can produce so great an effect.”
In this collection, Batchelor is quick to point out that throughout history fans have not only been used as a means to send signals, express preferences or emotions, but also as liturgical objects for the depiction of hand-painted biblical allegories, as modesty screens used by both sexes in Roman baths, and as a feature found in heraldry. More surprisingly, they have also been incorporated into a form of T’ai Chi, been utilised for the setting down of a secret language called Nushu which was known only to women and as accessories that determined one’s rank in a French court.
The collection is divided into two parts; the first presents fans across ages and continents which is interspersed with some of Batchelor’s personal memories of dressing up amid her grandmother’s collection of fans, silk Chinese dresses and lace Victorian outfits, and the second presents the stories of the 1860s lady from debutante to dowager through the language of her fans.
The Chinese and Japanese were among the first innovators of fan use and the most common fan in early China was the screen fan used by modest girls when out in society. Batchelor reflects upon this in her poem ‘By Parchment Veiled’:
I wish to hide, My visage is not one for you to look upon, I am not free. I offer you a painted scene, For maiden modesty, An embroidered reflection of my story – The fishing heron awaiting its catch, Beautiful ribbons of water beneath webbed feet.
I wish to hide, My visage is one for you to wait upon.
The image of the heron makes it clear that a fan in a woman’s hand was not exactly a passive accessory.
In ‘Allegorical’ Batchelor’s lines bring together both God and Mammon:
According to the scripture, parables in pearl, painted upon sheaves of vellum, holy writ was learned. According to the market place, parables of games, printed en masse for the mass of material gain. Crying of churches losing ground, how to spread the word? Crying of factories, how much have they earned?
I could not help but notice the judicious placing of this poem between ‘A Pauper’s Offering’ and ‘Dancer’ which inhabit two extreme ends of the spectrum between material poverty on the one hand, and riches on the other.
Flirtatious uses of the fan are summed up succinctly in ‘Elocution and Flirtation’:
The lover becomes a reed in the hands of the one who uses her fan with skill, Pliable and playing her tune, But only when playing society’s rules.
In the second part of the book, which is set in the second half of the 19th century, Batchelor’s “1860s lady” experiences her debutante ball in a poem entitled ‘White Rain’:
The start of the ball, my debutante night, presented to the queen in state. Spied from the stairs, the ladies of the dance trilling, bidding their wares for a dance’s calling card. Showers of pearl and lace float upon clouds of tulle, debutante and dandy guess at meaning, hesitation and trepidation in society’s marriage market hall. The wary captured in pearled starlight as a confetti of fans shower hope and fear across the dance floor.
Far from the innocence suggested by the word ‘white’ in the title, this astute lady seems to be well enough aware of what is going on around her even though she knows she would be experiencing butterflies ‘if it weren’t for the stomacher laced tight.’
Stylistically, the 29 poems / prose poems that make up this collection display as much variety as the fans themselves. One of them incorporates visual elements while others make occasional use of internal or end rhymes and most of them make use of very varied line lengths.
Whether writing about Samurai warriors, a cabaret at the Moulin Rouge, or a Victorian drawing room, Batchelor’s wide-ranging take on the subject is sure to impress fan collectors, poetry lovers and those with an interest in the history of costume accessories everywhere.
Neil Leadbeateris an author, essayist, poet and critic living in Edinburgh, Scotland. His short stories, articles and poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals both at home and abroad. His publications include Librettos for the Black Madonna (White Adder Press, Scotland, 2011); The Worcester Fragments (Original Plus Press, England, 2013); The Loveliest Vein of Our Lives (Poetry Space, England, 2014), Sleeve Notes (Editura Pim, Iaşi, Romania, 2016) Finding the River Horse (Littoral Press, 2017) and Penn Fields (Littoral Press, 2019). His work has been translated into several languages including Dutch, French, Romanian, Spanish and Swedish.
You can find more of Neil Leadbeater’s reviews, interviews, and his own poetry here on Ink Pantry.
“Get out!” The Scholl clog belts the shut bedroom door, its vibration whacks my back.
“I know you’re there, you…you retard, give them back now or I’ll cave your fat head in.”
I suck hard on the sweet, it fizzes on my tongue. I slurp in a deep breath, flick down the door handle and shove open the door. Dangle the red and white packet of Spangles clasped between my thumb and fingers, through the unguarded space, like a flag of surrender.
“Hey Sis, this what you’re looking for?”
I withdraw my arm sharpish and slam the door shut. The second clog bounces off the door, swiftly followed by the door being flung open. Bud catapults herself out the bedroom, clutches my shoulders her swiftness knocks me to the floor. She plops on top of me.
“What’ve I told you about touching my stuff.”
She’s got me in a Big Daddy hold on the narrow landing. I’m flat on my back, her knees squeeze into my ribs, the wind is squashed from my lungs. Her body weight is diverted down her arms to hands that pin my wrists above my head, flat to the golden square-ridged carpet. The force of Bud’s body pressing on me has lodged the Spangle in my throat. The packet of Spangles, my fingers tighten like a vice around them as the sweet ambushes my air.
“Give them back, you bitch.”
My eyes shout HELP. Her eyes scream I HATE YOU. The Spangle red flashes and then black.
“Told you I’d make you give them back.”
The pressure pops off. I’m discombobulated, rolled on my side coughing, in the centre of a golden square a half-sucked Spangle. I stare at the sweet, let it come into focus, the bedroom door clicks. I stretch my arm out, crawl my hand across the contours of the carpet like a crab on Southport beach. I grab the Spangle, a brief fluff check, not enough to put me off. I sit up, press my back against the bedroom door and put the sweet back in my mouth. Enjoy its sharpness as the gravity of what’s happened smacks me in my face. I keep perfectly still for what seems like ages before I go to our swing at the bottom of the garden.
Bud is my twin sister, younger by twenty minutes. When we were born she was so tiny the midwife wanted to send her to the hospital. All the incubators were full of other small babies. My dad had an old heat lamp for chicks. Dad and Mum are in shock they’re expecting one baby, me. So, when my mum thinks it’s over and the final push is for the placenta, it’s an almighty surprise when the placenta has a head, arms, and legs.
Placing Bud in a Pedigree Chum box beneath a heat lamp seemed the right thing to do. That’s where it started, the bond between Bud and Dad. He’d check on her like she was a day-old chick. I was placed into my cot and my mum took charge of me. Mum took care of both of us when our dad was out at work. When he got in from work dad took charge of Bud. Bud got extra feeds and was put into doll’s clothes. I can’t bear witness to any of this, I know it through the stories my dad told us and the many photographs. The Pedigree Chum bed is famous and there are loads of black and white photographs of Bud beneath the heat lamp. The photograph our friends ask to see over and over again is the beer glass one. When Bud is a day-old, dad pops her inside his pint glass. I often laughed to myself as dad took our photographs. Each photograph would take ages and ages as he held the light meter. Our faces ached with smiling for so long. I often wonder how long Bud was in that beer glass. The thing is, she survived none the worse and we became two, until we weren’t.
The Spangles episode is the latest and nastiest of loads of scraps, between us recently, has got me thinking. It used to bug me, Dad and Bud. Like the time a year ago, Nan Goodall had put money in our thirteenth birthday cards. We’d set our hearts on having a pet tortoise each. Bud and me drew a picture of how we wanted the tortoise’s house and run to be. We knew dad would be able to build it and we’d help. What niggled me the most was this, there was one slop jacket, Bud got to wear it, an empty Swarfega tin, she got it, screws needed tightening, Bud got to use the screwdriver. I didn’t make a fuss. The tortoises have a lovely house and run. Mine is called Fred he’s narrow and small, Bud’s is Sam, he’s like a walking rock. In the winter they go in the Pedigree Chum boxes with ripped up newspaper and air holes punched in the sides. They’re lowered through the hatch beneath the coconut doormat in the kitchen. Dad says the constant temperature in the space under the floorboards stops them waking up too early and dying. I wish dad would pick me sometimes to tighten the screws or to get the empty Swarfega tin. I never battered Bud for it, because when it was her and me, well we made a good team.
We’re twins but we don’t look the same and we’re not the same. I’m big and for that reason they call me Lobby and my hair is straight and blonde, Bud is small and has wavy mousy hair. Mum says Bud is determined. I remember when we were small and getting on mum’s nerves, mum went to rattle the back of Bud’s legs. She told mum, “You can smack me, I won’t cry.” I couldn’t do that. I felt safe with her. We shared our toys and we made friends together, so apart from Dad thinking more of Bud than me, being a twin was great. We were best friends and now we’re not.
The swing I’m sat on thinking about all this, Dad made from railway sleepers and the seat once had a rope in the centre so both me and Bud could sit side by side. That rope is gone. I sit and swing back and too. I half expect Bud to come bombing down the crazy paved path waving her precious tin above her head, accusing me of stealing whatever. She doesn’t appear.
The tin sits on the windowsill in our bedroom, above her bed. My bed is against the wall, Bud’s is in the best spot the furthest from the door, she’s got a bedside table and the windowsill for all her stuff. I have a bedside table. We share the wardrobe and drawers, we don’t share a bed anymore. She puts the things she doesn’t want me to see in her tin. The Spangles were in the tin. I saw her hide them, two days before she flattened me on the landing. I took my chance to pinch them during the night when she got up for a wee. I managed to find the tin in the dark, flip off the lid, got my hand stuck for a sweaty-few-seconds, heard the toilet flush, prised my hand free of Spangles and all, lid back on and dived back into my bed. I slid the Spangles under my pillow and there they stayed until the morning. I hid them down my sock as I got dressed. It’s Saturday so I’m wearing my lime green trousers, mum says I ought to wear more dresses, like Bud. It’s the raised lid on the tin that set her off, and me making a dive for the door.
The swing makes me feel better. I’ve located some fluff on the roof of my mouth picked up from the Spangle. I spit it out. I lean forward while my legs scoop the air to swing higher and then I’m still. I’ve hooked my arms around the ropes so I don’t fall. I close my eyes, I don’t know why ‘cos I’m not tired, I’ve only been up an hour. My brain plays a trick on me. It’s not this Saturday, it’s the one two weeks after we get the tortoises. We’re out on our newspaper rounds. It’s my first morning, the bag’s heavy. I can’t read Mr Tootle’s neat handwriting on the tops of the papers of the addresses. I can’t even read the words on the road signs. I don’t know what to do. I get off my bike and sit on a garden wall.
I’m not sure how long I sit there but my bum’s numb and cold. I couldn’t move cos I’m scared until I notice whose wall I’m sat on. It’s Janet Dixon’s gran’s. I lug the bag strap over my head onto my shoulder, get on my bike and start to peddle in the direction of the newsagents.
I’m going to tell Mr Tootle I can’t read properly. I approach the playground where me and Bud loved to play, it’s too early for playtime. I pull on the breaks and rest one foot on the pavement. The roundabout turns slowly. I don’t see anything at first. As the roundabout creaks round two bodies, one on top of the other, come into view. My heart’s going like the clappers. I can’t move, I gawk at the legs that come into view. Flesh-stockinged legs relax beneath his blue jeans. I puff out a load of air, it’s not a murderer after all. It’s teenagers. I feel sick. I recognise those shoes, and the bike up against the slide. I head across the playing field instead of taking the short cut over the playground.
On my way out the shop, I spot dad’s car pulling out of the carpark opposite the playground. Dad didn’t see me, he looked troubled. Turns out Mr Tootle isn’t as nasty as Bud said. He’s going to have a think what job I can do. I meet up with Bud at the top of our road.
“You finished quick for your first time, took me ages to find my way when I started.”
I look at her legs, they’ve got knee length socks on, maybe another girl has the same shoes and bike. Must be that. I don’t mention the incident on the roundabout or seeing dad. As we cycle side by side I’m bursting to tell her about Mr Tootle. When she finally notices I’ve not got my newspaper bag I tell her the whole story about my reading. She stops, turns to me and tells me I was brave telling Mr Tootle. That’s the last time she’s nice to me. As we’re pushing our bikes into the garage something drops from her coat pocket. She’s not noticed so I pick it up, a silk stocking dangles in front of my face. I stand stock still, the thought of the roundabout spinning in my head. I watch Bud as she rests her bike against mine. She turns around, my face must’ve told her what I’m thinking.
“What? What’s up with you?”
“I saw…” she spots her stocking lurches at me, snatches it, “Keep quiet.”
The swing’s stopped. I open my eyes. Later, that Saturday after the roundabout incident, Bud came storming into the bedroom, bounced face down onto her bed screaming. She lifted up her head and turned her blotchy face to me. “Snitch.” I didn’t explain.
I squeeze my eyes shut and make a wish. The swing wobbles as she shuffles in next to me. A Spangle is pressed into my palm.
Sally Shaw has an MA Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. She writes short stories and poetry and is working on her novel set in 1950s Liverpool. She is inspired by Sandra Cisneros, Deborah Morgan and Liz Berry. Published online by NEWMAG, Ink Pantry and AnotherNorth. She writes book reviews for Sabotage Reviews and Everybody’s Reviewing.
You can find more of Sally‘s work here on Ink Pantry.
