Sudden Prose: Prose Poetry and Short-Short Stories

  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 ...

  Train to Polonnaruwa Colombo, 1995 That summer seemed so short, standing on the roof of my grandmother's house. A crow watches from th...

Cinnamon   Watch how the skin peels, dislodges, is sloughed off to reveal inner layers of mottling, so soft and moist. This holds a tint onl...

Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in their Arms  the Skins of an Orchestra – Dalí, 1936     Having always used her music as an inst...

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 l...

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 t...

 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 ...

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 t...

  Early Retirement After many years abroad, I moved to a small village in Cornwall. The locals immediately took to me because I seemed forei...

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 wit...

  Evolution   There were some large black ducks, not unlike dodos, by the German lake. I began pushing one gently by the beak until it pushe...

XXXII      They said that the god was coming to visit. The bustling began at dawn. We set out the best tablecloth, the most exquisite ...

IX Last night again I saw the chest of drawers, the oldest, from my grandmother's wedding, my mother and her sisters' youth, m...

Antico Adagio Bring down the lights. Bring out the stars. Let the record sing; the vibraphone; the violin; the gong. We call this charm...

from "Of Wife" i   On the Manner in Which Wife Introduces Her Self The marriage counselor has me sit on his chaise longue...

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 ...

New Territories When I first get off the plane, the heat hits me, tropical, alien. For once, I’m no different....

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...

What did the orange gain                                            when it lost its 'n'? Orotundity and foreignness--an orange ...

Pancake Oh! The horror vacui of the crevice between refrigerator and wall. I call my reliable caulker, and she arrives after lunchtim...