by Neon Books
Issue #35
www.neonmagazine.co.uk
[email protected]
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 copyright © Imran Khan (i-k.co.uk).
ISSN 1758-1419 [Print]
ISSN 1758-1427 [Online]
Edited by Krishan Coupland.
Published summer 2013.
Contents
Jenny Gray
37 Milvington Road
Hampshire Saddleback
We Always Swam In Rivers
Jack Brodie
Nothing, Shadows
Noel Sloboda
The Cannibal Affair
My Stepfather As A Porcupine
My Mother As A Raccoon
Sarah Greenfield Clark
But What Can We Do About It?
This Gun Takes Vowels And Consonants
(Smug Sister) I Don't Mean To Brag But...
Boot Sale Blues
Voodoo Dreams
Hunting In The Snow
Nicole Cloutier
Coyote Runs
Derek Adams
What You Need To Know About Your Caesarean Section
Paranormal Investigation
The Eels
Deborah Sellers
Methodist Hospital
What To Do In Paris
I Need A Sharper Knife For This
Annette Volfing
Pinpricks: Before The Conference
Sharing
The Row
Contributors
Jenny Gray
Image by Jesse Therrien
37 Milvington Road
I undress for you,
sliding soft cotton from cold, pimpled, skin.
Watching you unfurl. The dizzying
stripes of your blue pyjamas. We touch
in non-erotic places. I learn the hairs on
your arms, the curves of your calf.
Run me a bath.
Alone, I sink with hot relief. You
lean on the door, "Will you
tell him?"
"Nothing happened," I say.
"No,
nothing did."
*
Hampshire Saddleback
When he was done arguing
he went to the barn, he had a wrench
crooked under his left arm.
(He'd been fixing the tractor
before the fight began).
The sow shuffled, idle in her stall.
He paused a moment, he put his wife's
face on the sow and the sow's
face on his wife.
When he was done beating
he scooped the sausage meat into a refuse bag
and went to bed.
In the coolness of the darkness
his wife curled round
him, her breath warm
on the nape of his neck.
*
We Always Swam In Rivers
and lakes, in the coolness
of a Scottish summer.
I found I lowered myself in
fighting the semi-pain, aware
of jagged rocks and the dog's sharp
paws.
You always
dived deep.
Red hair flowering behind you
the murk in the water
made your skin
seem more like stretched
canvas.
I always watched
in those brittle months
you self-absorbing.
You towelling off. Goose-
bumps forming like the ripples
on the loch.
Jack Brodie
Image by Maxime Perron Caissy
Nothing, Shadows
I was lying alone in a double bed, doing terrible things to a pair of knickers. The house was the student house of White's girlfriend – the room an absent house-mate's. Every few minutes an ambulance would roll past in the night, turning the room into a silent disco, red and blue. Whenever this happened, she smiled at me, the girl, from the hundreds of photos on her walls.
There was knocking at the door.
"Yeah?" I pulled over the duvet, tucking myself in. The door scraped over carpet, stopped, and then White flicked on the light. He stood there in unbuttoned jeans, rubbing his eyes.
"Class night," he said, and I nodded, although I had spent the last two hours of it pouring drinks into toilets and checking the time on my phone.
"Turn the light off," I said. He turned it off and lay down along the end of the bed. I waited for him to say something.
"It's so cool you came," he said, head down like he was talking to Betty Boop on the duvet cover, "I mean, all my best mates up here together. But you and me, man. We're like brothers. I'm serious - we're like brothers or something."
"Thanks," I said. "What's up?" He didn't move for a moment and I began to think he'd fallen asleep. "What's up?" I said again.
"I swear that Irish girl's cheating on me." Just then an ambulance went past and the lights started rolling around the room. I looked up and took a tour of the house-mate's life. Hair blown back by a rollercoaster. Some tattooed boy by a pool. Parties from year ten onwards: the plainer girls pushed to the sides as she became beautiful.
"How sure are you?" I said, sitting up and feeling the knickers brush my legs. "Because I don't get the feeling Caoimhe would–"
"I swear she's cheating on me."
"Fine. Why?"
He fell forward onto the duvet and sighed. "Texts."
"Texts?"
"From this Charlie bloke. Work mate. Blatant douchebag, right, clearly just wants to bang her." He turned over and spoke to the ceiling. "But no: 'We're pals, Tom, he's my pal from work.'"
"Good impression," I said.
"Thanks, I know."
"So what's the problem?" I said. "They're mates; he's a loser."
White sat up. "He is a loser. One of those gamers – you know. Probably likes Lord Of The Flies or something, probably goes to fucking wizard conventions. It's actually funny. But you should see the fucking texts he sends her. 'Bought some new boxers you can help me remove.' It's actually funny."
"It's out of her control," I said. "It proves nothing in itself."
"He's one of those gamer boys. Ugly cunt. Works at Costa, right, full-time – he's twenty-five or something – and then he goes home and plays his games and has a wank. It's actually funny."
I heard footsteps on the landing. White fell back onto the bed. "But I swear she's going with him."
"I very much doubt it."
"I swear down she is, mate. I know I deserve it. It's basic karma for all the times I went with other people." He paused. "The worst was that Sophie – I shagged her on Caoimhe's birthday when Caoimhe was downstairs."
"You bastard," I said.
"I know. And she wasn't even fit." There was a silence, a long one, and from far away on another street came the noise of people arguing, a girl shouting Leave him alone. "Dylan," said White, "Can I sleep in here?"
I sat up. "Go back to Caoimhe, mate."
He stood and reached to lift the covers back; I held them down.
"Mate, you can sleep with me or you can sleep with Caoimhe. I know which one I'd choose."
The door brushed over the carpet and there she was. Caoimhe flicked the light on and stood in the doorway wearing a grey dressing gown, no makeup. Her long black hair was wet at the ends from where she'd been sick and wiped it out.
"Turn the light off," said White into the duvet. She turned it off and all I could see of her was a slant of street-light across her face.
"Are you coming to bed?" She might have been talking to either one of us, or both. "Dylan, will you please tell Tom to come to bed with me?"
"Tom," I said – he was pretending to be asleep – "Will you please do the right thing and go to bed with Caoimhe. Look at her, for God's sake. If you don't go, I will." She laughed; strings pulled inside me.
"And will you also tell Tom that I'm not cheating on him with Charlie from work?"
"Tom," I said. "Come on. Of course she's not cheating on you with Charlie from work. And even if she is, who cares! She's here now. Look at her, for God's sake. I think I'm in love with her."
No one spoke. From far away came the noise of smashed glass, screaming. Finally, White rolled off the bed and onto the carpet. As he fell he took the duvet with him, and I lunged forward to pull it back.
"What was that?" said Caoimhe.
"Nothing," I said. "Shadows." They stood in the doorway and pressed their foreheads together. As they kissed an ambulance went past, and I watched the fluttering lights on their faces. For a long time after they had gone, I could still hear them. I lay there, still tangled with the knickers, and I listened: to the toilet slamming, to White falling over, and finally to the faint but rhythmic squeaking that came through the wall.
-
Next morning the pavements shimmered with broken glass. I had lost my shoes, and it would be months before they arrived in the post from Caoimhe. By then she'd have finished with White and would be seeing Charlie from work. The sun was out and the pavements were hot. At the bottom of the road White took his trainers off so we'd be barefoot together. We tiptoed across the city, and as we spoke, about football, films, and girls, I looked down and imagined the tarmac had turned to soil, the glass to fallen nettles, and that we were weaving through trees on our way to the rope swing, many summers before.
Noel Sloboda
Image by Miguel Saavedra
The Cannibal Affair
"Better to roast and eat him after he is dead." - Montaigne
During the French Renaissance, no
philosophers could have imagined
you and I would one day embrace
anthropophagy on weekends.
Starved by meagre rations
in arranged marriages, we dragged
bony bodies to a secret banquet
in my Toyota's tight backseat
behind the community tennis courts
gorging on a pale, fleshy feast;
we could not stop ourselves
under the leering moon, who wondered
if we would swallow enough to swell up,
float into the sky and join him.
Tantalized by the vicious caress
of your canines, I was ready to give up
slices of liver, finger sandwiches,
slabs of ribs, a breast, a thigh–
until you designed a fixed menu
for every day of the week and demanded
I do all the cooking too.
*
My Stepfather As A Porcupine
Whenever he held me
at arm's length, he promised
it was for my own good,
never reckoning his legacy
was already at work inside–
spikes that lanced my kidneys,
scratched my lungs,
and pricked my brainstem,
making me bristle with spleen
no matter how delicately
the arms of another warmed me
in an unforced embrace.
*
My Mother As A Raccoon
Dropped us in trashcans
filled to bursting with blessings
during that first lean winter
I discovered my love of colour.
Taught us schadenfreude
strutting across broken lines
on crimson roads that claimed
whole clans of squirrels.
Cared enough for us never
to remove the midnight mask
covering strain marks
scored around her eyes.
Sarah Greenfield Clark
Image by "sskies"
But What Can We Do About It?
It'll run its course
What if it doesn't?
He'll grow bored of her
Bored? He's never had so much sex.
Eurgh. Just pictured him naked.
Enough girls
It can't be serious.
He's sick in the head.
And the dick.
Enough
(Mother leaves)
He must be a pervert.
A paedophile.
She's legal though.
Agreed.
But what can we do about it?
*
This Gun Takes Vowels And Consonants
Open fire
in the etiquette fog,
"Isn't he too old" (a little,
or a lot...)
The air is scarred with a bullet tongue,
and the seconds still
as the round of heated sour words
curdle the atmosphere like an underground carriage.
Reload,
"He's nice enough" (for someone else)
More waiting while the medics check for wounds.
The clock hand beats again. The victim
smiles with false precision;
an artist's impression.
No bleeding, but
we've lost her for good.
*
(Smug Sister) I Don't Mean To Brag But…
I've walked
the same shifty underpass home,
no different to you.
I've watched the faces
crease between their brows
as they try to work out
if indeed that man beside me
was my father.
But no,
a father wouldn't swagger,
arm rested over shoulder,
brushing the top of my boob.
I've watched the faces
change to dirty looks
as if they've just eaten shit.
I don't mean to brag but...
I took note.
Now I walk home
with the right man beside me.
And I watch the faces smile politely.
*
Boot Sale Blues
Good advice adorns the Sunday tables; cherished, worn and faded.
She snubs the said befores and I know betters, but,
isn't the best wisdom pre-loved?
*
Voodoo Dreams
Like mist at midnight
Gently travelling its course;
Poison stops your heart.
*
Hunting In The Snow
With us you never camouflaged;
you were the siren on the robin's chest.
I'd killed you in my mind
a thousand ways
a thousand times.
She might have loved you, but she didn't fall.
With a barbed lasso
you hunted her.
Forced the bud to open before its bloom.
Your hunting season's over.
Ours is just beginning;
so cover your tracks as you leave.
Nicole Cloutier
Image by "bjgr"
Coyote Runs
A hazed dawn. Coyote runs down the mountain. His body moves almost too quickly for his feet and the muscles in his legs lengthen to keep up with his mass.
Moss-covered rocks seem to burst from the ground; the coyote leaps, nearly catching his toes. The mountain sheep stand chewing cud and tossing their horn-curled heads with unease. He passes by.
Between Coyote's gritted teeth is a stick that burns from one end. The red flames devour the scorched bark and singe the hairs on the coyote's cheek. The sun rises orange. Each breath burns.
-
A girl, fifteen, throws her leg through the open window and straddles the sill, balancing one foot on the loose toilet back, the other on the coiled hose that hangs carelessly against the house's panel siding. The girl shifts through the window, then winces at the sound of her feet hitting gravel. She releases a breath, pulls her jacket over her shoulders and walks, hunched, along the side of the house.
The forest looms up beside her. The glow from her parents' bedroom window disappears into the spaces between the peeling birch.
Around the side of the house, past the pond and through the garden that the deer always get to first. Past the stone wall that draws a line across the top of the downhill driveway, she's safe enough to quicken her steps, sending garnet stones in a tiny avalanche down the twisted length of the driveway and into the dirt road.