Rescued Footprints (2024)

Extracts taken from walking notes. Sleepless mornings deep in busy empty streets.

..alongside several boarded up townhouses, torn cars are being buttoned into fired twisted spaces...it's the music of early morning neighbourhood footstep reflected in slow moving traffic windows that stutter and idle into a yawning high street...

...close by, bare armed and heavily booted, keyholders arrive in knots of secret glances and reluctant handshakes, while patiently adopting the routine of shouldered good nature and long days of empty ambition...

Text - Steve Coel

Photograph - Steve Coel

Curated by An 11.59 Publication

No Paths (2026) - Broken Light..Charity Coffee

Broken Light

Here -

Where...tacky metal emblems cling to half shredded walls of commerce..

Where...fractured gang lines decide night time movement..

 

Where...waistcoat watches lie trapped in muddied brickwork..

Where...shallow drunk opinion dominates afternoon doorway purchase..

Where...beauty is hooded..

is the place language comes to die.

Charity Coffee

Here -

Where...bladed vape chatter tumbles into unlit corridor..

Where...fragmented sour heel machinery lies idle..

Where...cracked glass memory leans into elbowed temper..

Where...crippled time shelters from hillside churched solitude..

Where...rusty thimble alcoholics drink cold cartons of charity coffee..

is the place language comes to die.

Footnote - Why we should all read Experimental Short Fiction

'Experimental writing is often the strop that keeps your knife sharp...to implore that there are different ways of doing things...different perspectives...and different modes of reading.

You will not like all of it, but you will have a greater idea of what you like...and most importantly, you probably won't forget it'

Lee Mackenzie - Poet, Artist

No Paths (2026) - Bandstand..Begged Scandal..Board Yards

Bandstand

Here -

Where...top floor swearing is frequent..

Where...poor disguises are deliberate..

Where...slippery couples meet between sheets of hard fabric..

Where...derelict woods shelter shriveled worlds..

Where...door step begging is hasty and mindless..

is the place language comes to die.

Begged Scandal

Here -

Where...old parking is pavement rumour and small stone guttered..

Where...eclipsed views remain splintered with caged scissor precision..

Where...begged scandal is threatened..

Where...24 hour slowness is eyed suspiciously through boarded shop window..

Where...young shoes shoulder new passages on to industry dust covered machinery..

is the place language comes to die.

Board Yards

Here -

Where...recycled pathways stay unused and ignored..

Where...newly painted rail station gallery is haunted by plastic discipline..

Where...cryptic commands rattle through tight van streets into twisted board yards..

Where...key-ring novelty is blown into building machinery..

Where...boxed reminders become landfill..

is the place language comes to die.

No Paths (2026) - Adult Hands...Apple Canal...Back Pocket

Adult Hands

Here -

Where...illegal plastic high releases urgent stammered step..

Where...solitary private glass is windowed in shoddy single drinking room..

Where...stolen adult hands are nailed..

Where...blown factory wall rage by-passes toughened water..

Where...sponsored imagination drains away through rusting pipe..

is the place language comes to die.

Apple Canal  

Here -

 

Where...surface anger is scheduled for evening cycle ride..

Where...delivery boxed vandalism is slow hand clapped on coin free street corner..

Where...carded empty building sites play daytime tunes to passing tin drunk..

Where...scooters litter apple canal space..

Where...walking dogs is compulsory..

is the place language comes to die.

Back Pocket

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.

Lowland Feather - Short Story Extract

Image - Steve Coel

...out there on the scarab pathed moor where lonely birds pleat their song into ferned memory, old feet leisured by a lifetime of pain, shuffle slowly homewards...

...close by, as carefully baited lowland feather slaps its muted surface, ripple stone water stumbles into ice age grass bank...and through gaps in tree tired stone walls, wild horses fret and gather as rutted horizons shadow mountain valley...

 ...after too many years spent on The Mercy Path absorbing wire sharp whistled song, farewells will still be given through brick house window and muddied wall...

No Paths

Here, where young people never return and there are no paths; is the place language comes to die.

Text - Steve Coel

Photograph - Steve Coel

Curated by An 11.59 Publication

MicroFlashFiction - An 11.59 Publication

City Trilogy ( Part 1 )

Dead Air into Warm Harp

Since I bust my legs down The Works I've had to spend my mornings blowing dead air into warm harp by the Central Library. Truth be known, it bust my heart too. Lost everything now. Everything. Still... once I get enough coin in my pocket I go and get 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 shelter under the bridge by The Glastonbury.

Clink Hotel across the road gets noisy in the afternoon after lunch so I wander into town for a bit of a stretch and cadge a cup of tea from Astey's, before heading back down Bute to the Sally for warm meal and early bunk. Don't get time to feel sorry for myself really, not me. Trick I find is to forget past and just stick to what's happening now.

Need change of shoes mind...but I'll always find some in the box by the side door come Sunday morning.

Half Stolen Buildings

In her regulation daytime tracksuit armour, cracking with coarse whispers and yesterdays broken promise, the young girl pushes her vape shadowed baby carrier pass steamed 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 her plastic shoes will once again slap into one off needles that litter fishless gutters and where, even on dry days, the pavement is damp.

Smells of Time...

In you come in your sad seven year old ironic tracksuit and pair of box fresh looking for deals on the board behind the brown top counter which we know show the same best day price as last time, last week, last month. So in you come, doing quick sums and ordering a dozen shots with your release money which you quickly share out to punters who don't care anymore. In you come, barely missed and completely blitzed. A madman bent by routine, a madman twisted by addiction, a mad man caught in the to and fro of the outside which has turned its back...and good riddance.

In you come - a poorer man, smelling of time.

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

New Fictions

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

MicroFlashFiction and Experimental Narratives, An 11.59 Publication 

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

All That Remained Were Words...

...alongside (the many) mercenary stones that still indicate mossy unmarked graves... 

You seem listless in redundant twisted grey/green peaky cap as you leave the windowless corner caff. Your beard is wild and your eyes still sing of lost love and addiction. 

Days among these gravelly pits and cobbled streets are drunken... with local traders dealing in loose change and cans of strong cider your 24 hour park life is spent drinking, lying and dying.

Eventually you too will be burned in the tight verge leaving only your words: 

1..2..3 You Can't Kill Me!

Digbeth, Birmingham

2025

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication

...creating fictions...

Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication