Lost my concrete feet. These are see-through, lined with silica. You can see what’s going on inside – like when fish bleed and slip from side to side. Sensitive to heat, to light, the effects of moisture, I keep them wrapped in discount vouchers for days out later.
Drawing by Mark Clements
Words by Diane Becker
A man carries a microwave oven up Biro Street. It’s early, about six o’clock, and almost winter. His back curves against the weight, his arms taut, fingers stretched around the glossy edges of the oven. Outside Vohra’s, the newsagent, the man, who is neither old nor young, shifts the weight onto his right knee, adjusts his grip, grits his teeth and carries on. He is seen only by a young boy kneeling on his bed, looking out while his mother fusses for a clean pair of socks. Mam, he says, look, Iron Man. But by the time his mother comes to the window, the man has disappeared down the avenue of streetlights. The last falling leaves cover his tracks.
Drawing by Mark Clements Words by Diane Becker
Plug the phone in, there’s a light switch that won’t switch off and I’ve a chunk of fruit salad and a hank of cat hair in my hand. Yes, this is me, in the corner with a towel. A white one. No, not Wilfrid Owen, that was yesterday…
Drawing by Mark Clements
Words by Diane Becker
It is Ataturk’s death day. The market is a colour-scape, as usual. ‘There’s an Arctic storm brewing,’ a woman shouts to no-one in particular, ‘a storm coming, from over the Bering sea…’ A younger woman pulls me to one side… ‘I’ve got his ashes,’ she says, and shows me a cat bite on her leg as if to prove it. I listen. It is not a day for rejections.
Drawing by Mark Clements
Words by Diane Becker.
