Short Fiction: Experiments + Proposals - Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Crow Time Feeding
Here -
Where...recycled daytime hiding is scripted into knifed tree bark..
Where...reckless noise making is brutal and metal knuckled..
Where...vape bloodied cafe gardens groan beneath rusted leather footstep and betrayed seating..
Where...crow time feeding is weed killer gravelled..
Where...small group silence rejects courtyard posters and charity reclaimed allotment..
is the place language comes to die.
Daytime Sleeping
Here -
Where...shielded discount aisles are glued together with spiced smile and free news..
Where...stickered metal bollards herd cheap early morning trainer shoe..
Where...daytime sleeping is bagged with tourist litter..
Where...each stuttering step is guided by habit..
Where...whiskered waterway trees hang on singing electric wire..
is the place language comes to die.
Deaf Ear
Here -
Where...loyalty is sought and funded through dark glass..
Where...anger is buttery..
Where...doorstep begging is hasty and youthful..
Where...brave words are thrown away with cheap lager and soapy gritted water..
Where...curled up broken yard hideaways become legend..
is the place language comes to die.
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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
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
...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...
Here, where young people never return and there are no paths; is the place language comes to die.
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