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: "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)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Fish" by Anna Reckin

Fish

A few hours after dawn, under a bridge in the middle of the city, a wooden rowing-boat, with two fishermen in it. Downstream is the outlet from the printworks, where the swans gather in a rush of warm water; upstream the corrugated cardboard factory, a choking smell of damp paper. Along here, the river's shut in, with straight-sided banks and paved paths, squared off like a canal. I would never expect fish to be here. I would think that they would stay in the greener shady places where the river edges what were once water-meadows (sand and gravel still), now playing-fields.

That night I dream of the fish in the river. The river's course has straightened, blocked off into a long narrow pool: a tank in a Mughal miniature. The city walls are smooth and high, fortified, with watchtowers, and the buildings crowd up against them: towers, domes and minarets. It's after dark, and a single fish hangs in the water, gleaming in the night-time stone.

Anna Reckin
Line to Curve (Shearsman, 2018)

Sudden Prose Reprints: "Fondant Cake" by Lila Matsumoto

Fondant Cake

This fondant cake is here for you. A crisp, almost brittle crust, and a rich and dark crumb. Also this grief bacon.

Lila Matsumoto
Urn & Drum (Shearsman, 2018)

An interview with Lucy Hamilton on her book of prose poetry, Stalker

Ian Seed interviews Lucy Hamilton on her first collection of prose poems, Stalker, here: https://tearsinthefence.com/2018/02/02/an-interview-with-lucy-hamilton-on-stalker-by-ian-seed/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

Sudden Prose Reprints: Em Strang's "Hare"

This compelling prose poem appears in Em Strang's first collection, Bird-Woman, just out from Shearsman Books. 

HARE

In Memoriam Jyoti Singh

I'm carrying the hare along the road. One of its back legs is hanging by a single tendon, blood seeping slowly in the cold. It's early morning, but the hare is late. The school bus has taken it by surprise, for the last time. I'm holding it like a newborn baby, one hand beneath its head, the other beneath its backside. It's heavy. It weighs roughly as much as a fully grown, well-fed tomcat. It's the kind of weight I'd prefer to sling over my shoulder.

For some time now, I've been unable to let the images go: the bus in the semi-dark, the young woman and her male friend; the blood on the men's hands and all their wide eyes in the confines of the vehicle; the metal air; the woman's voice which I can hear, again and again, no matter where I look.

The body is still warm and limp, still supple, and I keep half-expecting its eyes to blink, its legs to jerk awake. I half-expect the hare to jump and charge away from me. But it doesn't. I carry it into the woods and put it down beneath a rhododendron bush. I lay it out in such a way that the gashed leg is invisible and it looks, it really looks, as though the hare is wide alive and running. It doesn't matter whether I'm doing this for me or for all hares.

I find a few branches and twigs and make a kind of woody tent over the body. I don't do this for other roadkill, but I've been watching the hares all year – there's a pair. Or there was. They circle the house like sentinels, beginning on the eastern side with the sun and working their way round through the orchard, past the hen-run and into the woods. I watch them through the windows, their black-tipped ears, their long, powerful hind-legs that work like suspension coils, easing the body up and forward, down and forward, perpetually sprung; ready, I supposed, for the unexpected.

By now it's a familiar story. The woman with a young, smiling face and soft skin. Her softness in the last light of the evening. All the shouting men, their mouths, their drenched clothes.

It's a small back road with little traffic, but the school bus passes twice a day and the driver doesn't mean to hit it. He's late and the kids are waiting, out in the cold on a corner of turf.

I stroke its long ears back against its head, stroke its fine coat, white belly, small face. Hares have kinetic skulls – they're jointed – which allows for a degree of movement between the front and back sections. It helps absorb the force of impact as the hare strikes the ground.

The iron bar. The shadow faces. The quiet glistening of the steering wheel, an empty glass bottle, an eye.

You can buy Bird-Woman from Shearsman Books here. 

Sudden Prose Reprints: Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), seventh and final selection

Here is the seventh and final prose poem from Greek Passages: 

Bright sunlight, sharpening the edges of the house, the blazing secret of it, the day. / A reason for coming here. And gathering messages from petals on the stony hillsides and the feathers of birds in flight, and small moths hesitating on grass stalks. / The hopes and fears of peoples, cast on the sea shattered into particles of light

You can purchase the collection directly from the publisher here.

Sudden Prose Reprints: Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), sixth selection

Here is the sixth prose poem from this admirable collection I wanted to share: 

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(3) Dear Rough Guide, Some of the eating places you recommend in Plaka are little more than dens of food bandits. One you don’t mention is Kapnikaréa, tucked away in a corner of the square of the same name. They don’t give the stuff away but it’s good food at reasonable prices for the area, casual, friendly, and seems to have impromptu live bouzouki music from about 2 p.m. / People doing things well. If you can’t find it in poetry look for it somewhere else.

You can purchase the collection directly from the publisher here.  

Sudden Prose Reprints: Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), fifth selection

Here is the fifth prose poem from Greek Passages I wanted to bring to a wider audience:

I lie in bed dreaming the street plan / corners of dark northern towns, complex of small back streets I can’t quite remember / My mother held my hand at the street edge / long ago, and we had our thin riches / there too, the future sailed up the bay as the potential, it seemed, of the entire land / held in the local hand // I dream this. Sound outside, swishing / of trees in gusts of wind / the red earth under the sky’s black cloak / That I should come so far from such streets / rejoicing in the same fear.

You can purchase the collection directly from the publisher here.

Sudden Prose Reprints: Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), fourth selection

Here is the fourth prose poem from Greek Passages I'd like to share:

But you will turn, in the end / and look back across the silence waters, the / roaring gap // deep and wide, perfect justice / on the other side. Listen. Small bells. 

You can purchase the collection directly from the publisher here. 

Sudden Prose Reprints: Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), third selection

Here is the third prose poem from Peter Riley's collection that I'd like to share with a wider audience:

Our sustenance dragged across our fear / purposeless gloom in half light / long fields of grey stalks pulled by the wind, our profit / hauled onto the land / up the long valley and into the hills // Turn and look back, strong hot wind in the face with some water in it, the olive trees thrashing / Our wealth, weighing, working, wearing us / on / to the empty monastery.

You can purchase Greek Passages directly from the publisher here.

Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), second selection

Here's the second of six prose poems from the collection that will appear here: 

Sweetly then / the whole thing / complete and / sailing away, singing: Noë noë noë . . . // Sings shouting: new, new born. // Welcome home, little turnip, welcome to the old song.

You can purchase Greek Passages directly from the publisher here.

Peter Riley's Greek Passages (Shearsman, 2009), first selection

The prose poems in Peter Riley's Greek Passages are untitled. 

There was no journey. The moment we opened our eyes we were there: / the colours across the bay / the red on the blue / Trinakrian Sea, its / turning islands, and all thought of betterment in the world / Bringing trouble. That lives here like a stone. / Bringing upright posture, anxiety, and longed-for repose. That live here like the flowers of the mountain.

You can purchase Greek Passages directly from the publisher here.

Sudden Prose Reprints: Lucy Hamilton's "The Compulsion"

The Compulsion

To emerge from my hideout and stagger to the mirror. To face the stranger in my face. Who is she in the white of her face, like the white of Robert Wyman’s Twin? Is it this white that fills the stalker’s dreams and fuels his nightly propulsion to the one-way mirror? The reflection is distorted. If I break the mirror I’m done for.

 Lucy Hamilton

"The Compulsion" comes from Lucy Hamilton's Stalker (Shearsman, 2012),  shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. More information as well as multiple purchasing options are available on the publisher's website.

Forthcoming books for Sudden Prose at Bath Spa

These are to improve our holdings in prose poetry and have just been ordered. I'd be glad for suggestions for short-short story collections beyond what we already have.

Jamey Dunham, The Bible of Lost Pets. Salt, 2009.

Gary Young, Pleasure: Poems. Heyday Books, 2006.

Ian Seed. Anonymous Intruder. Shearsman, 2009.

Peter Riley, Greek Passages. Shearsman, 2009.

Lesle Lewis, Small Boat. Iowa University Press, 2003.

Charles Simic, The World Doesn't End. Mariner, 1989.

Charles Simic, Selected Poems 1983-2001. Faber, 2004.