Time and Tide Welcome to issue 3 of Spontaneity, where everything connects. Click on the links and get lost in a creative dialogue between media – and if you’d like to be part of it, get in touch.
Ad lib by Jo Bell Forgive me. I’ve been spending time with fools, with lean assassins and the merely mean. I check my shoes for scorpions each morning. I had forgotten this sweet sting: a meeting, coffee at the riverside , a well-grown man with an ear for wit, and nothing but the truth. If I lean forward more than usual in a brand new dress we both know why. If you take off your sweater with a needless flourish we both recognise the shape of you. This afternoon I walked a different riverbank. I wore you in my throat, my … Continued Read more
Aspire Timeline X by Shea Atchison I dangle my watch, its leather strap warmed By the out-wind of the laptop. Time is both suspended in mid-air And ticking along a red rectangle, pulled by a grey disc, As the best of Wagner plays next To an advertisement for a Russian wife, blonde and busty with tits. I feel the two deep lines in my forehead burrowing deeper, As if each movement of the red rectangle and each swing of the watch Mark another irreversible folding of skin, and then another. Read more
Someone I knew by Andy Scotson “Hello old friend” I was greeted fear fastened fast, hand to heart. “I always thought we would meet again” sinking, cold, tired and scared. The smell of him came back to my nostrils, from those white walls and those plastic curtains. We had met twice before he came for dad when he was fifty two took his hand, dad tried to snatch away a struggle ensued, an unpleasant fight but in the end they went to Saffron Hill. My mum he met late in life he was polite, she had no energy or will to decline hand in … Continued Read more
Artist with newborn by Rachael Ikins …at her breast, robe slips silk, her shoulders, left arm cramps above joint, as she nurses her son, 2 a.m. Floor lamp illuminates her, she perches on a stool. Face-to-faces her easel. Right arm brushes, strokes, feathers, teases paint, baby clutches. Nurture flows through her. Color flows from her. Sleeve slips, slides up muscled forearm, white wrist where her watch band blocks sun’s rays. Days she pushes his stroller, he dozes, she dreams of dancing. Other breast peeks from robe matches rhythm, painting process, she evokes a face from mystery, until rainbow eyes gaze into hers. Baby hiccups, his bare … Continued Read more
Clockwork by RM Kealy As regular as clockwork, they say. Same time, every day. Seven days a week. Hail, rain or snow. He is an elderly gentleman, with wisps of white hair smoothed back neatly below a trilby hat. His faded shirt is buttoned all the way up and a drooping bow-tie rests beneath the folds of his neck. His outfit of choice is a grey tweed suit – three piece of course – with well-worn but carefully buffed brogues peeking from below his wide leg, turned-up trousers. I watch him move up and down the same street corner every afternoon, pacing in quiet … Continued Read more
Note weeper by Dominic Stevenson I saw you. Unable to control myself, I tapped a beat on the plaster holding my broken self together, and I wept your song. Building up, tap tap tap, I reached a crescendo and climaxed my thoughts in a bellow across the river, to where you stood naked, exposing your tune for my distasteful indulgence, but no need. I saw more in the reflection of the seaward flow of icy cold water, than in the curve of your cheeks as you smiled and I delighted in knowing I was the only one who’d know you this way. … Continued Read more
El Greco: a series by Martin Burke Red and blue flames form the Virgin’s dress where the sky is afraid yet joy abounds among the demos of the airy kingdoms For such as this earth will shudder (in joy and the terror of joy) And shudder through the spine of history as if a volt was travelling on the DNA of our being and fire alone was pleasing The paint is laid in shock-waves where black is not afraid to be black What is annunciated is ascension, what is enunciated is reply * This dream, this quake of creation at the engulfing whale – who would have … Continued Read more
