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)

Holly Howitt's Dinner Time, second selection

Here's my second selection from Holly Howitt's Dinner Time. I should mention that some pieces are much darker and more surreal than the ones I've selected--the book has an impressive range, but that those pieces tend to be a little longer, and I wanted to stick with what one could see in one small laptop screen.

"Fears"

It's always been the same, I try to explain. Periods and spiders, they're the thoughts I'm bored of. If it's not a furry-legged tarantula, a bird-eating monster, I'm thinking of the heat that makes my insides moan, the dance of my stomach and the heaviness in my knees, then the weightlessness afterwards, like a money spider dancing over my wrists. These are the thoughts that keep me awake, I say. The ones I can't exorcise, the ones that line my dreams and scuttle through my words, wombs and black widows, webs and ballpoint-marked windows.

Is it just me, I ask. Why am I so afraid?

Because you are ridiculous, the woman says, and scurries away on eight legs. My body cramps, expectantly.

Holly Howitt

Dinner Time (Cinnamon Press, 2008)

You can buy the book here.

Holly Howitt's Dinner Time, first selection

I was introduced to Holly Howitt's work at the Academi annual literature conference, this year at Gellifawr near Pontfaen, Wales. I gave a reading on the Saturday, and on the Sunday Holly was on a panel on flash fiction. I bought her collection of microfictions, Dinner Time, and have enjoyed it--it is by turns surreal, lyrical, wry, and disturbing, in unexpected combinations. Holly has given me permission to reprint here two of her pieces, and this is the first selection.

"Strategies"

Nick sees me before I see him. I can only now be pleased to see him, and smile, but I know that the few seconds he has on me, catching my sad face, will mean that he has won. He takes my hand, says nothing, and walks me home from the tired and dirty station where even the pigeons forget to coo.

The next morning, I ask Nick what he would do if one day, I woke up, saw him on the pillow next to mine, and asked who he was. He says he wouldn't care, but as I take his hand I can feel his palm sweating. I smile, my larynx flutters.

Later, I try to work on my novel, but I cannot write anything with him looking over my shoulder. I feel that, somehow, he'll affect my words.

I can never win for long.

Holly Howitt

Dinner Time (Cinnamon Press, 2008)

You can buy the book here.

New Anthology of Microfiction/Narrative Prose Poetry Seeks Submissions

The anthology is being produced by Cinnamon Press, and details are available on the submissions page of their website. The deadline is 15 August.