York St John University

The following pieces are taken from The Word, an annual publication featuring the work of students at York St John University.

How to Become a Gargoyle

First, think it through.
It’s a big step, what you are about to do.
Consider the implications of wings,
the real impracticalities
of a stone heart: loveless, bloodless,
little more than a fossil
to measure your evolution against.
There’s no going back.

Choose yourself a cave;
no larger than an office block, no closer
than a quilt. Find a place to rest;
a desk, a chair, a flat rock or a
stalagmite to lean against.
Organise your thoughts: rehearse
their running order until you can knot
them in the dark, one-handed,
into a rope of sheets to climb
down
deep into the muttering viscera
where the swallowed, half-digested bezoars
of misery and bitterness nestle like truffles.

Hunch over your thoughts; hoard them
and hatch them out. Metabolise your memories;
break them down to release the energy
trapped inside. Rich as caviar or sweetbreads,
you can live like this:
off dreams alone. The rare ones are the best.

Time will smile on you, draw a calcified blanket
solicitously around your shoulders; tuck you in
a little too tightly. A slow hardening: your pores
choked with a fever-sweat of limestone,
a bone-deep blush of brick dust. First your crown
will crystallise, then ten fingers, ten toes,
ten tiny claws,
and finally your wings will jut from nothing,
fully formed, relentless as dust,
a sudden fan opening out
with a sound like crumpling paper.

It will creep up on you:
one day, you’ll go to stretch or scratch
your nose and the nerve impulse
will earth itself harmlessly in your bedrock.
Nothing will have happened.

Katie Smith

Breakfast at Timothy's

The first three things
that came into my head
bacon, marmalade,
wholemeal bread.

Toasted.

Art deco sandwiches.

Gavin Husband

My own blues

I Am

Looking-glass-like, I see memories as reflections, fragmented and disordered as shards of broken mirror. Seven years’ bad luck.

Eight years old and knee deep in sludge, smells like oil and molasses. Poking at it with sticks and bony fingers, making mud pies that are of no use to anyone. I sometimes wonder, now, in my adult body, why children indulge in such aimless rituals. Saccharine-sweet tea parties for stuffed animals with eyes and ears missing, like soup kitchens for war veterans. Mothering dolls with glassy eyes that never grow up, proving the physics of time and reason wrong. And the mud pies, food for no one, possibly a subconscious philosophy garnered early on from parents and teachers that life itself is meaningless, and we are only here to while away our time performing ineffectual and futile tasks.

My mother read Sylvia Plath to me at bedtime. Ever since I can remember she would slip into my room and sit, silhouetted against the wallpaper, reading words from a tattered hardback with heavily thumbed pages. The book had an odour of dry leaves and a permanent layer of dust on the cover, and this made it so different and more magical that any of the fairytale paperbacks or laminated picture books full of inane rainbow spatter and thick black type. I must have been the only child in our village raised on a drip-fed diet of Plath, the rest of the kids brought up with Dr. Seuss and Hans Christian Andersen, choosing what they consumed or being force-fed by grandmothers and aunties. Plath is the only thing I remember my mother reading to me, and the resonance of it hit me like a tidal wave, ate deep into my soul, and wormed its way into a mantra to save my child’s sanity, stolen from its author, made my own.

I am.

I have always admired, and learned to look out for in later life, recurrent themes and ideas in art. Whether it be a certain character repeatedly appearing in still life crowd scenes, or a motif returned to over and over by an author, or a single lyric following a songwriter wherever they wander, I cannot help but marvel at the simplicity of significance. This repetition can apply to life, and people, and behaviour. You learn routines, peoples’ characteristic gestures and favourite sayings. The more you observe, study, analyse, the easier it is to predict.

I am, the beat of the heart, a declaration of life and being. I am I am I am. From Lady Lazarus to The Bell Jar, the heartbeat is a spoken reassurance, and it was instilled in my mind, perhaps knowingly, by my mother. My sheep-counting was replaced by the mantra, gently lulling me to sleep. I am.

In our small Norfolk village, we were stuck deep in a chaotic limbo, where the majority of old women still wore bonnets. Cannabis was grown in every other garden and all my memories take place in summer, as if winter’s icy tentacles never felt their way into villagers’ lives. We stood out slightly, my family. My parents came from the North, and their accents were razor-thin pitched against the lazy autumn drawl that made me think Norfolk was a colony of the West Country.

I don’t think it worried my parents that they were different, or that no one said hello on the street as we walked to fetch groceries and newspapers, or that the milkman was a loon who insisted on giving my mother a free half-pint of milk each month, doing this by taking the cap off the bottle and pouring half the contents into a cup and returning the half-full bottle to his float, where it attracted flies. My father worked twelve-hour shifts at the prison in the city, and we rarely saw him. My mother was busy studying O-Level Law for no apparent reason and simultaneously bringing up a particularly needy baby boy. They took no notice of the strange village and its stranger inhabitants, and I was left to my own devices.

I went along to the Teddy Bears’ Picnic at the village church, where all the children were asked to search the churchyard for teddy bears. I found two, big cuddly bears wearing checked shirts and dungarees, with chocolate marble eyes. Pleased at my accomplishment of recovering not only one, but two bears, I presented them to the vicar and congregating parents, and I was told by some snivelling child’s mother that no, put one back and let someone else have a go, unfair of you to take more than one, and who do you think you are anyway, just moving here and spoiling the children’s fun?

I shied away from other children after the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, scared of them and their hard-faced mothers with the deceptively idle voices. I am, I thought, and that is singular. No we are, just I am, and destined to be alone forever. No one ever bothered to tell me that Sylvia Plath put her head in the oven when she was just thirty.

They hated me. Oh, how they hated me. Me with my alien accent, part southern drawl, part repressed lilts of my origins, on words like ‘face’ and ‘joke’. Me with my ginger hair and Africa birthmark and desperate need to prove myself intelligent. Children hate intelligence, I learned, dragged round and round the schoolyard by my hair coming loose at the roots, two fat girls hitting me with sticks they told me were guns. Of course I knew they weren’t guns, but their anger and my fear distorted all reality until I was convinced that the thick oak twigs could indeed spew bullets.

I am, I cried, tears soothing my invisible wounds like a lullaby, whatever happens, I am.

The mirror tilts, or maybe it is my head, craning to see more, make sense of the slivers of pictures, and I am sixteen.

Grammar school, with all its painful scratches delivered by the clawed hands of girls in toilets, in dinner halls, in classrooms. She sat behind me in History, mocking my voice when I read out passages on the political repercussions of hyperinflation. She followed me down corridors, stopping when I stopped, shouting threats and all I could do was wait. She sat on the back bench of the bus at the end of the day, all of them with cigarettes and blouses unbuttoned to their navels. Hard pennies flying through the air, hitting my head. Paying for my misery.

I am. Or at least, I will be.

Now, the shards of looking-glass swept away and stored in a drawer, I hate throwing things out.

Now, a writer with a daughter of my own. Passed thirty a few years ago, safe from the oven, melancholy channelled and controlled into art.

Now, searching through Plath, books so tattered from conquests at every given age to find my hero, the one to bring redemption.

Now, it turns out I was right. That the mud pies and tea parties and dolls and teddy bears are all in vain, like life. I am, what am I?

From Nick and the Candlestick, I am a miner. So I dig, I search for jewels and gold buried in the rock of the world.

From Cut, I am ill. So I feed upon my illness, the sickness I have suffered and overcome.

From Ariel, I am the arrow. So I will fly, I will be cast to air, released from the bow and set into the sky.

But mostly, from Death and Co., I am red meat. For that is all anyone really is. We are born, we subsist, we die. And we may choose to persecute, or choose to be victims, or we may choose to be saved.

The night draws close, wrapping thick maternal arms around me. I let my daughter pick her own bedtime story, and she picks Pinocchio.

Just like me, she will find out what she is. We all will.

Amy Christmas

 

Small Change

One copper penny
In 1966 meant four black jacks
Or a lucky dip.
Two of these pennies
Was a bus ride home from school,
But the comfort of the coins
Lasted longer than that trip.

Besides, my grandpa worked halfway up the hill
And if my brother didn't complain
We'd knock loud, then peep in
Stare into his dark workshop
Dust and French polish up our noses
Until our eyes adjusted to the light
When we'd see him,
Grimacing over a whining machine
Or, if we were lucky,
Smiling at the smooth finished piece.

At seven, little things like that made me happy.
But my brother, age five,
Was too young to feel the same.
His pleasure, you see, was to climb the hill
Running his fingers between the bricks in the wall
Because there, he’d been told,
When the wall was being built,
Someone had pushed in a sixpence.

Karen Overend

The Black-and-White Photograph

I was about five when I first saw the black-and-white photograph. It was in Mam’s brown plastic handbag , the bag she carried everywhere.

It showed a small curly-haired little boy about five years old, dressed in a short sleeved shirt, knee-length trousers, a patterned sleeveless pullover and lace-up shoes, kneeling on the floor surrounded by other children. He was smiling.

At this time I had an older brother David who would always take me everywhere with him, and a younger brother Malcolm; but neither of them was the boy in the picture.

Now where do I begin? Perhaps as far back as I can remember. How do you define a privileged childhood? Is it wealth? A large house? Servants? Material things? I did not have any of these. . .
 
I was born on January 24th 1945 when the Second World War was still raging. My parents were the most caring parents that anyone could wish for. Looking back now, we were extremely poor but as children we did not notice this because it was just a way of life and my parents did the best with what they had.

We lived in a small terraced house in York. It was regarded as a slum area and was demolished in the 1960s to make way for modern bungalows, but I regard myself as having had a privileged childhood. Originally our little house had three bedrooms, but the blitz over York in April 1942 demolished the third and caused a hole in the kitchen corrugated tin roof. I remember that when it rained heavily our kitchen was always flooded.

It must have been in 1948 when my mam took pity on a family of five that had become homeless. She offered them our front room just for a few days until they found somewhere to live. Not everyone was as kind as Mam and Dad. Within days the man beat Dad up and threw us onto the street. We had to go to the workhouse on Huntington Road. Men were not allowed there so Dad had to go back to the house and face the violent man until many months later when the landlord gained access to our house again.

When we were in the workhouse, Mam worked in the laundry to earn our keep. David went to St. Thomas’s school nearby. Malcolm and I were in the workhouse nursery. I remember this vividly. The lady in the white uniform would scream at Malcolm to shut up. He was only a tiny baby and was crying for Mam. I was sitting on the bare floor cuddling Malcolm to comfort him. There was no furniture in this room and the windows had bars on.

Dad would visit us every day after he had left work. He would not be allowed inside. We would wave to him from the upstairs windows. One day he arrived with his head bandaged up. Mam was crying and waving to him through the window. It must have been Christmas time because I remember getting a small toy. It was an alligator that had a purple back and a yellow belly. We seemed to be in there for a long time but eventually we were all reunited again.

Eventually Mam became pregnant with my sister Susan who was born in October 1950. We were a happy family once again, walking in the countryside when dad was not at work. It was Dad who would stoke up the fire with the coal kept in the cupboard under the stairs. He would get the tin bath that was hung on a nail in the yard and put it in front of the fire. Mam would fill the gas copper with water. It could take all night to bath four children but that was the ritual every Sunday night to be clean for school the next morning. When the four of us went to bed, we would snuggle up under the blankets and tell stories before going to sleep.

One day when Mam had her handbag open, I noticed the black-and-white photograph again of the small curly-haired little boy. I was curious as to why she always carried it in her handbag. Who was he? She looked at me and started to cry. I was confused about this and was sad to see mam cry so I did not ask for a while.

I would sometimes notice Mam looking sad and gazing at the door, as if she was expecting someone to walk into the room. It would be as if she was deep in thought. One day, when I was alone with Mam, I plucked up courage once again to ask her about the little boy who was in the black-and-white photograph. We sat down and she told me that he was my eldest brother Brian. I did not understand because I thought that my brother David was my eldest brother. She told me that he was taken from her during the war. She couldn’t tell me any more because it was too painful for her.

It was Dad who told me that Brian was born before he met Mam. When they married he tried to get Brian back but the authorities at Dr. Barnados would not allow it. Mam and Dad didn’t even know where he was.

I remember going down the street with Mam to see a neighbour. Her son, who was in the Royal Navy, claimed that he knew Brian and would pass on letters to him. Mam was so happy. She wrote regularly but there were never any replies to her letters.

When I was fifteen, our little house was condemned and we were offered a three -bedroom council house with a bathroom. You would think that Mam would have been happy about this, but all her memories were there in that little house. She had never known her own mother, who died before she was seven weeks old. It was then she moved from Darlington to join her much loved grandmother in York

When the bulldozers flattened our little terraced house Mam found it too upsetting. She could not walk down the street again. We settled into our council house. It was such a contrast for the family - a much larger house with a bathroom, three bedrooms and a garden. We felt quite privileged indeed.

When I was sixteen I met my future husband. We married when I was nineteen, had my first daughter when I was twenty and another daughter at twenty two. I still would think about my brother Brian. He did not reply to Mam’s letters so at that time I thought that there was no point trying to contact him. Married life was now my priority: bringing up my two daughters and caring for my husband.

It wasn’t until 1991, when Mam passed away and was laid to rest with Dad that I began to think more and more about Brian. My own daughters were now married and I was living alone. Was Brian dead? Where was he? I could not settle until I knew the truth.
One day I plucked up courage and wrote to the Barnado’s Aftercare. I had to know if he was alright. So many questions unanswered.

I received no reply from them because I knew so little about my brother. Mam would get upset when I asked her. I didn’t even know his birthday. My youngest daughter started to investigate our family history. It was very traumatic and tiring but we found out quite a lot of information, but nothing much about Brian.

I wrote again to Barnado’s Aftercare and received a letter back on the 6th September 1995, informing me that because I was not a Barnado’s child, I would not have priority and would have to wait my turn in a long queue. It was a long wait.

It wasn’t until I was a grandmother myself that I arrived home from work one night to find a message on my answer machine from Ann Foster of Barnado’s Aftercare . She told me that my brother was alive and living in HULL. I could not believe what she was telling me. We were so near to one another all those years and did not know it.

Ann would have to contact him as to how he felt about meeting his sister because Dr Barnado’s children are protected until the day they die. I also had to be prepared that he might not want to contact me. That was why she would not give me his address. She said that she would phone me the next evening.

That day at work was the longest I have ever known.

Brian had hung up on her thinking it was a sick hoax call. Ann telephoned him again and he listened as she told him that he had two sisters and two brothers. His sister Christine would like to contact him. He gave Ann permission for me to telephone him the following night.

I will remember that day forever. It was 9th February 2000. I heard his voice for the first time. He told me that he thought that his mam had died in the war. He did not know that he had any family at all. Brian told me he had been in the Merchant Navy. Not the Royal Navy - our neighbour’s son must have been playing a cruel trick. Brian had not received any letters from anyone. Brian thought that he did not have anyone and Mam thought that Brian had rejected her.

We arranged a reunion at my house on 20th February 2000 with the five of us and Brian’s wife, Pat. As he pulled up in his car I knew it was him because he looked very much like Mam. We hugged and it was very moving for all of us. We were a little sad that Mam and Dad were not with us to share this moment.

That day answered all our questions. Brian brought all the copies of his details that Dr. Barnado’s had given him when he left the institution. It was upsetting but we had to know the truth. Mam was engaged to Brian’s Dad. She became pregnant. The man informed her that he could not marry her because he was already married. She never saw him again. Mam’s grandmother stood by her and looked after Brian while Mam went back to work to support the family. Mam’s grandmother died in September 1942 at the age of 95. This left Mam in dire straits, wondering what to do, so she paid a neighbour to look after Brian while she went to work to support them.

One day when Mam was at work, Brian was playing outside and fell from a tree that he had been climbing. He was taken to hospital with a broken leg. The authorities were informed. Brian was made a ward of court because they declared Mam an unfit mother with no husband to support her.

The written form that Brian received by the authorities was terrible. They described mam as weak of mind, unfit and unstable - of neglecting Brian. No wonder Brian thought that he was not wanted. They certainly were not talking about our loving, caring mam. The only crime that she committed was the terrible circumstances that she found herself in.

They deprived Brian of a good childhood with his other siblings. He had clothes and food but did not have love. The black-and-white photograph was of Brian playing with all the other children in Dr. Barnado’s. It was in 1943. He was six years old when he was taken away from Mam. He was never adopted. People seem to only want tiny babies when they adopt. He was born on 22nd January 1937 and was in Barnado’s until he was fifteen. He then went to sea with the Merchant Navy.

On the day of our reunion we nearly exhausted ourselves talking. So many similarities in our families! Brian’s son was called David, our brother was called David. Brian’s daughter was called Tracy, my daughter was called Tracey. Brian’s son was a cabinet maker, our brother Malcolm was a cabinet maker. Brian’s wife worked at Hull University, David’s wife worked at York University. Brian had two granddaughters, I had two granddaughters. So many connections after all that distance!

We took Brian and Pat to where the little house used to be. We noticed the gardens opposite; they looked untouched by time, just as we remembered all those years ago. It was a most remarkable day that we will never forget. The sun was shining and we were all together as a family. Brian walked down the street, pointing out the things that he remembered when he had been six years old. He stopped at the garden with the bent fence where he had squeezed through that day. Brian just gazed at the apple tree for a moment. He then told us it was the same tree that he had climbed up those many years ago to get an apple. The day he had fallen and broken his leg, the day he was taken away from his mam.

We all shed a tear that day. We were happy that we were all together again; sad that Mam couldn’t see her five children walking down the street together in the sunshine.
When I look back now, I understand why she would gaze at the door, deep in thought. I know now that she was waiting for Brian to come home.

Well mam, he’s home now.

Christine Anne Oldfield, February 2006.
(Written six years to the day since I found that curly-haired little boy in the black�"and-white photograph.)

The Russian Dissident

It was a toyshop with a difference.
Mid-August in Irkutsk, Siberia.
Six blow-up Father Christmases, three dolls' prams
And three shop girls with nothing to sell.

With nothing to buy we turned and left.
Then we heard a voice, "It's pathetic, isn't it?"
There he stood, a threadbare Russian dissident
Speaking to us in fluent English.

He was not allowed to travel to Moscow, owned nothing,
But he once put up an Englishman for two weeks.
"You may have heard of him", he said modestly,
"His name was �" Graham Greene".

Paul Elmhirst

Window Seat

How flat the world seems
Held down by cloud-spangled skies
(Almost purple, such strange hues)

This train knows only one path
Through this picture.

Horizontal in a world of uprights:
Trees, towers, lamps on posts
(Redundant in this hour with the sun over us)

And the ghost of this world
Manifests itself in the movement

Of cattle nibbling hedgerows,
Figures traversing canal paths,

And perhaps a bird of prey, hovering,
Allows its wing-tips to quiver.

But I am astonished: by speed,
By the spaces between us.
Somewhere in the town there is a house
With a console and a seat in a boxroom -
A window-
A terminal that opens up to cybernetic planes and superhighways.

But this, this is real, isn't it,
This train, those fields, that sky?

Alistair Newton

And in the corner

Jennifer Buckley

Down by the Head

Holed below the Plimsoll and
Down by the head in the
Berg-filled foam
Of the southern ocean
I observe my distant shrinking southbound counterpart

She, heading south, full steam ahead
Twin triple expansions throbbing
Is bound by hackneyed fate for the very berg I struck

Pumping, baling, praying, I remain afloat for now
But with each league she puts between us
Another of my compartments is flooded
More power is lost
More hope

Furnaces extinguished
Boilers cold
All stop

Does the band play on?
No
It drinks the best sherry and then goes over the side
With the croupier and the chef and the silver

And the southbound ship steams on
Oblivious

We had seemed to have drifted close
But the vastness of this ocean had deceived us
We were not so close really:
Miles apart
Both heading in different directions
We thought that we had understood one another
Wrongly
Our meanings had been lost in the call of the gulls
And in the glint of the waves

She misunderstood
And so leaves me to sink here alone

But I forget: she too is doomed
Bound for the marauding bergs of the south
And only I can save her
Or could
Or would

Were it not for the fact that
I'm holed below the Plimsoll
And down by the head

Edward Wainwright

stroking his beard
he assembled
rumours of hope
into a large
pile on the floor.
he stuck a sticker
on a pamphlet
labelled “HARDENED SINNERS”
would this be
the beginning
of boundless confidence?
it was a fragile thought
and he stamped
on it
with both feet.
he went for a cup of tea
had a biscuit
talked to a lady
about jerusalem
before living
the rest
of his life
staring out
of the window.

Ryan de Koning

The Birthday Card

MARLENE (60) is sitting in an upholstered chair. The arms are badly worn, suggesting they have been scratched repeatedly. There is a small table next to her with three envelopes on top of it.

MARLENE’s arms are striped with numerous cuts and slashes.

It’s like I said to my social worker, I didn’t start nothing, it was staff, no me. ‘Cos why should I when I’d just won twelve quid? But I’m no sooner through that door than she’s at it, poking her nose in: Marlene, you can’t go leaving your Chloe in the communal area while you just bob off up town.” I said, “Excuse me, she’s not my Chloe.” She says, “No, but while she’s here she’s your responsibility. I said, “She’s alright, she’s behaving herself.” She said, “She’s eight years old, what about health and safety?” - Health and safety. I said, “What about staff?” She goes, “We’re not insured - it’s not our job.” I said, “What is your job, watching telly?” I wasn’t even gone an hour. “Anyway,” she says, “I need to speak to you in the office.” I thought, here we go.
She says, “Marlene, you’ve been told the rules about borrowing money off other clients.” I said, “Are you asking me?” She said, “They’re no better off than you.” I felt like hitting her. But I just walked out and got Chloe. And she goes, “Marlene, can you pick that chair up please?” But then she’s at it, “Oh Marlene, don’t be like that - stay for Trisha.” I said, “I’ll watch it in my room thank you very much.” She says, “I’ll buzz you later when it’s time for your medication.” I didn’t reply.
So then she’s on the intercom every five minutes, isn’t she? “Oh Marlene, you’re not going to do anything daft, are you?” I said, “Leave me alone.” “Only I don’t want to have to be calling your social worker.” I said, “Do what you like.” That shut her up.
But we had a cracking morning, me and Chloe - playing Bunnytunes - our new game - I’m always treating her. Then our Kerry turns up: twelve o’clock - on the dot: “Say goodbye to Auntie Marlene.” I said, “Are you not stopping for a brew?” She says, “We can’t.” - Didn’t say why. So I said, “But you’re coming tomorrow?” She goes, “Oh Marlene, I don’t know about that.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “You know why not.” I said, “I’ll sort your bus fares out.” And then she’s at it, “Oh, can you borrow me twenty?” I said, “Kerry, I’m strapped myself.” She says, “You wouldn’t be if you didn’t spend all your D.L.A. on fruit machines,” she says, “I’ve got four kids to feed, never mind buying kids games.” I felt like hitting her.
So next day I knocked on first thing and I says to staff, “Can I have my med for the day please? I’m not stopping.” So she goes, “Oh Marlene, happy birthday.” I said, “Yes, can I have me medication please?” She’s at it, “Oh Marlene, you know I can’t do that. It’s in your Care Plan.” I said, “I’m not going to take them all. I just want to be left alone.” So she goes, “But we’ve sorted a cake out for you and everything.” I said, “You can shove your cake.” So then what I did, I went round to me flat, I got a Morrison’s bag - all my knives - all my razors - all my old med that they didn’t know about - back round to the office (She bangs twice with her fist) - on her desk. I said, “There.” She says, “Marlene, do you mind? I’m on the phone.” And she’s at it, whispering to him, “I can’t talk now, I’ll call you back.” So I shouted so he’d hear me, I said, “You needn’t bother coming round. Tell her to look in the bag.” So then she shuts the door in my face - just slams the door right in my face - locks herself inside - and I’m stood there - stood there looking at her through the glass. And she’s making not to catch my eye and rooting in the bag and telling him this, that and the other. And I thought, right, that’s me off.
So I go off up town to Casey’s Arcade to try and perk up, only Carlo (he’s the manager - he always lets on to me) he sees me at the machines, her says, “Are you alright, Marlene? Are you alright, love?” …And I tell you…

She wipes her eyes and composes herself.

And he sits me down and he gets me a brew - proper gentleman-like - and he says, “There you are, Marlene, you drink that.” And suddenly I’m telling him all sorts, I says, “I’m sixty today.” He says, “Are you my love? Well you just wait there.” Five minutes later he comes back with a card. He says, “There you are my love - open it when you get home.”

Marlene takes three envelopes off the small table and opens them one by one.

I got three cards. One from Chloe (she made it when she was last round):
(Reads) To my very favourite Great Aunt Marlene - kiss, kiss, kiss.

She places the card on the table and opens the second card.

(Reads) To Marlene from all the staff at Primrose Bank.

She drops the card on the floor and takes out the third card.

(Reads) To Marlene, happy sixtieth birthday. Remember: you are a lovely person no matter what anyone says. Love Carlo and all the staff at Casey's Arcade.

She places the card carefully on the table.

It's alright is that. 

Robert King

Return Journey

Sunbeams through dusty glass and dazzling chrome.
The weight of a head on a shoulder.
The incense of fruit shampoo.
She makes a bird with her bus ticket
As shimmering yellow stalks flank our procession.

Through the juddering and occasional bumps,
And the stifled reek of petrol
Cuts a sigh,
And her familiar touch reassures.

Jack McKay