MicroFlashFiction: Short Stories and Experimental Narratives - Steve Coel. '...Coel's experimental short fiction is really suited to this medium...' Writing Review, Q+A - 2024.
Here -
Where...narrow lane adventures are captured in muddy headlight and cry of tortured bird..
Where...broken lives are inherited..
Where...evenings shadow lies distressed on ripped rock and moss border..
Where...isolated youth walk through decades of frosted vision..
Where...small trees blanket fallen brick..
is the place language comes to die.
Documentary Fiction Photography
Here -
Where...slim concrete staircases funnel nervous jealous glances..
Where...starched wrinkled skin sticks to stretched bone..
Where..young people die old..
Where...unopened door fades into peeling brick and small bottled yard..
Where...glum dance patters aggressively on fractured acre..
is the place language comes to die.
Extracts...
A stick tip tapping down the platform...sympathy and shock...crowds
parting to bleak groans from grown men. Across the way, park fires
are cracking an evil flicker and sidewalks glisten perspiring after
another days heavy abuse.
* * *
Drunken shoes and ghosts remain dormant in a world gone crazy ...
nightlife shovelled gleefully into demanding hands and ... gypsy
souls drinking thimbles of wine and scuffles down the street.
Steve Coel
A series of Experimental Music+Word performances over a period of about 18 months or so, difficult to repeat even now. Still they happened and that is a good thing. This is a very short extract of a much longer Experimental Narrative. A bit out of my comfort zone, but again that too is a good thing. Steve Coel
Documentary Fiction Photography - Steve Coel
Iron Shelter
Here -
Where...music is day time dead..
Where...beaten up strangled trees steal fenced air..
Where...pavement shy funeral cars are smokey..
Where...mapped walking is silenced by small group gossip..
Where...sleeping iron sided shelters are brick piled into bulldozed walls..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel
Twisted Ornaments
Here -
Where...seagulls congregate to share daytime information..
Where...mudless lanes fracture industry and metal..
Where...cold slab chipped rock fountains are smiling and love struck...
Where...glitter ball glamour is boarded and gig postered..
Where...glass shadows stretch into shoeless avenue..
is the place language comes to die.
* * *
Six Month Empty Paper Towns: small communities peopled only by those left behind...nowadays, as far as I can tell, an increasingly older and more reflective group of resilient residents who are daily learning to cope with emptiness and lean times...I can only ever be a visitor to these places, but I am always struck/horrified/bewildered by the underlying despair/bitterness of the conversations...
* * *
In my own local community - an hours walk shows all the shades and shapes...the movers...the shakers...the chancers...the winners...the losers of the area...Some are clearly falling between the cracks...the gaps that exist between each moment. Snatches of conversation. Moments of aggression. One day this. One day that.
* * *
I am drawn to the loneliness of busy places ...the emptiness of crowded places...what is happening is not on the margins of the community...something has gone is missing...opportunity probably.
O ble mae'r bobl wedi Mynd? / Where have all the people Gone?
Steve Coel
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Documentary Fiction Photography
Since I bust my legs down The Works I've had to spend all my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Bust my heart too truth be known. Lost everything now. Still; once I get enough coin I has a mild and Clark's pie down The Vulcan, and, often or not, I end up talking to the old girls warming themselves up before they go and shelters under the bridge by The Glastonbury.
Clink Hotel across the road gets noisy in the afternoon so I usually wonder back into town for a bit of a stretch and go and cadge a cup of tea from Asteys before heading back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk.
Doesn't have time to feel sad really. Not me. Trick I finds, is to forget past and just stick to what I knows. Need change of shoes mind. Guess I'll find some in the box by side door Sunday morning.
The Right Shadows (2025)
Steve Coel
Notes -
Warm Air into Dead Harp reminds me of so much that is never fixed properly...I noticed a lot of damaged adults growing up...some from the war and too many others from closures of steel works and the docks...I still see damaged adults today, we all do...all ages, from all over...it's never right...never was...Steve Coel
Documentary Fiction Photography
Stepping away from the street through a broken two door, customers painfully walk into a high congregation of brown paper and leather. Inside; along each damp tired wall, anointed paint quietly peels and unclean fragile carpet, frayed by disappointment, falls into hooded empty corners stacked high with rotting chairs.
The Right Shadows (2025)
Steve Coel
It's found up along cobbled visions of forgotten towns in times disputed by all who lived them. In places caught by Pentax and Olympus children will forever play on empty streets near to crumbled demolished homes. Tall ships still hang over brick wall in this broken vision, with the ships, made by small people whose dreams daily smashed, mirror the horrors of this passing time. Close by, crisp tied officials arrive but soon leave. As they always have and always will. Visitors making quick decisions over local pie and ignored cake.
Today windowless empty youth painted buildings scatter to wind and sudden downpour as in large open working spaces; in tired, dormant feral communities; few people gather each morning for early shift. Labour here is now too vague, mechanical and undisputed. Tiredness is instant and contagious. Jokes are few, clumsy and dulled by lack of echo. Uniforms, worn in shame, are cheap and ill fitting as they signify nothing but cowardice and lack of respect.
Steve Coel
Here -
Where...frosted symphony bamboo foot bleeds into glass split concrete..
Where...silent fingers cup memory..
Where...bloodied alert eyes are street fierce..
Where...back pocket lamps guide bullied handshake greeting..
Where...muted trolley tight waiting is slow shuffled along wired footpath
is the place language comes to die.
Here -
Where...spirited cloth tightly holds hidden defence..
Where...painted step reveals rusted night-time dancing..
Where...burnt time walking becomes wall shy and forced..
Where...open doors disperse rumour of stolen memory..
Where...expensive remarks are fake..
is the place language comes to die.