Calling Welcome to issue 6 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.
Those Things We Do Not Say by Angela Readman They fall silently, beautiful as snow we did not press with our boot prints, some days rooms are landscape, paled with possibility – cocoons of words that lived in our chests but did not fly to our lips. The scent of rose hip, sour milk, sharpened knives, breathes our could-haves to a half life, sure as fibres in sunlight screening a movie of the chair where a cat fell asleep. Those things we did not say float above us, settle like dust marking the spot where a gold ring sat on the shelf, a … Continued Read more
I Swore I Would Never Shoot a Lighthouse by Gram Joel Davies Today, you tell me you will die soon, jealous of an old man dogwalking the dunes who has mixed his bigotry with talk of coal ships on that muddy straight. It is late, the power station is an ice-cube across the mica flats, and cider stymies us. We have not reached the eyelid wreck; instead you say it now, by the stilt-legged beacon — lonely as a Tove Jansen sketch. 60, tipsy, and suddenly intent. I wonder how a metal shack on limpet steps survives on sand? I have a secret. It will be she who goes, … Continued Read more
Souvenirs de la maison désaffectée by Marilyne Bertoncini Les sarments décharnés sur la façade blanche mais le jardin frémit dès qu’on franchit le seuil la maison aux yeux clos s’éventre mollement dans le désordre du jardin tout ondule et flotte dans l’ombre brouillée d’un verre de bouteille sous la dentelle acide des fraises ensauvagées la suave escarboucle les ruches abandonnées un reflet qui s’accroche à la vitre brisée Le tilleul sur le toit de tôle secoue ses bouquets blonds des fantômes frôlent encore les pruniers foulent la mousse Ils ont laissé une sandale morte sur le gravier de l’allée. Read more
The Fall by Peadar O'Donoghue That was one way to stop the music avoiding the hot shoe shuffle, all those bright dancing knives. Is this how you land when human wings are broken? Already sleeping, already gone, long before the real kiss of concrete, the mask held still, eternal, in front of your ever twisting wires. Read more
The Call by Clodagh O'Brien Mia hears a voice, the same one that sung the night before and the one before that. The notes are whispers; declarations that she’s not quite sure are said at all. Tonight she will follow it, a decision made over dinner as she watched her parents bicker over what potatoes are best. Argue over everything but the real problem; they don’t know how to help their daughter and so pull at the threads that make up each other. On hearing the hush, Mia slides from her bed and opens the window. The air is fridge cold. As she crawls out … Continued Read more
Under The Rose by Colin Dardis I want to slice through my belly and rip out the fat, Become less in myself and more a striking whore to the temple of roses hidden beneath my skin. Come kiss my crippled breasts and count each rib as if this cage held piano keys; our music could be perfect: semi-quavers of lust spilling forth from maestro fingertips. Come tattoo your foreign land upon me. Just close your eyes and imagine silk instead of hair. Can you feel the surrender? Dance closer, before the flame extinguishes under the wait. Read more
Ghost by David O'Hanlon You approach him. I stand between the two of you and plan, again, to never leave. You reach out and pass your hand through where my heart used to be. Only now may you call it cold. Read more
Sorting by Evelyn D'Arcy On the day of the Death of the Year I have a ritual. Kettle on, door closed, radio off. I empty my pockets out on to the table. Pebbles of all shapes and sizes scatter everywhere and I quickly scramble to stop them falling on the floor. Time to get sorting. The ritual is always the same so I know the best way to begin is to stretch my arms across the table through the stony sea and split them into two halves. Task divided, I begin. The first few take no considering, I grab them and drop them into … Continued Read more
Masks by Kashif S. Choudhry I retrace my forlorn footsteps. I exit from a subterranean labyrinth at the green path. The last time I was here, I watched you disappear into the decaying mouth from which I have just ascended. I turn to my left and walk towards the road of little towers, each step more hesitant than the former. Inhaling a cigarette, the ones you smoke, I wait on the corner. A few more steps, a few more steps. ‘Why do we burn? Is it because we dared to hold hands with God, or because we hold each other?’ I don’t believe in God. … Continued Read more
