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