Experimental Short Fiction - Steve Coel. Documenting through a fictional mirror, responses to the world around us... these experiments are nearly always intuitive and spontaneous. I will continue to publish On - Line. Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication (August 2026)
Here -
Where...fake grins act as currency..
Where...simple gestures are challenged and closely debated..
Where...daily trauma functions alongside passing rumour..
Where...narrow concrete staircases funnel nervous jealous glances..
Where...starched wrinkled skin sticks to stretched bone..
Where...young people die old..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
Once you bypass the last lightning tree..
you enter a hillside world of midnight stream and border wire music..
walk across the shilling debris and early shadow..
and watch as blisters of high mist compose movement from iron and broken bone.
Begin by the shallow path that slopes unevenly away from the Shadow Nut Wood..
go towards the broken hill and distant wet rock..
you will soon find the corrugated tunnels built to hide, imprison and shelter straight back frightened animals..
twist open the unyielding buckle of weed that lies thick with the embrace of both mud and food..
and note how death stamps its mark into heated spot creating an acid smell of ripped air, fallen dead leaf and crippled motor oil.
Here -
Where...steep dark pictures dent curved sky-line..
Where...dead fruit is picked clean by unseen nightlife..
Where...leather shoes crack salted grit iron pavement..
Where...early day widows gather to taunt community editors..
Where...heavy bronze wire divides night time misery along broken river front..
Where...cheap tables split abandoned doorways..
Where...warehouse beams trap steel smile and welded arm..
Where...blossom heavy rubble lounges outside fenced in destruction..
Where...fallen brick slices papered railing..
Where...waste pipe lined side streets issue warning to hooded sleepless vagrant..
Where...top floor swearing is frequent..
Where...cliff edge bramble holds litter to ransom..
Where...cold slab chipped rock fountain is smiling and love struck..
Where...mobile notes are glued to pavements damp with summer..
Where...waistcoat watches lie trapped in muddied brickwork..
Where...skin is scissored..
Where...sunlit sea crag is clogged with blue nylon futures..
Where...plastic sand cuts foot and dead wood..
Where...safe walking looks like running..
Where...glitter ball glamour is boarded and gig postered..
Where...barber shop window reflects passing stooped daytime..
Where...sham smiles turn away and re-locate..
Where...singing electric wire hangs on whispering waterway tree..
Where...church bell hymns crack open egg shell mourning..
Where...runaway daydream sinks into warm mud..
Where...sober chatter corrupts polluted chamber and cork lined corridor..
Where...busy ripped cloth store front is box fresh and smokey..
Where...puzzled footstep is matched with clumsy frail voice..
Where...pick-up warnings are scratched into street corner metal..
Where...small creatures move tightly through weed walls at midday..
Where...glass shadow stretches into shoeless avenue..
Where...blank looks remain stubborn with old age..
is the place language comes to die.
Steve Coel / An 11.59 Publication
