Short Fiction: Experiments + Proposals - Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Here -
Where...narrow lane romance flickers over roof ridged hedge..
Where...bladed vape chatter tumbles into unlit corridor..
Where...slippery couples meet between sheets of harsh fabric..
Where...dead meat flags hang from rusty hook in damp empty rows..
Where...weightless men saunter early into cotton hospital shroud..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Here -
Where...secret hill people hide their harvest crust earnings..
Where...swift water threatens high floating walls of greasy moss and slippery cracked slate..
Where...silver steps to gated harbour crash into scalloped boats..
Where...fussy overcoats and woollen carpet shape grassy valley roadway..
Where...night light blooms on weathered cardboard shelter..
is the place language comes to die.
Here -
Where...fly-tipped memory eats up roofless factory space..
Where...stripped bare wall paintings spray the cold message of futile argument..
Where...bricked up elegance is submerged behind hungry false promise..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Etched from St. Augustine's stone into the headland below, you'll find a length of coast that bleeds into the docks. Here, the ritual is of kerbs being painted by elderly welders, daily recruited in pubs that still echo the empty space between water and youth.
Mystery man, shadow man is what they used to call him. Him when he was the latest three day thin whistle at dusk millionaire returning from sea to die like his father. Shallower sea back then mind, better cut cloth, broader smiles. Now though, after too many rope marks and twisted bone, life comes mixed to stillness with drink, sharp curses and dark corners.
Stepping away from the street you pass through a broken broad open two door. Inside, along damp tired walls, you discover anointed paint quietly peeling, a high congregation of brown paper and leather, and frayed by disappointment, unclean fragile carpet falling into gloomy empty corners.
Since I bust my legs down The Works I's been spending my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Bust my heart too truth be told. Lost everything now I has. Still; once I's got enough coin I has a mild and Clark's pie in The Vulcan. And; more often than not, I ends up chatting to the old girls warming themselves up before they goes and shelters under the bridge by The Glastonbury. Clink Hotel across the road gets noisy in the afternoon so I wanders back into town for a bit of a stretch and goes and cadges a cup of tea from Astey's before I heads back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk. Really, I doesn't have time to feel sad. Not me. Trick I finds is to forget past and stick to what I knows. Needs change of shoes mind. Probably find some come Sunday in box by side of hostel door.
Here where young people never return and there are no paths, is where language comes to die.
Steve Coel
Here -
Where...slippery eyes fix on glassy oil pavement..
Where...shop doors embrace the bubble gum smell of illegal cheap drink..
Where...greasy thin blue sky spits light on planked up corner store..
Where...old smiles are reflected in rust..
Where...grey pictures are carelessly hidden in barbed wire hedge..
Where...purple eyes glaze across a stubborn river..
is the place language comes to die.
Here -
Where...burnt out bandstand and gritted wall hold the sky in place..
Where...crippled landscape shakes at the passing of invisible feet..
Where...ugly water washes up dead fish..
Where...padlocks protect broken fields from broken people..
Where...debt plagues argument like two coins rubbed clear..
Where...hills consume history and memory is wiped out by nature..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
In her regulation daytime armour still cracking with coarse whispers and yesterdays broken promise, the young girl pushes her vape shadowed baby carrier past boarded up pub windows. Her world is the High Street where each day a bitter grey tide shambles downhill towards abandoned blue churches and disappearing city light. And it is here plastic shoes will slap into one off needles that litter fishless gutters and where, even on dry days, the pavement is damp.
Steve Coel
Steve Coel
In your spring hat, tied with lost string, you search the free paper for clues for which day you now finds yourself waiting. Because waiting on the corner beat today in the rain for the next delivery, is receiving disturbed glances from local windows and trolley men. And the steady clump of wet shoe against cracked kerbstone drunk is shadowing a high street roaring with anger over closure and debt, where even the most fucked up has memories when called upon. Is called survival so it is.
***
So; you's been shadow hunting? You fucker. Isn't nice. Know what I means? And it sure doesn't look as if it is going to end well either because peoples already got their mobiles out and others are instinctively putting their hands over stash's and stolen wallets.
***
From the stickered shop window the tidy looking young women shakes a weary head at the nasty row growing on the pavement outside. It was always about dodgy deals and money owed. Always. And she's really sick of seeing the same exhausted faces. The sound of blues up the street usually moved on most, but not all and CCTV(s) are already being clicked off, wiped or removed.
***
Stolen trainers and suede overcoat; owed wraps, scissored finger tips, sellotaped glass', fake tan and orange lipstick; kitchen knife strapped underneath skateboards, grey trade tracksuits and knitted beanies.
***
Seen wearing cheap cloths they's always got expensive rings and expensive boxfresh. Go figure. Seems weird to most, but is accepted down the street because knowledge is learnt early round here. Everyone knows, you don't learn, you's a loser. And that's where you don't ever want to be. Reputations is made young and lasts. Everyone knows this, don't they? Is fucking first lesson for fucks sake!
***
You catch snatch's of stoned smiles floating through the smoked out windows of passing stolen number plates. Everyone knows the street cliches and seems to love them round here. And not ironically, ironically.
Steve Coel