Sudden Prose Reprints: Isabel Galleymore's 'True Animal'

 

True Animal

On a dozy summer's day, a donkey magpied a lion's skin that the hunters had left to dry in the sun. What else had the donkey to do, but chameleon himself inside it? As he swanned across the paddock in his new ferocious fur, the horse began to mouse, the hare grew chicken-hearted, and the chicken hared away. How good it felt to shark among the shrimp, he thought, and let out a proud hee-haw... The daisies widened their eyes. Mid-run, the chicken stopped. The hare, and then the mouse, dared themselves to look. Finding not claws but hooves, each turned upon him and, as any true animal would, parroted a short teaching on natures true and fox. 

Isabel Galleymore
Significant Other (Carcanet, 2019)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Train to Polonnaruwa" by S. Niroshini

 

Train to Polonnaruwa

Colombo, 1995

That summer seemed so short, standing on the roof of my grandmother's house.

A crow watches from the lane, its black eye half-sunken in pulped aubergine;

strange feast, gesture of street-opulence, only the Poya moon that night familiar.

Trains to Polonnaruwa from Colombo on the horizon, to monuments in stone.

Blind to the violet waves of this country: fake flowers at airports, love cake, ayubowans. 

Little girls in white uniforms amble past mosques and churches, holding hands.

In the south-west monsoon, thunderstorms in Colombo are not what you might imagine.

S. Niroshini

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Cinnamon" by Fawzia Kane

Cinnamon

 

Watch how the skin peels, dislodges, is sloughed off to reveal inner layers of mottling, so soft and moist. This holds a tint only burning sugar can show, at that instant when it granulates from smooth clay to sheets of beaten copper. This wound, just here on the trunk, has already dried. Even the leaves turn brittle, curl into fingers, and desiccate to crumbs. Examine these differences of duskiness, the scale of halftones that play out among and over us, during our quick dawns and lingering twilights. How many will mingle in crowds, to be tied to others with strings of painted lines? Which of these, when they touch and interweave with us, will you still believe are invisible? Remember, remember the splintering of their scent through the prism of air, the lick of it, the hot taste against the inside of our throats, the hurt on, the hurt of the tongue.

 

Fawzia Kane 

Filigree: Contemporary Black British Poetry, ed. Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Peepal Tree Press, 2018)  

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra – Dalí, 1936" by Geraldine Clarkson

Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms  the Skins of an Orchestra – Dalí, 1936  

 

Having always used her music as an instrument, a gift to stifle hurt in others, a searching for a niche into which she could stuff pansies or wallflowers, a grey to be drenched with peony or tangerine, she became pliable, perfectly responsive to circumstance, a kitten following its master, chase-and-nibble. At first she didn’t notice herself changing, so intent was she on pacifying with titbits the yawning jaw. Filling the jug of subjugation. Until she awoke in a boulder-desert, stone-faced, immaterial. Her life shrunk now to two needers who dominated: her mother and her daughter. Her music no more than a cipher, a distorted keyboard painted on a banner wrung out, flung out between her and the others, a mute offering. The godlike gift something less than animal or vegetable. A split skewed thing. And she, a rock-musician, no longer able to please anyone.

 

Geraldine Clarkson

Monica's Overcoat of Flesh (Nine Arches Press, 2020)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "A Thursday" by Geraldine Clarkson

A Thursday

Attendant circumstances: the sun and the moon, in that order. Running home, no reason to think the house would not be as we’d left it. Mother wiping workaday hands on her stretchy pink overall. Father gulping down tea, talking to whoever was there, his soft-steel presence filling the house, so that we breathed in, moved carefully into corners. And my brother: thinning, staring, wandering off for longer and longer, forgetting to say where, just flushed cheeks and eyes shining like polythene. But the noise coiled through the windows and walls before we arrived—a wind of tangled voices sighing and soughing. The back door open. Mother not in the kitchen. Father, loitering. The next room quickly dark with cousins and uncles and Irish people, all here not there. On top of each other, two heads to each person. All the heads crying. And Mother by the fire, flanked by four aunts. Someone took us to a back room, away from the sobbing-wind sound, offered us sweets, as many as we liked, while day turned to night, in that order.

Geraldine Clarkson

Monica's Overcoat of Flesh (Nine Arches, 2020)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "I Was Trying to Make Peace with My Past" by Vik Shirley

I Was Trying to Make Peace with My Past,

 

but my past was making it very difficult. Every time I would go to shake its hand, it put thumb to nose and wiggled its fingers. I tried cooking it a nice meal. All it did was make a fuss about the bones I'd left in the lamb tagine, to enhance the flavour. I tried Martinis: it didn't like olives; pavlova: it had a meringue allergy; after-dinner coffee: it couldn't have caffeine after 3pm. I started to wonder if it might have been easier to have remained enemies. Or better still, if I'd thought of it earlier, I could have poisoned the food and killed the past. But I knew one thing the past liked and that was a drink. So I slipped antifreeze into its Amaretto liqueur, and as we sat and drank, smoking Cuban cigars, listening to Andy Williams, I smiled to myself, knowing that any minute, the ethylene glycol would kick in. It was then the past turned to me and said: "I know I act mean, but I would like to make friends or peace or whatever you want to call it." I stumbled to the kitchen, where I added the remaining poison to my White Russian and downed it. Then we lay together, in each other's arms, until, at last, we were at peace. 

Vik Shirley

The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN Press, 2020)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Object Poem" by Jane Monson

 Object Poem

We do not write about the object--we write about the shadow it casts or the reflection it throws back at us. We talk about the setting, the human dramas that crowd outside it. We try to know them all. The language. The disasters. We write about the wind that moves, throws, or breaks it, but ignore that so low to the ground, something like a stone can remain complete and still during the unhinged run of a hurricane, and that stillness of a tiny thing without so much of a flinch when nothing else stands a chance, is worth a thought at least. The words can follow later, in a mere handful, and that is something. Something at least, on which to build, or not, as the case may be.

Jane Monson

Speaking without Tongues (Cinnamon, 2010)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "What Death Said" by Jane Monson

What Death Said

Here the wind is too subtle, too unseen. Even the dew on the grass is safe, the ant's straight line over the slate and the slack wire line from tree to wall--even this is static, stock-still in the air. She waits for a change, a sneeze or a sigh, some shift in the view. She does not trust or know nature like this--inanimacy, she finds, breeds a tension like death. For this, she is always unprepared, always taken aback--to the night on a long lost road, waiting out the surprise that comes when death pricks open her eyes and says: you have known me before I have known you.

 

Jane Monson

Speaking without Tongues (Cinnamon, 2010)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Early Retirement" by Ian Seed

 

Early Retirement

After many years abroad, I moved to a small village in Cornwall. The locals immediately took to me because I seemed foreign and exotic. The plump, middle-aged woman at the Post Office asked me if I would take on the leading male role in a production that was going to be put on at the village hall. She would play the leading lady. I was too ashamed to admit that I wouldn’t be able to remember the lines. Instead I told her my schedule was already packed, mumbling a lie about a book to write. She blushed as if I’d slapped her. Perhaps another year, I suggested, though I knew my memory would be even worse by then. She shook her head. My standing in the community would never be the same again. 

 

 

Ian Seed

New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018) 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Volunteer" by Ian Seed

Volunteer

We were all in a large tent. Sitting at untidily laid-out trestle tables, we had to sort out hundreds of letters, stick labels with addresses on envelopes, put the letters inside and seal them with a lick. I was surprised at how quickly my mouth and tongue got sore. I had come in good faith, but was now wondering how I could escape.

A tall American lady dressed in a red uniform seemed to be standing guard at the flap door. She wanted to know why I was leaving so soon. Before I could reply, she pointed to the ring on my finger. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the best ones always get taken, don’t they?’ She gave me a bundle of large letters and envelopes to take home with me, to make sure I was kept busy and useful.

 

 

Ian Seed

New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018) 

 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Evolution" by Ian Seed

 

Evolution

 

There were some large black ducks, not unlike dodos, by the German lake. I began pushing one gently by the beak until it pushed back and then slowly and clumsily chased me round and round. From nearby metal benches, some Germans looked on bemused.  

We hadn’t been here since my daughter was a toddler. At that time, she was frightened by the birds, and I had played the same game to amuse her. Now she was a teenager exploring the old town on her own, while my wife slept off her hangover. I had nothing better to do.

A German man, roughly the same age and height as me, but much broader in the shoulder, got up and started playing my game with one of the ducks. But he did so in an aggressive and exaggerated manner, as if to parody me. The others smiled and their eyes lit up, perhaps anticipating my inevitable humiliation.

 

 

Ian Seed

New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018) 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "XXXII" by Marosa di Giorgio

XXXII

     They said that the god was coming to visit. The bustling began at dawn. We set out the best tablecloth, the most exquisite eggs in syrup, the little plates filled with ripe olives and pearls. All morning we watched the air and the sky, the trees, the lone clouds. Someone knocked on the door, but we did not answer; we just wanted to be alone and pray.

     But, at noon, he arrived--we didn't know from where. There he stood with his long braids, his woolen cloak, his colossal wooden staff. We dropped to our knees, praying and crying; we served him the finest food, the fantasy rooster, everything adorned with big sprinkles. He ate his lunch, drank, and explored the house; he declared that he wanted to take something with him, since he was never going to return. He examined the cupboards, the chandeliers, the little porcelain cups, the big clock at the foot of my grandmother's bed; he smelled the oak trees and basil; he searched the wardrobe, drawer by drawer; he looked into the album; he asked which one was Celia. We showed him my little sister.

     He chose her.

Marosa di Giorgio, translated by Jeannine Marie Pitas

The History of Violets 

(Ugly Duckling, 2010)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "IX" by Marosa di Giorgio

IX

Last night again I saw the chest of drawers, the oldest, from my grandmother's wedding, my mother and her sisters' youth, my childhood. There it stood with its high mirror, its baskets of paper roses.

     And then the white chick--almost a dove--flew from the trees to eat rice from my hands. She felt so real to me that I was going to kiss her.

    But then, everything burst into flames and disappeared. God stows his things away safely.

Marosa di Giorgio, trans. Jeannine Marie Pitas

The History of Violets

(Ugly Duckling, 2010)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Antico Adagio" by Peter Gizzi

Antico Adagio

Bring down the lights. Bring out the stars. Let the record sing; the vibraphone; the violin; the gong. We call this charm a festooned gazebo in twilight. We call night and her creatures to the summer screen; every beat a wheel every wheel aglow. The soft tight musical light a freshet. And happy who can hear the wood, the ferns bobbing, the stars splashing down. I wanted this glad tight happy light inside the gloaming. I wanted glow. The piping anthem of a voyage listing in lamplight, oboe light; hear it and fly. Hear it fly like friendship like modernism beginning like a steamer pulling out to sea in an old reel dreaming. Married to a song; to a pebble of song.

Peter Gizzi
The Winter Sun Says Fight 
Plymouth: Periplum Poetry, 2016

Sudden Prose Reprints: from "Of Wife" by Alison Winch

from "Of Wife"

i   On the Manner in Which Wife Introduces Her Self

The marriage counselor has me sit on his chaise longue, behind him a long green garden like a secret glade. I pretend to be one woman.

On this body is a head, I explain, and on this head is a pack of spaniels, a pack so dense they are a mind. And they fawn over men. Men made up of golden light, muddy crystals, kissing cherries. 

Alison Winch
Darling, It's Me (Penned in the Margins, 2019)

 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "the outside air" by Alessandra Lynch

the outside air

Though it's still blue, the mist here is not the future mist and the rain not the same rain and the corner field not a parking lot. No sound from the pond. No after-stir. Charred flies skitter over its silent vellum, and chimney swifts dodge the irrefutable air. And there are other alterations, other speeds.

From underfoot, doves startle. Leaves hang their dry masks over the trail, rattling slightly. On the western bank, a tree--aloof from its cutoff dress--all sheathed bark, reads as skin, reads as: can-be-shed. Will-be-pared.

The air once deep enough to breathe, too shallow to wade. Broken armed women sinking and rising. Their mouths, fixed as megaphones. Their faces undone.

Alessandra Lynch
Daylily Called It a Dangerous Moment (Alice James Books, 2017)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "New Territories" by Jennifer Lee Tsai

New Territories

When I first get off the plane, the heat hits me, tropical, alien. For once, I’m no different. The anonymity subdues me. This is where my past begins. I meet my uncle for steamed bamboo baskets of dim sum and oolong tea. He is tall, fair-skinned, almost like a gweilo, people say. From my aunt’s apartment windows, I see tendrils of mist rise from Tai Mo Shan mountain. Mammoth dragonflies hover, translucent-winged, their presence signalling the imminent fall of rain. I look for traces of my grandmother. A woman I meet, from the same village as her, mourns for her orphaned children, laments the tyrant husband, the cruelty of the mother-in law. She remembers my mother as a child. By day, I read the Tao Te Ching. I want to understand something about the nature of emptiness, start again somehow. The character for Tao contains a head and a walking foot which means the way. In the Chi Lin nunnery on Diamond Hill, there are lotus ponds, bonsai tea plants, purple and orange bougainvillea. Behind intricate screens nuns offer fruit and rice to Buddha. High-rise apartments tower in the background.

Jennifer Lee Tsai 

An earlier version of this poem appeared in Ten: Poets of the New Generation, ed. Karen McCarthy Woolf (Bloodaxe: 2017).

Sudden Prose Reprints: "This Is the End" by Suzannah Evans

This Is the End   

It's 1999 and we're rehearsing the school play – a devised piece set at the end of the world, in a motel run by the devil. Surely some revelation is at hand shouts Mr Maxwell, millennial prophet and head of Theatre Studies. We shout back Surely the second coming is at hand. Because this is the West Midlands we pronounce it Shirley.

The performance date is after the predicted apocalypse so no-one's made much effort with their lines. Mr M makes us sit in the gym with the lights off and listen to The End by the Doors. Theatre doesn't last forever, he says, like life. We sit cross-legged on the polished floor while he paces between us, grinning in the dark.

            *

In the early hours of New Years' Day, unsteady with alcopops, we watch the firework display from the bridge and make our elaborate plans for the year ahead.

The play gets mixed reviews from both staff and students and Lucifer goes back to his life as a sixth-former named Gareth. We patch and cut the costumes into something else, ready for next term's Midsummer Night's Dream.  

Sometimes now I hear that song and remember how it felt to live under that weight of danger, how I carried those words with me all winter, as ice laced itself over the pavements, as I walked home under the viaduct and the sky lowered itself over everything.


Suzannah Evans
Near Future (Nine Arches, 2018) 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "What Did the Orange Gain" by Anna Reckin

What did the orange gain

                                           when it lost its 'n'? Orotundity and foreignness--an orange is rounder than a naranja. It announces its roundness at the very beginning, out loud in black type: O.

But the 'n' didn't just drop off and fall away, a curl of peel. It slid across into negative space, no-man's land, the indefinite article. There it is, in the middle: empty vessel without so much as an outline around it. 

You can't throw a circle off-balance, but a painting needs a tipping movement. Something to set the eye rolling, ball on a see-saw. Teeter-totter, the clatter of utensils. Cutting board, and the knife's an indicator. Spin it like a needle, and see whose heart it points to. 

Not many murder stories happen in kitchens, despite all the knives, the opportunities. Or maybe they're disembodied--the murders, I mean. Acid, or the ones that slowly boil away until the pan runs dry. Spices whose oils evanesce into the atmosphere...

                                                            the vanishing's the point.

Anna Reckin

Line to Curve (Shearsman, 2018)

 

 

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Pancake" by Lila Matsumoto

Pancake

Oh! The horror vacui of the crevice between refrigerator and wall. I call my reliable caulker, and she arrives after lunchtime with an armful of smooshable foodstuffs, eventually electing pancakes as her most preferred medium.

Lila Matsumoto
Urn & Drum (Shearsman, 2018)