Flash Frontier

April 2013: HIGH TIDE

Michelle Elvy — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 01:51:44 +0000

Fraser Williamson, Fishing

Fraser Williamson has had work in many national and international publications, books and projects for design firms and agencies. He shows his paintings at the Flagstaff Gallery in Devonport. He lives with his wife Loisi and their son Antonio. They like to spend their time between Tonga, New Zealand and Spain. ‘Fishing’ is a humorous look at the inter-connectedness between Hawaii and Aotearoa (and all the islands really). Tama is fishing up a dobro-style guitar which he will play as an accompaniment to the vision of ancient surfing that models itself on the original drawings by European seafarers who observed the sport when they first visited Hawaii. It is acrylic on canvas and now resides on a wall in Malta. More here.

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Janet Pates, Cast Ashore

Once, there was an old man who loved the sea, for it had been his life. One day there came a huge tide which cast him high on the shore then retreated, washing the beach clean of sand castles, footprints and stick-drawn messages.

At first he enjoyed the waves’ siren song, but then the sound began to steal into his head and spirit things away. The days of the week were first to go, then names, faces, places – all washed out to sea on the tide.

Every day he went down to the water’s edge and fished for memories but all he ever caught were fragments of the past: the glint of an eye, the echo of a laugh, the colour of a girl’s skirt.

One day, a young woman came to him out of the sea mist. He peered at her and saw she had beautiful eyes. He knew those eyes. “Are you my wife?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’m your granddaughter.”

He asked if she would take him home and she said, “Perhaps another day.”

Meanwhile, she would help him to fish. So they fished, side by side until he grew tired. Then he passed her the bait he had left and said, “Carry on.”

The winner of the 2012 National Flash Fiction Day competition, Janet Pates lives in the small town of Tuakau, near the mouth of the Waikato River. She writes for children and for adults, she writes fiction and non-fiction, the latter with an emphasis on local history. In between times, she is trying to create an interesting memoir out of a singularly ordinary life.

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Tim Heath, High Tide

The boy in the bath makes no effort to wash.

His knees are muddy, his face smeared with tears.

He lies down, only nose and eyes above water. His lips form a word. If his mouth was above water level the listener would be able to hear the word – buggers.

He starts to cry again and has to sit up. The water level drops and reveals that sufficient dirt has been released to form a high tide mark.

“Buggers. Bloody buggers. Coulda let me win, just once. I’m the youngest and the littlest and I never win, bloody buggers!”

He lies back down. The water is no longer warm and soothing. The high tide mark reinforced by the dirt his movement has dislodged.

“Hurry up,” yells his mother, “your brother needs to have his bath too you know.”

“Bugger him,” he bubbles. “He can be last because he never let me win and I am the littlest and the youngest and…”

His father steams into the bathroom.

“For god sake boy, how long are you going to take? You haven’t started to wash? What’s the matter with you?”

“They wouldn’t let me win and….”

The tears rush back.

“Stop your blubbing, wash yourself and try harder.”

He does as he is told. Scrubs, climbs out of the bath, dresses.

He watches the water drain away. The image of the high tide mark, a shadow on whiteness, will stay with him for the rest of his life.

Tim Heath writes poetry, enjoys some success in the oddity known as Poetry Slams and writes whenever he can grab time from grandchildren, travelling, sailing, growing vegetables and hanging out more washing than he cares to mention.

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James Claffey, return to nothingness

Along the empty beach seagulls struggle to make headway in the face of the strong wind and sea shells tumble end over end in the wash. I pull my trunks up around my waist, the plastic buckle is a gold anchor and Mam says they look very smart on me. The Old Man slaps his belly and says, “Time for a dip, my Son of Eireann.”

In the water a dead seahorse floats along and I pluck it out and hold it against the sky. Curved like an “S” from a storybook the horse is a beautiful thing. I take the goggles off and fill them with water. Sand washes off its body and its purple ribbed corpse shines in the sunlit water. I wade back to shore, afraid I’ll crush it and kill its soul.

Mam reads the Sunday newspaper behind the windbreak, smoking a cigarette. The baby is in its house, waiting to be born. When she sees the tiny creature she says she’s never seen one so lovely. “It’s wonderful. Thank you.”

I bury the seahorse in the rocky area by the fence. I say a prayer for the maritime traveller and toast its return to nothingness. When I get back to the windbreak the Old Man drips water on Mam’s Sunday Independent. “Sit down and eat something,” Mam says. “Give me one tick,” I say, and run back to the seahorse’s grave to say goodbye to the summer.

James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA, with his wife, the writer and artist, Maureen Foley, their daughter, Maisie, and Australian cattle-dog, Rua. His blog is at www.jamesclaffey.com.

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Jeff Taylor, Tsunami Blues

TV said it would strike about 11am Pacific Standard Time.

DO NOT GO NEAR THE COASTLINE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Me, Trent and Kyle didn’t think twice, we wagged school, got on our bikes and headed out there with our boogie boards.

The estuary was deserted, except for some old freaks hanging out on the high ground. They shouted stuff at us that we couldn’t hear, so we gave them the fingers. The tide was out so we waded through knee-deep mudflats for ages before we reached the water’s edge.

“Whaddya reckon?” Trent said, “Ten feet, twenty feet?”

“You seen the TV this morning?” Kyle said. “They’re gonna be awesome. Thirty, forty foot maybe. Cars, houses just wasted, bro. Dead bodies everywhere.”

We’d come prepared. Trent had some Jim Beam out of his old man’s cabinet. Kyle had pinched some of his father’s roll-your-owns, and I’d used the five dollars I’d snuck from my mum’s purse to get some crisps.

The waves stayed about one foot except at one stage when the tide came slowly up the sand about another six feet, then went back after a couple of minutes.

Our eyes got sore from staring at the horizon for hours.

“Must be about lunchtime,” I said.

“Stinks, man.” Trent chucked a hunk of driftwood at a seagull, but missed by a mile.

“Waste o’ time, bro.” Kyle kicked a shell out of the sand and hoicked a spitball at it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Tsunamis suck.”

Jeff Taylor is a retired pharmacist living in Hamilton who enjoys writing short stories for both adults and children. He has been writing for about six years and has won three short story contests in the UK (Global Short Stories) and has a children’s story published in Barbara Else’s latest anthology, Great Mates.

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Melanie Koster, Chasing Dragonflies

She giggles as the tide pulls at the sand under her feet, almost causing her to lose her balance.

“Watch me, Mummy!”

“Don’t go any deeper Miriama, and keep your sunhat on!” Her mother lies under the shade of a ngaio tree, fishing little white flowers from her wineglass.

Miriama chases a dragonfly. It glistens and hovers over the water with cobweb wings. “Look at this, Mummy!”

No reply. A book covers her face, her glass discarded in the sand.

Miriama ventures a little deeper. A gust snatches her hat, tossing it further out. She lunges, but a wave knocks her off her feet. She tumbles through the surf, spluttering. Standing in the shallows, she watches her hat float away.

Miriama wonders whether to wake her mother – to tell her about the hat, and that she really needs to do Number Twos. She leaves her sleeping, and makes the trek across the paddock to the woolshed loo on her own.

Miriama screws up her nose. The woolshed smells of lanolin and dried sheep poo, but it’s cool and dark – welcome relief from the heat. She climbs onto a bale and stretches out. A fly drones above her, and she is soon asleep.

A shattering scream echoes around the bay. Miriama peers through the door. In the distance she sees her mother clutching a sodden sunhat, wailing and thrashing about in the waves. She’s mad about the hat, thinks Miriama. She decides to hide out in the shed for a while.

Melanie Koster lives in Christchurch with her husband and two children. She works at a local primary school and teaches a pre-school music group. She is the author of children’s picture books, The Reluctant Little Flower Girl (Mallinson Rendel 2008) and Milly Maloo and the Miracle Glue (Scholastic NZ 2011).

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Graeme Lay, James & Elizabeth, North Yorkshire, 27 December 1771

It was the first time Elizabeth had seen the sea. Until now the only seawater she had seen was a flowing Thames tide. Averting her eyes, she drew her shawl tightly about her. She was with child, again, and her husband, James Cook, would be leaving soon, again.

“It frightens me, James, the sea.”

“How so?”

“The endlessness of it. And the waves, they are so threatening.”

He drew her closer to him. “You need not be frightened, you need not go upon it.”

She raised her face to his. “Yes, but you … go upon it. And I worry that when next you do…”

They walked on, stepping around a wrack of seaweed, just above the high tide line. The sea was murky green, the wind bitter. Within the crook of his arm, James felt her shivering. The ocean pathway was the one he had chosen, there could be no taking a different course now.

Instinctively, he looked up and sniffed the wind. Nor-nor-east, ten knots. Even here in Yorkshire, surrounded by his family, his thoughts kept returning to the Deptford shipyard. How were the refits for the next voyage progressing? Who would be the expedition’s astronomer?

Breaking the silence, he said, “We must return to London, Beth. I have urgent work to attend to there.”

She looked up at him imploringly, one hand across her bulging midriff.

“I do not want you to go, James. Stay, please stay.”

The sea was coming between them, again.

Graeme Lay was born in Foxton, grew up in coastal Taranaki and is a graduate of Victoria University of Wellington. He began writing in the late 1970s and since then has published or edited forty works of fiction and non-fiction. These include collections of short stories, novels for adults and young adults and books of travel writing. The above story is an extract from the sequel to his novel The Secret Life of James Cook, to be published in May 2013 by Fourth Estate.

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W.F. Lantry, Somnambulist

With all the constant change, hillsides transforming themselves, August fires burning down from the mountains, covering the city with smoke and ash, it’s easy to get restless, even on a calm night. In those times, it’s best to go out on the balcony and look up the coast. In the clear air, you can see why someone described the shoreline as a succession of dolphins plunging into the sea.

And between those plunging ridges, valleys that once held lagoons, some of them with romantic names, like Batiquitos, others whose names translate to foetid waters. You won’t find those on the map anymore. But you will find the names of the towns that have replaced them: Encinitas, Del Mar, Solana. Beautiful names for places now planted with every exotic species: giant bird of paradise that can grow up to the second storey, the wild mustard sown two hundred years ago by friars as they made their way north.

If you look out at dawn, when Orion has already set, after its night of being “strung across the throat of the valley like a lamp-lighted bridge,” you’ll believe you live in a different world, one which is both eternal and has never existed. A look across the boundless western sea will persuade you: it is always changing, and always the same. Behind you the desert, before you the high tide or the tidepools with their exotic life, and you, caught between them, waiting, for dawn, or for something, or someone else.

W.F. Lantry received his Maîtrise from L’Université de Nice and PhD in Creative Writing from University of Houston. His poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree 2012) and The Language of Birds (Finishing Line 2011). Recent honours include: National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry and Potomac Review Prize. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Möbius and Aesthetica. He currently works in Washington, DC. and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.

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Vivienne Merrill, Zero Hour

They checked the gauge alongside the river each half-hour. The man from Civil Defence had called in warning them “zero hour” was around midnight. His advice, Leave now. Leif shook his head and the man’s tone changed. He ordered them to stay alert – at least awake. Asta watched the rain slash Leif’s body as he battled away. She breathed in the damp air, recognising the smell of earth, of decay.

Asta left the curtains wide open to the darkness. The percussion sound of water, colliding with rocks, permeated the house. She remembered summer’s languid concerto: dragonflies like diligent violinists, scents warming them at night. Autumn brought sudden rain, too hard for the ground and unceasing for days. They filled bags with sand and stacked them around the house. For this time, she thought, they’d seemed almost happy again.

Outside, the wind snarled: a wild dog at their door. Asta heard, again, Leif’s words: She meant nothing. It meant nothing. Since then they’d swung away, in ever increasing circles, needing nothing from each other save silence. She watched the way the river rose and fell, surged towards the sea, and then returned. She understood that ambivalence and longing for things that could never be.

They listened for the sound they dreaded hearing. Trust the river’s banks, the sandbags, me, he said.

Asta wondered if such a trust could hold, in the face of a power they had yet to experience, another betrayal that could change everything they believed forever.

Vivienne Merrill lives on the Kapiti Coast where it is all too easy to beachwalk and dream her days away. Sometimes, when she’s lucky, some of these dreams become stories and poems. Writing as Vivienne Joseph, she has won several awards for her work, particularly for her children’s books.

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Nod Ghosh, Wet

Henny loves Gray. They’re sitting on a park bench by the Heathcote, their toes rolling naked in the grass like huhu grubs ready to burst. Gray lights up a fag, and the river obliges them with a retaliation of coloured swirls. Henny only took the mushrooms to find a way into Gray’s anatomy. He wants him in that way. Then there’s the glue, and a little baggy.

Jason drives past, his windows wound down, a shaft of bass resonates out of the battered maroon Legacy. He’s shouting, “D’wanna come to Miff’s bach?”

Henny feels like his toes are splitting as they scratch the earth. His teeth feel like they are still in his head, but only just. He looks up at a cliff face on the other side of the road. There are tree stumps near the top, They’re spinning.

Miff’s bach is always cold. Always has howling gales ripping through the corrugated walls and cracks like spider webs in the windows. You feel the cold a lot more when it gets dark. Stars lie sprinkled in the corner of the sky, like crazy dots of festival light. Henny reaches over and touches Gray’s thigh, who pushes him off, spits out, “Gay bastard”, then he’s gone.

That’s when the sea rushes in. It’s higher than his head, fingers of fright force their way down his throat. One minute he’s fighting the terror, the next, Henny’s wondering if he ever left the river at all, and then…

Nod Ghosh lives in Christchurch, New Zealand, and has completed year one of the Hagley Writers’ Institute creative writing course. Nod’s work has been accepted in Catalyst, Penduline, Christchurch Press, Takahē and Express. Nod works as a medical laboratory scientist.

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Clare Kirwan, Sky / Sea

It used to be that the sky was the sea and vice versa.

Shoals of fish flew in high currents watching the birds ripple, distorted, beneath them. Some parts of the sea sky were so deep you couldn’t see the top of it or imagine what creatures lurked in its darkest heights. The moon was washed fresh every night by the tide.

Beneath it, the sky churned, depositing feathers and other detritus of the air in its wake: tufts of clouds and drifts of light fog on the barren land.

But man hungered for fish swimming out of reach and his nets weren’t long enough to catch them. He longed to dip his toe in the sea that stretched high above him. It was so dry on earth, with the blank sky under his feet, stretching as far as he could see, turbulent air and birds nipping his ankles.

Man called to the gods to bring the sea to earth and it began to rain. It was the time of a great flood: 40 days of salt rain with seaweed, minnows, and sharks splashing and thudding to the ground, filling the thirsty valleys with heaving, shuddering waves.

The moon grew grubby-faced and dry. That’s why the sea still tries to stretch up and wash its face when the tide is hig – but can never quite reach.

And man tires of fish – which is harder to catch than he’d imagined. But most of all, he misses walking among the clouds.

Clare Kirwan is from Wirral, England. Her stories have been published in The Binnacle, Dark Tales, Contrary, Flax, Short, Fast and Deadly and Little Fiction’s Listerature. By day she is a library assistant – like Batgirl. More at www.clarekirwan.co.uk.

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Adrian Hall, Calls from the Sea

Rubbery little things, aren’t they? She skewers another one with a cocktail stick. They’re like embryos: ugly little beginnings. Perched on craggy rocks, Sharon looks out at the vast expanse of Morecambe Bay. In the distance the Lake District hills embrace the sands and sea, corralling them back home, keeping them safe. She looks through her binoculars. I can’t see you: I can see the boat, but I can’t see you.

Out at sea, a few hundred yards at most, a rowing boat rocking, waves lapping against the wood: gentle salty slapping. The hull peeling, keeling and yawing, rising and falling. Fat wet kisses on pale blue paint. Within, almost succumbing to the watery lullaby, is Dylan. His pocked and sandblasted face is turned towards the cobalt sky, his coarse knotted hair silvering in the sun, flashes of mackerel in his rough sandy beard. Floating on the Irish Sea, Dylan has surrendered to the equations of tide and moon, anchored only by this telephone call. He listens, too, to the call of the sea, calls from the fathoms, from long-lost souls: in urgent Eastern tongues they whisper. Geese fly overhead. I’m lying down, that’s why you can’t see me.

Sharon looks up at the geese, their wings beating black scribbles into the sky. The tide ebbs and flows beneath her feet: each gentle crash against the rocks lower than the last. She chews on another cockle and swallows the sourness away.

Adrian Hall was born in Hull in 1969. After studying Philosophy at Lancaster, he went into teaching and has been teaching in the north west of England for over 20 years. In what little spare time he has, he writes short stories and flash fiction. He lives in Lancashire with his wife, three children and some chickens.

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Maris O’Rourke, Time and Tides

The day my waters broke, the rains came. Droplets were thrown dust high creating a blood-red mist in the hot air. Empty riverbeds and reservoirs with cracks deep enough to walk in began to fill. Nine long months of desiccating heat. My body had grown while the land died, streams stagnated, and young ibis died in the Mooroopna swamp.

Heavy, expectant clouds rolled in each afternoon over the parched landscape. We lifted our faces – only to watch them disperse. A chimera. A chance spark, a conflagration, and fifty-three houses were lost in the Dandenong bushfires. My distended belly rippled like the sea, hot as urine, sucking sand from my swollen ankles as I sought relief at the beach. The drought – death. My kicking baby – life.

Finally storms rolled in across Australia and New Zealand. Sank the Wahine in Wellington harbour. Fifty-three people died. The same weekend on Easter Sunday (and on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic) the Salvation Army band stood in the downpour and played “Abide With Me” outside my window at Warrnambool Hospital as I gave birth.

Maris O’Rourke has been published in a range of poetry journals in New Zealand and overseas (including being Guest Poet in Poetry NZ #44); placed in a number of competitions, including the South Island Writers’ Association National Competition, the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and the Robert Burns Poetry Competition; and performed in a variety of venues including Lounge and The Fringe Festival. Her first children’s book Lillibutt’s Big Adventure was published by Duck Creek Press in 2012 and her first poetry collection Singing With Both Throats by David Ling Publishing in 2013.

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Nuala Ní Chonchúir, Tell Tale Tit

My bully has a French name. Louise D’Arcy. In my head – not to her face – I call her Loo Arsy. After she batters me, I go to the strand to examine the bruises tattooing my arms. I walk the sand to get my puff back and settle my heart. I don’t go home – Gran doesn’t like tattlers.

I can smell the sea even when the tide is out. It smells ancient and blue; it helps. When Loo Arsy thumps my arms and reefs out my hair, I don’t fight her. I can’t scream because my throat goes flat; not even a squeak escapes. The one time I told Gran she sang, “Tell tale tit, your bum shall be split, and all the kids on Shore Road will have a little bit.”

The sea leaves me presents: red seaglass and pottery chips that look like Gran’s good China. The clean seaweed and fish stink fills my nose and my belly. It softens me out when Loo Arsy has got to me. After her I am a person made of planks – stiff and unbendable.

I walk to the shoreline and watch a gull dip above the rushing water. The waves are in a hurry to get home, not like me. I let them chase me up towards the sea wall. I look back at the horizon; it is a grey smudge I can trace with one finger. I breathe on the seawater and it is lonely. Lovely, but really very lonely.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir, interviewed in the last international issue of Flash Frontier, is a short story writer, novelist and poet, born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1970 and living in Galway. Her fourth short story collection, Mother America, was published by New Island in June 2012. For more, go here.

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Kevlin Henney, Wrecked

He was an unusual find, there at sunrise by the high-water mark, embedded in a four-poster wreck, tucked cosily into a seaweed-brocade net, a drinking-horn shell to his ear like a pillow, like a hearing aid, like a seafood cornucopia that had missed his mouth, a mouth half open beneath half-closed eyes.

Alive or dead? Dead or alive? She was answered by a cough, a snort and a crescendo of snores, waves of sleep breaking into foam, rolling in from a deeper dreamy sea. The seventh wave washed him onto the waking shore, his eyes half opened.

“Flotsam or jetsam?” she asked, head cocked to match his sleepy skew.

“Sorry?”

“Which are you?”

“I… I don’t know. I don’t think I’m either. I mean,” he said, removing the shell from the side of his head, casting it into his cradle, “This is the wreck, not me.”

“So why are you here?”

“I… I don’t know. I remember drinking… drinking a lot.” His hand reached up to the side of his head as if to restore the shell, as if its removal had undammed a dam, unplugged a plug, uncovered a hangover.

She passed him a bubble pack of tablets, part of some lost shipment spilt across the beach just yesterday, studying him as he popped two and swallowed.

“It’s OK, you can keep them,” she said when he offered back the remaining unburst bubbles, “Flotsam.” She continued along the shore leaving him in her wake. She would not claim him.

Kevlin Henney writes shorts and flashes and drabbles of fiction. His work has appeared online and on tree, in Litro, New Scientist, Every Day Fiction, Fiction365, Word Gumbo and others. His flash fiction has also appeared in the Jawbreakers and Kissing Frankenstein & Other Stories anthologies. He can be found on Twitter, at his blog and, occasionally, at home in Bristol, UK.

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Makyla Curtis, Two Children

On the incoming dusk, we sneak out the back door of the rented bach.

At low tide, the wide belly of the shore, ridged and dimpled by the sea and our own imprints – heel and toe, heel toe – with all of its secrets laid bare in the rock pools and the fops of hair-like seaweed. But not tonight, the sea has moved all the way up.

We rest there, where the sand is softest, where it sieves and tumbles easily from our fingers. The top layer has a chill but, digging in our feet, we quickly find the warmth the sun left there.

There is such a long pause before we hear our mother, crashing about in the closing darkness. Her voice carries, strange and high pitched.

Pretending, imagining she is someone, something else altogether, we set off through the pohuehue and the scraggy shoreside bush, giggling and terrified in the elongated black shapes of the twilight.

We run right into her.

Her face is all shadows.

The holiday is over, and the car is all packed up.

Our car turns its metallic hide on the sea and we watch out the back window at the beach. The tide way up high: the hushed sea strokes and caresses the shore, as far up as it can reach. The sun is sunken: long, red-golden rays outstretched reaching back to the beach, holding on as long as it can.

Makyla Curtis is an Auckland-based poet and artist. She is one of the editors of Potroast literary ‘zine. Makyla works primarily on collaboration works such as Abstract Compositions and was one of the creators of the Metonymy Project in 2008.

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Anonymous_Author©, Recrudescence

Could she? This time? Imogen wonders on her return. She’s not sure. About anything anymore. She slips silently beneath the sea’s surface. It’s like passing through reflective glass, all that remains a magnificent play of shadow and light.

She thinks, Suicide is not meant to be beautiful. The ugliness of it ought to leave scars making it impossible for others to choose. A lunar eye, open and bright, dims – ashamed of its power to shift oceans which here smother the fearful and hesitant. Probably no one will miss me, she thinks, submerged and uncertain. Wind whips the calmness into anxious spray, diamond sea now dirty foam. A murky scum surges ahead of waves, strands
beyond the reach of the tide, stains cold and ugly on the black sand shore.

All at sea, immersed, Imogen inhales, chokes, drowns in self-doubt: It takes a courage I lack to see it through. She shatters the underside of her liquid-lidded mirror, bursts through its surface and gasps for air. The wet taste of failure lingers, before she breathes faint relief. The sky stares as she drifts to the beach on her back. Cast on land’s edge, water grasps at her toes, rushes and recedes. Woe betide, Woe betide, it whispers in a fizz of disappointment. Not tonight, Imogen relents. She’ll return home.

She supposes her mother might be happy to see her. She’s just not sure.

Anonymous_Author© is a literary voice who resides near Puhoi. He is an existentialist suffering from an identity crisis and exists only through the benevolence of language. René Descartes categorically stated: “I think therefore I am.” Anonymous_Author© ambiguously offers: “You think you exist.” As well as poetry, flash fiction and short stories, Anonymous_Author© is currently working on his unauthorised autobiography, The Ghostwriter in the Machine. Follow his progress on Twitter (@anonauth).

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Christopher Allen, Powerless

Kai toes a white sock through the dust smothering the coffee table. Like frost, he thinks, like Marcus lately. He should never have invested in mahogany or in his expectation that Marcus would stay. Like a dark, hardwood rainbow, he says, as a little man on TV, near naked and wrinkly, heaves arms against a raging sea. Orchestrating, Kai thinks, or levitating? Levitating the percussion section? God? Not God? But an actor who plays God on TV?

The old man – he must be Japanese, Kai thinks – is performing some ritual, probably for inner peace, for finding his center or his chi, though Kai doesn’t know what chi is. He talks to the waves. The subtitles – English over Japanese – are a poem, something minimal and stark about how nothing lasts but everything washes back, which doesn’t make much sense to Kai. He sneezes. Drops of mucus settle on the table with the dust. Marcus says Gesundheit from the kitchen. His voice sounds hollow, like it won’t be here tomorrow.

Kai climbs onto the coffee table. There’s music now, something Asian, pentatonic but not like that song kids clomp out with their fists. Kai’s white socks glide through the dust. Making and ruining rainbows. Conductors, he says: he and the old man, waving their arms wildly at the television sea. Though he knows he’s powerless to stop Marcus falling out of love with him, he dances until his sock-soles are dark and the old man stands motionless. Waist-high in the water, smiling.

Christopher Allen, a native Tennessean, lives in Germany. He is the author of the absurdist satire Conversations with S. Teri O’Type and a recent winner in the AWP HEAT Flash Fiction contest. He blogs at www.imustbeoff.com.

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Melindy Wynne-Bourne, Postcard: Wish You Were Here

Lori read the words scrawled on the postcard, then turned it over and gazed at the sunny beachside landscape on the front. The brochures said walks on the beach should be romantic, but they didn’t mention the flood of a high tide. She carefully waded through the salty surge.

Lori pondered that phrase: “Should be.” Things never turn out like they should, she thought. Life should be calm, but it was as tempestuous as the tidal waves. John should be strolling with her tonight, but business won out over her, again. She should be missing him, but she wasn’t. She should be waiting for his phone calls, even though they always disappointed her. She remembered the last one.

“Hello?”

“Hey, babe!” John had sounded cheerful, as always.

“Hey,” she’d answered. “How’s everything at work?”

“It’s alright, Taking longer than I thought.”

“That figures.”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make it out there. Forgive me?”

“Yeah, whatever. Maybe next time.”

“I promise. Send me a postcard, OK?”

She frowned at the postcard for a minute, until another rushing wave startled her from her reverie.

“What’s the matter?” A pair of strong arms that should have been her husband’s – but weren’t – embraced her. “You scared?”

Funny how things didn’t turn out like they should. She tore the postcard in half and threw it in the water, smiling as the pieces drifted out to sea.

“No, but I think you should kiss me anyway!”

Melindy Wynn-Bourne is a freelance writer with an emphasis on flash fiction living in Mississippi. Her stories have been featured in such magazines as Gemini and the sixth annual ultra short edition of The Binnacle. When she is not writing, she enjoys reading and photography.

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Mary Carroll-Hackett, Aegean Blues

Marlene sold more Passion Party paraphernalia than anyone in the whole, hot-pink, hungry-hungry-housewife history of the company, trolling Richmond suburbs in her VW with its sticker reading Orgasm! Ask Me How!

Now, she needed a drink.

She was supposed to be on a plane to Crete. She had pinned travel posters to her teenage walls long ago. It was meant to be – blue water, white sand, mysterious men – just waiting. Twenty years later, she had the way.

Contest posters up for months – same blue water, white sand – Marlene had worked up that sales board until she got to the top, and stayed there. Angeline, Passion Party’s founder, all silver fox and innuendo, was supposed to have arrived to announce the winner. No one had out-sold Marlene. Not even close.

Marlene had waited for Angeline to sweep in with that first-class ticket and bikini with the Passion Party hearts sewn on bra cups and fanny. Marlene waited. And waited. Finally, Lois, the district manager, came over, eyes down, saying, well, Angeline wasn’t coming. In fact, Angeline had run off, it seemed, with Brandon – they called him Legendary Brandon – the only male sales rep Angeline had ever hired.

Lois smiled, pink shadow creased in her crepey lids.“Well, she followed her passion, right?”

Marlene shut the door behind her.

Now, Marlene found a bottle of Blue Curaçao in the kitchen, and poured it into a glass, kept pouring, added juice and stirred, until it swirled, blue as the water kissing the white sandy coast of Crete.

Mary Carroll-Hackett’s work has appeared in numerous journals including Clackamas Literary Review, Pedestal Magazine, Superstition Review, Drunken Boat, The Prose-Poem Project and others. Her book, The Real Politics of Lipstick, won the 2010 Slipstream competition; another chapbook, Animal Soul, is forthcoming from Kattywompus Press. She edits The Dos Passos Review and The Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry. Most recently, she co-founded SPACES, an innovative online magazine of art and literature.

~ ~ ~

Rachel J. Fenton, Waiting For High Tide

For all it is black, it gives back no heat. Emma holds her palm flat as a limpet for over a minute all the same, until she isn’t sure if what she’s feeling is her hand or the coal. Until her fingers are like all the other fossils protruding like nosey neighbours from the quarried valley slab.

Strange to think how many fish were fractured when they mined this seam; that a pit was here and men working deep underground; that all this was once sea. At high tide, this town did not exist.

Now, only men remain, and wildflowers smattering the scrub with colour. Ox-eye daisies, borage, cowslip, toadflax, poppy, mouse’s ear, black medic, speedwell, evening primrose, pimpernel, all strangled with blue: the tendrils of vetch clinging on every stem.

Emma presses her cheek to the coal face, listens, waits.

Rachel J Fenton was born in a South Yorkshire mining town in 1976 and currently lives in Auckland. Short-listed for the Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize, she won AUT’s Creative Writing Prize. She is currently working on a novel.

~ ~ ~

Teoti Jardine, Oranges

The oranges kept rolling out, one by one by one, until they covered the whole floor.

It all began when I asked at the dairy where the storage facility was, and they directed me to this warehouse near the beach.

I knocked on the door and a hoarse voice called out, “Come in ya landlubber”.

Sitting on a rocking chair was a very old man with a bright orange scarf tied around his head and dressed in what looked like a pirate’s outfit, a hook for a left hand, an eye patch over his left eye, his right eye glaring at me.

“Ya want a locker? Well, got one over there,” and he pointed with his hook to a huge chest covered with barnacles. “Ya lucky, came up the beach on the spring tide this morning, once ya clean it out ya’ll have more room than you could possibly use.”

I opened the chest and that’s when the oranges came rolling out, thousands of them.

Amazed, I turned to the old man who was smoking a joint, he winked at me and said, “I’m getting high and sailing on the next tide.”

He was never seen again.

With the endless supply of oranges, I’ve turned the warehouse into a marmalade factory, selling Spring Tide Marmalade to the Dairy owner, and whenever I make a delivery he gives me a wink, and I’m reminded of someone that I knew, long long ago.

Teoti Jardine is of Māori, Irish and Scottish descent with Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe and Kāi Tahu tribal affiliations. He spent twenty years overseas living in Canada, Italy and the UK where he worked as a nurse, a potter and a deckhand. Since his retirement two years ago he has been writing full-time. He’s had poems published in Te Pānui Rūnaka, Christchurch Press and London Grip, and hopes to have a collection of poetry published later this year. He lives with his dog Amie at his friend Bert McConnell’s place near Oxford in North Canterbury and is a member of the Canterbury Poets Collective committee.

~ ~ ~

Sian Williams, Hokianga Ghosts

Last night he saw a brigantine crossing the bar, though he knows none have sailed this way for sixty years. He watched her cleaving the surf and heavy weather. This morning, he sees she’s anchored in the roads, riding the slack water, swinging with the rising tide. He opens the window for his old eyes to see her better and breathes in the cold dawn. A snatch of harmonica and distant hammering comes up, like a memory, on the breeze. She’s a blackened, barnacled West Coast workhorse but grimly beautiful nonetheless and he’ll be proud to step aboard.

His daughter and her man are still sleeping, so he closes the back door quietly. No need to make a fuss, to say goodbye. She’s a dear girl but he can’t be doing with tears and carrying-on.

He doesn’t look back although he thinks, now and then, he hears the slow drum of a marching band and the shuffling feet of a procession behind him.

It’s a long walk down the hill, past the school, the pub, the marae. His places, his times. As he walks he feels his years unrolling like a chart smoothed flat on a wheelhouse table. The whole dominion of his life can be seen now, complete – its headlands, inlets, anchorages and reefs – all surrounded by the circling seas.

The wind is raising white caps down the harbour now. A lapstrake tender waits by the old wharf. The long-drowned bosun takes his arm, “We sail with the tide.”

Sian Williams is editor at Flash Frontier. This story was inspired by a winter visit to the Omapere Hotel.

~ ~ ~

Michelle Elvy, At Te Haumi

The windsurfer balances athletically and leans with the wind, propelled along the water’s surface at dizzying speeds. Hemi watches while playing lazily at the high tide line. Passing by is the typical Friday morning parade: a small sailing dinghy, several yachts and fishing boats heading someplace better for the weekend, the R. Tucker Thompson making its daily trek to Motuarohia with its guests. Up the beach, Hemi’s nana and aunties talk noisily under the shade of the pōhutukawa.

The windsurfer glides close to shore. The women’s laughter drifts towards him then whips away on the fickle breeze. He sees the small child, off on his own and poking the sand with a stick. Poor bored boy. He slows to a graceful stop in the shallows, motions Come, but the boy backs away quickly. The man mounts his board again, steadies himself and catches the breeze. As he sails away, he waves back at the boy, and whoops: “You don’t know what you’re missin’, kid!”

Much later, the women are scattered along the receding tideline, fingers and toes digging in the wet dark sand. Hemi sees the windsurfer return, even faster in the afternoon breeze. He waves, then drops a few more pipis from his shirt into Nana’s kete. Nana smiles, knowing he’ll leave with the outgoing tide some day. But not today. Today, her boy grins back then turns to the windsurfer – now a small speck speeding away forever – and hollers: “You don’t know what you’re missin’, mister!”

Michelle Elvy is founding editor at Flash Frontier. She has driven past Te Haumi beach many times, but has yet to stop and collect pipis at low tide.

~ ~ ~

Please also see this month’s feature page with Flash Frontier contributors Rachel J. Fenton, Tim Heath, Leah McMenamin, Elizabeth Farris and Mike Crowl.

~ ~ ~

Coming in June: stories about new shoes.

FLASH FEATURES

Michelle Elvy — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 01:18:37 +0000

April 2013

This month, we highlight several stories from previous issues that captured our attention – for their experimental form, content and character, or approach to the theme. We’ve asked each writer to provide a brief commentary on the story we selected for a second (or third or fourth) reading. Below, we bring you five selected stories which you may recall from our earlier pages and their accompanying author notes – some commentaries in exactly 250 words. Enjoy!

Rachel J Fenton, Young Girl with a Sheaf (Dec 2012/ Jan 2013, THE GIFT)

Avignon glows golden as an August field of ripe corn. A walled town: there is a sense of what it feels to be a mouse lost in sheaves, drowning in stalks. Will grips my hand and we go on.

I expected screams, terror-curdled wails, not this:

our heels echoing our hearts the only sounds as we make our way along the gravel path. The light, pied, in need of an artist to paint it, and there she sits, the so-called nightmare, just in view between the laddered shade of a sentry of trees, and the doorway of the madhouse.

Will adjusts the camera. I walk the last few yards alone, see in Camille’s hands stalks of corn; in her eyes, so blue, even now, it is eighteen ninety, I am not sixty-eight but twenty-nine, looking at the exhibition catalogue, yearning to meet the maker who would become my dearest friend. She did not disappoint.

There was a rumour she should not be in Montdevergues, as there was a rumour the rumour she started (Rodin stole her ideas) had her committed. Every rumour holds at least one ear of truth.

My forehead to felt: her hat.

“They told me you were mad.” A tear’s lost in the creases of my face.

“You pester me.” She has woven the corn into a sunwheel.

“Avenie ventosa, sine vento venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa. Forgive me.”

She gives me the sun. The camera clicks.

Rachel J Fenton

Fenton’s commentary: Most people have heard of Rodin. I was twenty, on my first (only) trip to Paris with a lover, when I discovered Camille Claudel.

I became obsessed with her, her work, her life, her love affair with the man who signed his name to her sculptures – such is the price for an apprenticeship with Rodin – and her ending.

Her life presented in two parts: the privilege, a father who indulged his daughter’s interest (unusual for the period), recognition by Rodin, the apprenticeship, passion, and her close friendship with the English sculptor Jessie Lipscomb. Then there was her “madness”. Enough said.

I came to the conclusion her insanity was that she had accused Rodin of stealing her ideas and had worked intensively and without care for herself since their relationship had ended. She became an embarrassment to her brother and he had her committed.

“Young Girl with a Sheaf” describes an actual photograph taken at the asylum, the imagined moments preceding it. The blank space represents the remembered life; that lived outside the perimeters of the photograph, the truth.

I thought what better way to understanding than to inhabit the friendship of women; friendship that, despite the distance of years, lifestyle and countries, in the end proved stronger than the love that allegedly drove Claudel mad.

The St. Bridget’s Cross sun/corn wheel is symbolic. The Italian proverb: artistic licence.

Curiously, Rodin’s sculpture “Galatea” is almost identical to Claudel’s “Young Girl with a Sheaf”, yet Claudel’s piece was exhibited two years earlier; madness.

~

Tim Heath, Hydrangeas (June 2012/ HOLD MY HAND)

“You’re silly,” she says, watching me plant the hydrangea cuttings.

“Those sticks won’t grow and they’re old-fashioned.”

“Fashionable again,” I reply. “Cheap too – just nicked some from your mum.”

I pat down the cuttings and look up. The sun silhouettes her body. Desire grabs at me. Sun, soil, my wife and I am lost.

“Come here, you bossy woman!”

“No…you’re grubby…and the neighbours?”

But she comes to me and the sun is eclipsed by her hair. Today, in our garden I learn again how strong she is.

“You’re a silly, grubby, wonderful man,” she breathes and breathes.

The hydrangeas grow. I become a gardener.

“Why are you hacking at those poor hydrangeas?”

She is sitting in the garden chair with our child. Her dress is damp from feeding.

“Make ‘em grow better…that’s what it said in the paper.”

“Silly man!”

I take her hand. Today, I learn that babies, too, can smile.

“The children want a trampoline,” she says. “If you trim those old hydrangeas, one could go there. “

“Yes…good idea.”

She is surprised I don’t protest. She doesn’t know I love working with the smooth, round stems, the smell evoking memories.

I drag the trampoline away and tip it over. It seems so much heavier.

“It was always a clumsy sort of a thing,” I tell her.

“Yes, you dear, clever man, yes.”

Today, she is able to sit in the chair.

I break some dry stems off a dead hydrangea and reach for her hand.

Tim Heath

Heath’s commentary: This is story that I have played around with for some time – it has been a longer story and a poem but seems to have found comfort in becoming a 250-word flash fiction piece. In its various forms I was always trying to depict, and celebrate, both long lasting love and the to and fro not quite bickering that gives a bit of sparkle to everyday interactions. And, of course, it was so important to do this without using those words, but to endeavour to show the passage of time, and the growth of the relationship, largely by reference to the garden, the hydrangeas and the trampoline. It seemed best to use dialogue, as much as possible, to convey changes – it was my hope that the wife’s voice would show a steady change from banter (the loving desire to improve one’s partner?) to an easier voicing of love, the change from calling him a ‘silly man’ to a ‘dear and clever man’.

I see writing a story like this a bit like making a good chicken stock: you can have all the ingredients but the quality of the stock lies in how you blend them and your willingness to keep reducing the brew until the flavour and strength are just right.

~

Leah McMenamin, Wanderings (June 2012, THE ROAD)

We walked it at twilight. That way the day’s heat spun up our legs from the concrete, like a tabby cat threading between our ankles.

When there were no cars we held hands and walked on either side of the median lines. At nights the cats eyes blinked at us, wardens of the dark, and we played hopscotch in the stretches between them, hopping on one leg and then the other.

He liked the way the road prostrated itself before us. “It is both a god and a servant,” he said to me. We watched the road works we passed. The workers laid down the tarmac inch by inch, smoothing and stretching and drying.

We walked past them and it was as if they had never been, as if the road was an organic occurrence. Towns crowded us, but when we walked on those great open roads all was possible.

When our shoes wore down we simply left them in the toetoe that crowded the road edges. Our feet got scratched by stones and cut by broken glass. Once we slept beneath rubbish bags in the rain, and saw a lost cow lumber in front of us. It seemed disgruntled, confused by the intrusion of asphalt where there should be grass.

We dreamed of the road at night, of its endlessness, and felt sad for our own imagined immortality.

Leah McMenamin

McMenamin’s commentary: The theme for the June issue was the road, and I wanted to capture the power of physical movement, the action of putting one foot in front of the other and how that everyday occurrence is actually rather miraculous.

I had been thinking for some time about a holiday I had taken with my friend. One day we left our campground intending to walk to the corner dairy, and instead kept walking up the road for hours.

We passed through a couple of small townships and left them behind, and in this story I wanted to communicate a small part of that memory – the action of walking, the unbroken stretch of road in front of us, and the changing landscape that kept us company that day.

~

Elizabeth Farris, Afternoon Tea (April 2012/ AFTER THE PARTY)

Happy Hoppy Bunny has fallen from his seat and lies sprawled across the floorboards. A purple bow round his neck -– formal attire for the occasion -– has come untied. Rag doll Charlotte Anne is slumped over, face down on the table. Her yellow string mop hair is stained from the tea which had spilt from her teacup. Mike the orange monkey barely hangs on. He dangles -– mid-air -– his curly wire-filled tail loops through a slit in the back of his pink plastic chair. One more tremor and he’ll join his rabbit friend on the floor.

The three-year-old hostess had rushed outside without an apology, overturning her little stool. Her mum’s porcelain teapot, decorated with perpetually-cheery yellow daffodils, remains on the floor, smashed into pieces that will never be glued back together.

Without a sound, the man makes a notation on his clipboard and leaves the house, carefully locking the door behind him, even though the doorframe is fractured and an adjoining window is shattered. He affixes a red sticker onto the outside.

In the front yard, the Student Volunteer Army battles an invisible enemy that can never be defeated. Once again, their shovels scrape, removing the inert grey silt which has buried the lawn. They fill wheelbarrows full of lifeless liquefaction, and cart it away.

A random cluster of daffodils may emerge from the garden next spring.

Farris’s commentary: I enjoy flash fiction that is a photograph capturing a scene suspended in time. Something happened before this moment and objects give evidence of the backstory; it is the job of the reader to piece everything together.

The theme for April after the party suggested inclusion of the motion after the click of the camera’s shutter.

The Christchurch earthquakes changed so many lives and triggered compassionate action all over New Zealand. And it was the Student Volunteer Army that epitomized the Kiwi way – taking care of others.

~

Mike Crowl, Scropian (September 2012/ TURN THE PAGE)

“The scorpion is predatory… eight legs… pair of grasping claws… .” Turn the page. My eyes are only skimming the text. This assignment isn’t going to be easy. With next to nothing going on in my head, I’m practically braindead. A couple of heads in the library turn briefly, because I said braindead out loud. Apparently. I hope their assignment subjects are even more difficult than writing about a scorpion. I keep typing it on my tablet as scropian. Scropian is legit, so my brain claims (though not Spellchecker). Brain’s on the verge of abandoning me for a quick kip. Maybe I’ll copy something off the Net, use an article out of Wikipedia, change a word here or there, hope Ms I-know-everything-about-flora-and-fauna won’t notice. If she asks me outright if it’s all my own work, I won’t lie. I’ll say: everything’s on the Net these days, so what’s the point of reinventing the wheel? I like that, reinventing the wheel. See? There’s nothing original around, otherwise no one would have come up with that cliché. Pity I couldn’t write a story, instead of an essay. A story about reinventing the wheel would be cool. There’s this gigantic explosion – destroys every wheel on the planet. The hero – he’s a junior scientist – he tries to reinvent the wheel and discovers an even better way to get around.

Yeah, like what?

My brain doesn’t like having its nap interrupted. Turn the page: – “…scropian venom…has been known to kill…a hamun bieng… .”

Mike Crowl

Crowl’s commentary: I’m an intutive writer, I guess: I start with a seed and things grow of their own accord. I don’t usually have an idea where I’m going when I begin. (This happens when I’m writing music too.) The seed for the Flash Frontier pieces is usually the theme itself. Sometimes a play on words occurs to me, or else I just start writing with the theme in mind and see what happens. It’s a bit like a door opening inside the brain. Sometimes the door has to be wedged open with my foot while I type, the story arriving bit by bit. It’s not necessarily fully-formed, but takes shape as the bits appear.

The word count in flash fiction provides a nice constraint. There isn’t room to start developing characters or ideas; everything has to be pared down to the bone, and words that seem important initially get chopped away. This disciplined form suits me: I can leave things unsaid, letting readers fill in the details for themselves. I can even pretend I’ve left things unsaid, and wonder what’s missing myself.

In the case of this story I have a notion that it started because I mistyped the word “scorpion”. However, I might have imagined that idea since. I’ve found it interesting that other people have actually seen more in the piece than I did…!

Please see the April 2013 international issue — high tide – here.

February 2013: TRAVEL

Michelle Elvy — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 23:12:45 +0000

Graham Hughes, Buster Brown Meets the Yard

Graham Hughes on ‘Buster Brown Meets the Yard’: “Taken using an Anso Buster Brown 2a Brownie 1913-25. Paper negative on expired paper, 5-second exposure, developed in expired Agfa Neutol. Scanned and inverted, contrast slightly tweaked. Otherwise a pretty straight shot. I love this camera.” More here.

~ ~ ~

Tim Jones, Carousel

The man in the safety vest pushes the button and we begin our journey. Behind me is a suitcase, its sharp corners digging into my back. In front is a sagging and much-sellotaped cardboard box. Black plastic flaps slap me in the face, then we enter the world of light.

There are faces all around, anxious, impatient, wanting to get their belongings and get the hell out of there. Who wants to hang around a moment longer than they have to?

All around me, faces light up in recognition, hands reach down. I continue unclaimed, around one curve, around another, out into the echoing cold of the loading facility, where more luggage is added to the belt before the plastic flaps can assault me again.

A face looms over me, a voice sounds. “Is this yours?” it asks.

“No,” comes the reply. “That’s nothing like mine. Mine’s got a yellow top.”

“Sorry,” says the first voice, and the face turns away.

“There he is!” A shout, but it is not for me. The carousel goes round. There is less and less luggage. There are fewer and fewer people waiting. In the end, I am quite alone.

The belt stops. I climb off. I have a few coins in my pocket, enough to feed a vending machine. I eat, drink, and find a bench to doze on. When the belt restarts, I hurry back, eager to be claimed.

Tim Jones writes novels, short stories and poetry. He was awarded the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature in 2010. His story “The New Neighbours” appears in The Apex Book of World SF 2. His latest book is poetry collection Men Briefly Explained. You can find him on Twitter and Facebook too.

~ ~ ~

Vivienne Merrill, Just a Storm Away

We are almost at our journey’s end when he pulls the car over to the side of the road. “Need to check something. Sorry.” His words, his manner, verge on formality. To hide my reaction, I look out of the window and across the paddocks.

There’s an old house near the road, almost subsumed by trees and vines, its windows encrusted and opaque. It seems to cringe back in on itself. I can’t help wondering why I feel my eyes blur with tears. After all, we’ve passed many such unwanted houses and sheds on our way back. Maybe it’s the resolute stance, the way the walls refuse to crumble, just accept the intrusion. Although, here and there, holes are appearing and a few bricks are strewn, fallen from the chimney.

The fault fixed, we finish our journey in silence. Outside my home, he leaves the engine idling and taps his fingers against the steering wheel, looking straight ahead.

I understand that silence and have no wish to search for more words. Like the old house, I think, I am just a storm away from collapse. I hear the car drive away, recalling the huge bougainvillea blazing from the centre of all that fragility. Red, so red. Like a beating heart.

I turn the key.

~ ~ ~

Tina Cartwright, Chinchon

The Land of Fable, it was called. And for a reason. It cycled around his mind; in every direction he walked, he finished here again. Around the clock tower sending the pigeons up in a shower of grey feathers and sparkling glorioles, past the Cathedral de Nuestra Señora where the bell marked the hours as if they really existed and the spire in the tired wind groaned over the hot air. Past the Museum with the courtyard which opened into dark caves he went, and finally under the aqueduct’s ancient, gingerbread stone arches, stuck like Lego structures over the horizon. There he was again.

His eyes floated in waves of golden stone and airless blue sky. Here, the terraces surrounding the plaza stepped down, with their orange tiled roofs uneven and leaning; their whitewashed walls blazed in the sun and their ornate green and gold railings made them seem unreal – a perfect little maquette of an ancient Spanish plaza. One you could set in the palm of your hand. Donkeys dragged their feet around the centre-ring, slow with their burden of colourful children. In the afternoons the donkeys went home and the children too, after siesta the children rushed back with their soccer balls and their dreams. Everything was bathed in soft, golden dust. It sank into his mind too.

He took another swig of the local liquor, yellow stuff, stoppered with a cork. His thoughts bathed in waves of aniseed and old dust. He decided never to return home.

Tina Cartwright is a folk artist concerned with stories and beliefs that people carry in their blood, whether consciously or subconsciously. She has one foot in the south of New Zealand and another in Mexico. She currently lives in Mexico City and is working on poetry and short story collections.

~ ~ ~

Anonymous_Author©, The Tyranny of Distance

Strike-a-light! The big red car overtakes. Well over the limit. On that corner! They’ll kill themselves, or worse. Maureen frets, checks for more traffic. Her Corolla rattles along the uneven surface south of Taumaranui. She and David travelled on many roads like this, before he too became riddled with bumps and holes. He was here, then he was not.

A cattle truck looms and threatens in the mirror. Maureen tentatively eases off the pedal. The truck roars by, buffets her tiny car, further frays her nerves. She grips the steering wheel and mentally crosses herself.

David had driven everywhere; they’d seen most of New Zealand.

“Only State Highway 6 left,” he’d exaggerated. “But that can wait.”

She arrives at a country churchyard, exhausted. A placid river caresses its northern boundary. Maureen prises herself from the car. Insects and birds fade to silence in deference to her procession along grass avenues. The engine clicks rudely as it cools. In the distance she hears the wild shush of rubber on abrasive bitumen. Other people rushing off somewhere. A slow week has passed since she was last here. And a week before that. She’ll drive here next week too, despite her anxiety.

They’d been planning their first overseas trip.

“No driving,” he’d proudly announced. “Planes and buses. Chauffeured all the way.”

One day she might… but for now this is as far as she travels. Maureen stoops and pulls a weed from the soil in front of David’s headstone. Overseas can wait.

~ ~ ~

Karen Peterson Butterworth, Walkies

Today I took an idea for a walk. A yappy little resolve to help others more. Its eyes lit up, it slipped my leash and darted off.

This way, it barked, and led me into a foetid jungle. Don’t be nervous, it admonished – novelty is good for you and ruts are – I can’t express how bad.

I inhaled – and choked on sulphurous fumes thick with black particles. Tank turrets towered around me. In the undergrowth a girl in a grey hijab with a cut-off nose cowered behind a discarded fridge, while a posse of turbaned men searched, prodding plastic bags, bubble-wrap and rotting food with sharp knives. Skeletal hands grabbed at my handbag and clothing and tore them to shreds.

I turned to flee, but my resolve tugged me forward with surprising strength.

Exploring this place is the first step towards helping humanity, it declared. You could never do that from your double-glazed home in your leafy suburb.

But why me? I’ve spent a life-time’s energy surviving in this world. I’ve tithed my income to charities. I’ve earned some relaxation before I leave it.

I have to wake someone up and it might as well be you.You love your species, flaws and all. You’ve seventy-eight years’ experience.You have grandchildren. You qualify.

I could find no answer so I kept on following my idea while we searched for a way out. Common sense. Generosity. Wisdom. Integrity. If only we could find the signposts.

Karen Peterson Butterworth has published seven books. Her poetry and prose has appeared in journals and anthologies in seven countries. She won the 2001 BNZ/Katherine Mansfield Essay Prize with an essay about Otaki, where she lives with her husband Brian. Themes for her writing often come to her while gazing at sunlit leaves stirred by sea breezes.

~ ~ ~

Emily Seresin, Slipping

Maria left work early with pre-migraine lights playing behind her lids and now sat northbound on the train with thighs sticking to the edge of the vinyl where her skirt had ridden up. A woman across the aisle and facing the same way applied a blunt stub of kohl to already heavily demarcated eyes. Maria gave in to the compulsion to watch. The woman wore a sleeveless shiny leopard blouse and dark soft tonged curls fell over her shoulders. She held the compact mirror attentively. Backing her profile were large glass squares filled with passing buildings, so that it seemed the train might be stationary, and the world slipping by.

The train slowed and stopped. Commuters appeared, separated by insubstantial poles holding the platform’s awning – a businessman, a mother with a pram and teen boys in sets of three and five. The woman was patting her face now, gently but firmly with a flesh-coloured disc, like the skin itself would not adhere. The compact shut, making a muffled click, and when she cleared her throat the note was base.

Three boys entered with excessive long-limbed strides. The tallest flipped the seat to face the other two. Sitting forward, elbows on knees, he clipped the side of the blonde boy’s face and pointed to the woman using only his eyes. The friends leaned in for a punch line. Maria caught the woman’s eye reflecting low afternoon light, and flushed at her own complicity.

Emily Seresin is a costume designer and has clothed other people’s characters for nearly thirty years. Lately she likes to experiment with characters of her own. She particularly likes it when her characters stay on the page and don’t stomp around the wardrobe truck complaining about itchy socks. Emily grew up in Wellington and now lives in Sydney on the Bankstown line.

~ ~ ~

Tim Heath, Small Hole in Security, Narita Airport, Tokyo

When the trip was planned, I’d told myself the nine-hour wait in the transit lounge wouldn’t be a problem. In reality, time, like honey too long in the fridge, stops and threatens never to flow again.

I regret having packed away the anthology that had been such a pleasant companion on my travels – Hone Tuwhare’s Small Holes in the Silence. Poetry, so redolent of home, would be some solace.

Loud speakers muffle my name. A problem? An upgrade? A friend?

The girl behind the desk, fresh out of Standard Four, bows and smiles an airline smile. Her mouth seems too much like an unopened rosebud to allow speech, but she says, “We transfer bag from Amsterdam. Security worry bad thing inside so you come.”

I wait and feel bad thing inside. Security comes in World War Two uniform, baton under arm. No smile, suitcase in custody.

“You open!”

My heart? My mind? My story?

“This the one.”

He points to a rectangular glow on the copy of an X-ray, then taps his baton on the Tuwhare volume carefully wrapped in shining plastic to protect it from three weeks of unwashed clothes.

“Ah,” he says. “Only book. Book no danger.”

We smile and bow. He helps pack away the laundry.

We laugh and repeat, “Book no danger.”

No, no danger to those who think rain is just rain, and sun is just sun, and love is just love.

~ ~ ~

Celine Gibson, California Girl

Sally was right: Wicked Wigs are amazing. They’re from Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Cali for ni a. Their website’s heaven – glamour with a capital G.

I’ve never been to California, never been anywhere really… Auckland when I was a teenager. So you can imagine my excitement at our proposed trip to Melbourne this summer. Trouble is Aussie’s been having those heat waves and fires – not good. They say excessive temperature fluctuations could kill me, so I’m not taking any chances. My life – what’s left of it – is just too precious.

Nutritious food plus abstinence from fags and alcohol have been my mantra. My body was my temple, but now this forty-seven year old temple’s under attack, and I’m bloody cheesed off.

My cousin from Timaru died of cancer… but she treated her body like a nightclub. Her husband, Barry, posted me her wig. Kev dubbed it my “hideous helmet” and almost wet himself. He’s right though, New Zealand wigs are CRAP. Kev’s so supportive. He stumped up the $195 U.S. for my Wicked Wig straight off. He wanted the “Beach Babe” model, but it’s just not me. I’ve ordered “Yummy Mummy” – sort of Sharon Osbourne meets Rod Stewart.

I’m disappointed about Melbourne, but given a second chance I’d opt for California. Sally jokes I could’ve given my wig its first airing down Rodeo Drive. Never mind, come my next chemo jaunt to Christchurch at least I’ll leave the hospital looking like a star.

Celine Gibson shares her home with her husband (a bagpiping fiend) and two cats. Writing is her first love, followed by gardening, baking and painting -when time allows.

~ ~ ~

Kathryn Jenkins, Joel’s Knickers

After six months travelling I lost my suitcase on the journey home. Three weeks later they told me it had probably been stolen. There wasn’t much I missed: my Canon 5D, the authentic Himalayan salt bought from a street vendor in Pakistan and ten pairs of silk panties designed by my ex-boyfriend, Joel. The camera and salt I replaced, although I suspected the latter wasn’t as authentic as the label proclaimed, but my French knickers were irreplaceable.

I first met Joel at a construction site where I was on the engineering team and he worked for Just Like Butter Concrete Cutters. Watching Joel wield his concrete saw made my mouth water and I soon lured him to my bed. In our post-coital glow we’d eat chocolate and watch re-runs of Project Runway.

One day I came home to find him rummaging through my underwear drawer. He held out a pair of Warehouse knickers.

“Where are your pretty panties?” he asked.

“I don’t have any,” I said.

So he set about making me some. After a few unsuccessful attempts he created a pair that could only be described as exquisite. Soon he had numerous designs and an internship with Fashion Central.

When he started sleeping with the models more often than he slept with me I changed the locks and threw his belongings onto the street, except for the deliciously comfortable ten pairs of panties he’d first designed.

Travelling had helped me forget Joel but I sure miss his knickers.

Kathryn Jenkins unexpectedly started writing flash fiction as a result of a workshop exercise and has written at least one a month since. She’s still surprised at what turns up on the page and wonders where the ideas come from. Hopefully they will never dry up.

~ ~ ~

Rebecca Simons, Playing House (Mum’s Little Girl)

Hip tucked into the bench she leaned on an elbow, one foot hooked behind the other, envelopes crumpled in her hand. Most were “windows”, some with threats stamped in large red letters; she tossed those aside to lie amongst crumbs and dead flies. Without raising her eyes she reached forward and plucked a beer bottle from the windowsill to suck warm bubbles. Eyes flicked to the littered sill then back down. Fingers found what they were looking for. She pushed the empty bottle aside and held the envelope. The writing was blue, small tightly looped letters representing home, warmth, Mum. Her own note, asking for help, money, had been scribbled on a scrap of paper. She closed her eyes as her whole body began to shake. The unopened envelope dropped soundlessly to the bench. A voice from behind hissed, “What are you doing?” Her body jerked back. The voice repeated, “I said, what are you doing?” Shoulders bunched as hands busied themselves sweeping the envelope under bills, brushing a dirty knife with the empty bottle into the sink. “Just giving things a quick tidy-up.” Her back remained mute. His breath grew loud in the silence. “Well get a move-on – the boys will be waiting. You can do that shit later.” She half turned, head low, hands hovering, “I’ll be right there.” Keys jangled, his pocket momentarily forming a fist. He left. She snatched the envelope, tucked it in a drawer, and followed.

Rebecca Simons is an ex-office worker who discovered short story writing while enjoying a mid-life crisis. Although her university years were spent studying European language and culture, she has found an even greater challenge in mastering the use of her maternal language, English, and hopes to continue with this challenge for many years to come.

~ ~ ~

Sian Williams, HAERE RA

My grandmother always said the Captain had a girl in every port but I never believed her. I adored him; my grandfather could do no wrong. He taught me to ride a bicycle and to draw — ships naturally: barques, freighters, ketches, yawls at the Tiger Bay docks.

After they died my mother cleared the house and carpentry workshop, no longer shipshape and Bristol fashion.

In the Captain’s sea-chest she found photographs: Sydney Harbour Bridge, South Sea islands, the Statue of Liberty. She brought back an envelope containing three small sepia images. In rich brown tones they showed a Māori woman wearing a straw hat and a confiding expression, a dark-haired toddler playing naked in a rock-pool with a handmade wooden boat and a carving of two tiki flanking the words HAERE RA.

“He visited New Zealand many times,” Mum said. “I wonder where these were taken, and who these people are.”

“Also,” she said, “what does it mean, the wooden sign, do you know?”

“Yes, Mum” I said, “Haere rā means farewell.”

I examined the images, searching for clues. The woman’s eyes looked directly into the camera, transporting me to that distant beach: the intimacy of the moment and the child with his boat – identical to the one sitting on my mantelpiece, the one the Captain had made me and which we’d sailed together on the Taff the summer I turned eight.

Perhaps my grandmother was right.

But he’d left us all now, his girls in foreign ports.

Sian Williams is editor at Flash Frontier. Her grandfather was in the merchant navy and did visit New Zealand many times — but this is a work of fiction.

~ ~ ~

Michelle Elvy, Wandering

They went to the gallery together but when they stepped through the door their hands drifted apart and they meandered down separate corridors. This is how they always went: travelling together but following two paths. In market streets he’d seek gourmet coffees while she’d follow her nose to the smelliest cheeses; underwater, he’d linger near the colourful sunny surface while she’d dive into deeper blues and purples; on hikes he’d look for shady patches while she’d search out the sun.

Lately, he’d been wondering if she’d wander off forever one day. Now he found himself spying on her in the gallery.

The first time he found her, she stood in front of a portrait of an older woman. It was as if he’d intruded on a fierce conversation, so intent were their locked gazes. He dared not speak.

The next time he found her, she was falling into an Escher-like ocean labyrinth. She tumbled down into spirals and space, and he was sure he could not get her back. He dared not move.

The last time he found her roaming off into the rolling hills of a distant landscape, her body so small in front, as if she were disappearing into the milky greens. He dared not breathe.

But when she turned and caught his eye, her smile opened up like the hills and stretched like the treetops and melted like the oceans. And when he asked “Where to now?” she squeezed his hand and said, “Let’s wander home.”

Michelle Elvy is founding editor at Flash Frontier. She believes in wandering fairly far and wide, but she generally finds her way home.

~ ~ ~

Please also see this month’s interview with Wellington writer Sally Houtman, whose stories appeared in twelve out of twelve issues of Flash Frontier in 2012.

~ ~ ~

Coming in April: the high tide issue.

Interview with Sally Houtman

Michelle Elvy — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 23:10:21 +0000

February 2013

This month, we talked with Sally Houtman, who contributed to Flash Frontier‘s twelve issues in 2012. From her opening story ‘Safari Hats and the Colour Green’ (January frontiers) to her final piece ‘The Seasons, it is said…’ (December/January the gift) Sally was with us all the way. Read on to find out more about her workplace, her attention to detail and her love of other stories, too.

**On w*ork habits and influences***

FF: Sally, you wrote a story for every issue of Flash Frontier in 2012; that’s twelve stories in a year, month after month. Congratulations – well done! Do you tend to write on a regular schedule anyway, or was this more an exception to your usual habits? And what makes this kind of challenge inspiring? Was it helpful to you as a writer ?

SH: More than a regular schedule or writing routine, I’ve found the best way to keep the creative gears turning is to adopt an attitude of openness. By this I mean a ready awareness of the magic in the everyday ordinary, an ability to grab hold of anything that seems to contain that little spirit-spark of life. In this way, even when I’m not physically at my desk writing, I’m still engaged in the process. Writing is something I’ve found I can’t make happen, but rather have to let happen in its own time. It does, however, mean that my writing comes in fits and starts, but I’ve never found logging a prescribed amount of screen time to work for me. Inspiration has its own schedule. Certainly, the physical act of putting words to page, the construction phase of the process, takes place at the keyboard, but the act of discovery and the linking of ideas, the heart of the process, is a bi-product of the sensory experience of interacting with the world and is more likely to manifest with an ear to the radio and a spoon stirring a bubbling pot on the stove than at the hard, uninspired surface of the desk.

That said, I did find the challenge of the themes and deadlines enormously helpful this past year in terms of accelerating and structuring this process. It provided me with a more targeted awareness and focus as well as a sense of urgency as the monthly deadlines came and went. Without the positive pressure of these themes and deadlines, I doubt I’d have written with such intensity over such an extended period of time.

FF: In our June interview last year, we asked you about your work habits. We’d like to ask you to share a little more with our readers in this interview. We understand that you have some degree of visual impairment. Does this affect the way you write on a practical level? Are there technological advances that assist you? And also, does this condition affect the way you write on a literary level, i.e. do you believe you see the world differently in a psychological as well as physical way? Does your visual impairment have any bearing on the sensuality of your stories? We can’t help but notice that your stories are full of colour, taste, smell, sound…

SH: On a practical level, there are two pieces of equipment that, without which, I would be unable to read or write. These are a desktop camera for the magnification of printed material, handwritten notes, etc., and a computer screen magnification program which also provides speech output.

Although these allow me to access material that would be otherwise beyond my reach, there are inherent limitations to being dependent on such technologies. There is an unavoidable time and frustration factor involved in performing even the simplest of tasks. The best way to imagine the way I work is to think of holding a powerful magnifying glass over a page – yes, you can read the print, but only a small block at a time. And yes, my computer ‘speaks’ to me, but I’ve got to know where to find the text to tell it what to read. For this reason, complex graphics, columns or scattered blocks of text such as those found on web pages can prove to be vast and foreign landscapes. Many have been the times I’ve searched for a piece of information, a link or a button, only to find it ‘hidden’ on another part of the screen.

Additionally, unlike a sighted person, I do not have the ability to skim or scan text, as the speech program must read every single word. This means that, in order to locate a specific piece in a document, or refer back to something I may have missed for clarification while reading, I’ve got to either do a search for a word unique to that part of the text, or reread the entire document. Proofreading as well becomes challenging, since things like extra spaces or punctuation errors are easily missed because they simply are not spoken. On the other hand, because I actually hear everything read aloud, I have a greater feel for the flow and music of the language and am able to pick up errors in my own and others’ work that escape visual detection. The eye, it seems, sees what it expects to see while the ear never lies.

As for whether I see the world differently than others do, it would be naïve to say that I don’t. Certainly it is a cliché to say that a blind person is more in tune with their other senses, but there is no denying the element of truth in the cliché. Throughout my life, rather than simply looking at a thing, I’ve had to, whenever possible, pick it up and turn it over in my hand to examine its detail. It’s inevitable that this natural tendency to feel the weight and texture of a thing, would find its way into my writing as well, since this is the way I experience the world.

The details…

FF: Titles matter a lot. Your titles tend to be a part of the story – that is, they don’t just announce the story but they blend into it, as in ‘What Lily Knew’ (June 2012) or ‘To Dislodge –’ (May 2012). How do titles come to you – do they come most often after the story has been written, or do you think up a title that takes you into the story? Do you have any of your own you wish you could go back and change?

SH: A title must not only seduce and entice, but it must, without being gimmicky or clever, seamlessly blend into the landscape of the story. Nothing turns a reader away from a story faster than a cliché or tired expression waving as the story’s flag. If the title shows a lack of imagination, it is likely that the story will do the same.

In my own writing, the title serves as a frame to house the finished work. While a work is in progress, its title changes continuously, sometimes as many as a dozen times in succession as I work to pinpoint the story’s central theme. I find the physical act of typing out a title and pinning it to the top of the page an immediate indication of whether I’ve tapped into the heart of the story or not. That’s not to say that an original title never survives to the final cut, because quite often it does. ‘Safari Hats and the Colour Green’, for example, is a phrase that came to me while working in the garden in a green safari hat. It provided a jumping off point around which I built the story and that particular title never changed. Other titles will undergo a number of transformations before returning to their original form. But the final title is never decided until the work feels whole and complete. And because I take great care in choosing a title which blends into the story rather than announces it, I can easily say that there is not a single title I would change.

FF: You started off at Flash Frontier in January 2012 with ‘Safari Hats and the Colour Green’, a story that favours rich description over plot. In fact, one might even argue that nothing actually happens in the story, and yet there is a lot happening in this relationship – which makes it a memorable piece of flash. In fact, most of the stories you wrote for Flash Frontier are about relationships, often in crisis – or at the very least morphing, developing, swaying and uncertain. But ‘Safari Hats and the Colour Green’ depicts a relationship that works despite the couple’s differences. Which relationships are most challenging for you to tackle in your writing? And do you know when the story begins whether the relationship will work out or founder?

SH: I think of relationships not just in terms of those between people, but in a more universal sense, as the inter-connectedness of all things. I am fascinated by the idea of choice, compromise and consequence; the power of a single decision, act, moment, or encounter to set in motion a chain of events which changes the course of a life. That being the case, you could say in all fairness that all of my stories are about relationships, but in a more general sense. In life there is a relationship, for example, between the is and the could be, between the real and the imagined, between what we have and what we desire. Whenever these forces are at odds, the result is tension and choices or compromises must be made, each carrying with them their own consequences. In my writing, I merely identify and define the opposing forces at work, give them flesh and bone through character, and assign them a voice. Do I know in advance whether or not the relationship will succeed or founder? The success or failure of a relationship between characters in a story, just as in life, is not so much the question, since there are benefits and drawbacks either way. From this point of view, the dissolution of a relationship becomes less a failure than a course correction, a choice that, for highly individual reasons, puts a life on an alternative path.

FF: Your story ‘The sky on that day’ (March 2012) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. This story contains detailed observations (His hands were in his pockets, his trousers hitched up with a piece of string…) as well as a certain simplicity and symmetry that make it both sparse and whole. When you thought up this story, did you intend to create this kind of space, or did that follow once you began?

SH: That story, as do many of my stories, sprang from a single phrase. In this case, the phrase being, “He couldn’t say.” Where, when or how the phrase came to me, I can’t recall, nor is it important, since all scavenged bits take on a new life in new hands. The phrase itself implies a mysterious sense of uncertainty, which I imagine is why it caught in my net. I knew right away that whatever story developed from this phrase would need to reflect the same feeling of uncertainty. So it wasn’t so much that I intended to create this kind of space, but that the story itself demanded it. It was my job as the writer to carefully weigh and balance each detail to give the story just the right amount of structure while at the same time leaving space for the echoes. I worked quite hard on word choice and phrasing so that the sections would have a sense of balance and symmetry, and to ensure that no one section carried any more weight or significance than the others. In any story, I strive ultimately for a sense of balance. I feel I found it here.

Some short questions…

FF: What was your favourite story to write at Flash Frontier in 2012? And your least favourite?

SH: I’ll define a ‘favourite’ story as a successful story. A story that is truly successful, I feel, is one that lifts off the page, one for which I as the writer feel I no longer claim ownership. In other words, a story I can step away from and feel it lives apart from me. Though not all stories achieve this status, when they do, it’s tremendously rewarding. Of the twelve, I feel ‘Soliloquy’ hits closest to this mark. It began as a series of random and unrelated phrases I’d collected, all of which seemed to contain a particular rhythm and energy. In working with the phrases over time, a distinctive voice began to emerge. It was then a matter not so much of writing the story but of getting out of the way just enough to hear what this voice was attempting to say. In this particular story I quite literally built the stage and allowed the emerging character to take her cue, step out and begin to speak. The discovery process in this case felt quite personal and special, and was for that reason the most rewarding.

As for a ‘least favourite’ story to write — rather than singling out a particular story I’ll just say that some stories are, on a technical level, more effective or successful than others. Each of the twelve was written with the same amount of thought and care. But as a writer, it’s natural to feel that it isn’t enough for a story to simply stand strong on its feet. I wanted them all to dance.

FF: What authors of short fiction do you admire most?

SH: I appreciate the use of the word ‘admire’ rather than ‘enjoy’ in the context of this question, since I believe them to be very different things. I enjoy a good cup of coffee, but I wouldn’t say I admire it. By the same token, there are many writers whose work I enjoy, but to admire implies an appreciation of the craft. As an avid reader I’m always on the look-out for fresh voices, and the writers whose work I am most drawn to tend to be those who have a voice most true to itself. In other words, a writer whose work is not shaped by a particular style or trend and whose writing contains a certain watermark that defies imitation. These are a rare find, but there are two writers whose work I’ve discovered in the past year who come immediately to mind. They are Chris Okum and James Claffey.

To try to characterise Chris Okum’s work is to answer the question of how long is a piece of string. His narratives tend to careen forward at a dizzying pace and in a characteristically disjointed fashion. But at the same time they manage to remain tightly focused, driven by their own internal logic. I’m continually surprised, often amused and frequently horrified by the truths that emerge from the depths of his characters’ noisy absurdity, but rarely, if ever, am I disappointed. James Claffey, in contrast, has a special knack for capturing the real world with an uneasy depth and detail. His writing which at times is raw and haunting, and at times mysterious and surreal, is always richly textured. In a few hundred words he is able to open a window on a world I find both familiar and unfamiliar, one filled with mystery and promise, beauty and pain.

Looking back at last year…

FF: In an interview last year (when you placed in the national flash fiction competition), you commented:

“In any story, particularly a very short one, I feel it’s essential to create some resonance, a sense that there is more here than meets the eye, a feeling of before and after, a sense that the story has life or significance beyond the words on the page. A successful piece of flash fiction, to my thinking, should create a feeling that, in the palm of your hand you are holding something immense.”

We agree with this of course and find that the best flash fiction stories from our pages resonate long after we’ve read them. Tell us which stories by other Flash Frontier writers from 2012 still resonate with you, and why.

SH: There were a number of stories that readily came to mind, as these were stories I returned to several times, rereading them with an eye to discovering their X factor, that little something that made them work so well.

Having just gone back once more to reread Matthew Zela’s ‘On a Day’ from the February 2012 issue, it still gives me chills. In a short space he’s managed to compress a lifetime of experience and a sense of sadness and longing. In less skilled hands this might have veered into the sentimental, but its language is perfectly paced and the detail sparse and well balanced.

Also on subsequent reads of Mike Crowl’s ‘Scropion’ from the September 2012 issue, the story still makes me smile. It’s difficult to write an effective, humorous flash piece without it unfolding like an anecdote or a joke building to a final punch line. But this story has both humour and warmth. The character’s frustration and vulnerability are transparent and accessible. Who among us cannot relate to his inner dialog? “My brain doesn’t like having its nap interrupted.” A complete and thoroughly effective piece.

Lastly, for the reasons I noted earlier, James Claffey’s ‘turn to tiny vessels’ from the October international issue has stayed with me. The scene is so vividly drawn that the reader is right there in the moment, feeling the bite of the wind and the roughness of the bark. It’s a powerful and telling scene, revealing much about the character’s inner and outer world, giving that necessary feeling of the before and after and lifting the words off the page.

Thank you, Sally Houtman, for the interview this month. For more of Sally’s stories, check out her Fictionaut page.

For the February 2013 travel issue of Flash Frontier, please go here.

Dec 2012 /Jan 2013: THE GIFT

Michelle Elvy — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 23:46:06 +0000

Janneen Love, The Gift

Janneen Love lives and paints and works in Auckland.

~ ~ ~

Sally Houtman, The seasons, it is said…

It is said they met in autumn, with the shadows at drowsy angles, in the clearing where the field sloped steeply towards the hidden creek. She caught his eye in the curious light, kneeling in the clover, thick curls hooked behind one ear. Perhaps it was the gentle way she clipped the roses that made him want to know her, who she was, how she thought. He approached her, bashful, grinning, buttoning and unbuttoning his jacket, blunt-nailed fingers fumbling slits. A glance of sideways approval and he was smitten. He received her smile like a gift.

In spring they wed beneath the petal trestle. She gave him a paintbrush with squint coral pigments. He gave her a drainpipe and a tarnished gong. At home she managed book and ledger, kept the teapot full. He worked on conduit and woodpile, hollowed pits for seedlings in their broad backyard. Winters came with heavy footsteps. Summers lingered, long in stride. Twenty years his senior, he knew one day she’d leave him, as all breathing things will do.

It is said the day she died the clocks ran backwards. Starlings wrestled with their warbles. The skies filled but gave no rain. Decades later, some say that you can see him at the window, a silhouette of shadows, searching for her in the hinged wing of the sparrow, in the twisted branches of the cypress tree. Forever he is watching, waiting for the seasons to cycle back around again.

Sally Houtman is a Wellington writer. She began writing fiction and poetry in 2007 and threatens not to stop.

~ ~ ~

Kate Mahony, The Gift

Grandmother brought something out from behind her back. Francie saw it was a doll. It was big and pink with a hard body, a rubbery face and crimped hair.

“Happy birthday,” Grandmother said. “It’s from your father.”

Mother sighed. Francie’s father was away in the South Island drying out. His white arms would be turning dark and wrinkled like raisins.

Mother pushed baby Tessa off her lap. “We can’t stay long. Molly’s been asked to a party.” She rubbed at a spot on her wool skirt.

“There’s clowns and a magic show,” Molly said importantly.

“Last minute invitation. At the school gate.” Mother wound a hanky tight around her fingers. “The girl’s mother looked embarrassed, too.”

Grandmother frowned. “Because of–”

“Ssh,’ Mother blew her nose. “I don’t know what’s worse. Avoiding me or asking how we’re coping.”

Francie hated it when Mother cried. She mightn’t stop. “Can I go to the party with Molly?”

“You aren’t invited,” Molly said.

“But it’s my birthday and being here isn’t a proper party.” Francie stamped her foot.

“No,” Molly said. “The other party’s for seven-year-olds. You’re five.”

“That’s not fair,” Francie wailed.

Mother stared out the window. “As if he’s dead.”

Grandmother frowned. “Stop that, Francie.”

Francie wailed louder.

“Or I’ll take the doll off you.”

“Please, Mother?” Francie kicked Molly.

Grandmother put the doll on the floor beside Tessa. “Here, Baby, Dolly’s for you now.”

“I hated it anyway,” Francie said. And she didn’t care if her father found out.

Kate Mahony has an MA in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University, Wellington. A former journalist, she has tried novel writing, short story writing and now flash fiction. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Zealand Fiction Vol 6, Turbine, Takahe, The International Literary Quarterly, Tales for Canterbury, Blue Crow Magazine and Blackmail Press. She teaches short story writing at the Community Education Centre in Wellington.

~ ~ ~

Leanne Radojkovich, A Dog’s Soul

In winter, the porch was light-starved and goosebump-cold.

We sat in the kitchen, fire snapping and fizzing, while dog sat on the porch whining to be let in.

Each morning, I’d open the door and she’d knock me down and lick my face.

In summer, dog thought she was a cat, chasing sparrows across the lawn and trying to climb trees.

One morning, I opened the door and dog was lying on her side with her legs poking out.

Thwack! Thwack!

The sound of Dad chopping into the lawn.

The swish of earth sliding off his spade.

“Drag her over,” he said.

Her stiff legs made good handles but I was half out of my body with shock.

Dad rolled dog into the hole, testing the fit with his gumboot.

Something whooshed out, a fleeting pressure against my face: one cold kiss.

Leanne Radojkovich’s stories have featured in the UK’s Flash Fiction World, Turbine and Flash Frontier. Her flash readings on YouTube have had over 2,000 views in the past year.

~ ~ ~

Mike Crowl, Self-Gift

She reads aloud, “60% of shoppers plan to self-gift on Black Friday.”

“Self-gift?” I snort. “Oxymoron. You can’t give yourself a gift. Giving requires a giver and a recipient.”

“So you say. I’m happy to go out and self-gift any time.”

“Something tells me this is post-modern retail thinking. Our grandmothers would have sniffed, Nonsense.” I glance over her shoulder at the article she’s reading. ‘Perhaps it’d be better if they wrote, 60% of shoppers plan to shop selfishly.’”

“You’re an opinionated oaf.”

“And you believe that shopping is therapy.”

She tosses the paper at me. Misses, of course. It splatters in sheets across the floor.

“You going to pick that up?” I ask. “Put it back in order?”

“An opinionated oaf and a control freak.”

“Better than being someone who thinks that shopping will solve their crises.”

She stands, ignoring the newspaper. Flicks the switch on the jug. “It’s relaxing.”

“It’s a way of relaxing only Westerners can afford.” I put my empty cup on the bench beside her.

“I’m not making you a coffee.”

“So, no gift from you then.”

“Not when you’re doing caffeine therapy.” She tumbles my cup into the already cluttered sink. “That’s your third cup in an hour.”

“Sharpens my brain. Makes me able to see the rubbish behind a phrase like self-gift.”

“Enables you to say things that make no sense at all.”

I grab her round the waist. Kiss her. She yanks my beard. Kisses me back.

Mike Crowl is a 67-year-old writer, pianist, composer and actor living in Dunedin. He has been writing for publication since 1989, with most published material these days appearing on one or other of his blogs. Current projects include typing up weekly letters he sent to his family in 1968/9 when he was at the London Opera Centre, and writing a set of songs in which dogs of various shapes and sizes are the focus.

~ ~ ~

Rebecca Simons, The Gift

Fat tears and snot streaming she stood near the closed door, bottom lip uncertain. In her arms she held her favourite dolly tight. Something broke in the kitchen, her body flinched. A soft voice behind her spoke, “Get back to bed. If he catches you up he’ll give you a hiding too.” Eyes fixed on the crack of light beneath the door she stubbornly said, “Dolly can’t sleep.” The other voice hissed, “Don’t be a stupid baby. Do you want to get the both of us into trouble?” She lifted her eyes to look at her brother then back down at Dolly. With a dimpled fist she smeared snot across her face then took Dolly by the hair and threw her against the door, “Stupid baby.” Dolly fell silently to the floor, face down, a tuft of stuffing exposed. Fresh tears dripped from her chin as her body began to shake. Wordlessly her brother padded over to the door, stooped and picked up the doll. With a finger he pushed stuffing back under stained cloth. She began to sob. He growled, “Now what?” She stuttered, “Dolly’s hurt. Kiss better.” He sighed and with a slight shrug raised the rag doll to his lips and gently kissed the new rip before shoving it roughly back into her arms. “Now get back to bed.” She clutched the doll tightly to her chest and then looked up, a broad smile exposing gaps. In a loud whisper she said, “Dolly sleep now.”

~ ~ ~

Campbell Taylor, Into the Night

“It’s like being shot out of a gun barrel decorated by Frida Kahlo. Apparently.”

Sam realised Leisel’s perfect lips had stopped moving.

“You have to snort it, for it to work.”

“I’ve… never done that,” Sam said.

“It’s not drugs: it’s natural. Magic. The Pigu use it to float above the trees and commune with their ancestors.”

They had met at the Reclaim the Night planning committee the previous week; Leisel admiring Sam’s Witchy-Poo t-shirt, Sam offering to make her one.

“My brother imports it from Bolivia. It’s safe; you don’t fall too hard.”

Sam liked the idea of magic; always wanted to believe; got angry that women had been persecuted for their natural wisdom.

“I don’t know. Being fired out a gun… Have you tried it?”

She had never wanted to kiss a girl: a woman. Maybe this would take her there. She looked at the small pile of powdered bark Leisel was arranging into two lines. She was beautiful; bewitching. Not that she was only attracted to her looks.

“No. I wanted to share our first time. As a thank-you for making me this,” Leisel said, smoothing the shirt over her breasts.

Sam was scared, but she was less scared of barrelling into the air. She did not know what women did. Well, she did.

She smiled at Leisel and gazed out into the night.

Campbell Taylor is often a phlebotomist, sometimes a sound-man, occasionally a performance poet. His short stories have been published in New Zealand and overseas. Born in Christchurch, he lives in Titahi Bay with his young daughter while he chips away at his first (or second) novel, depending on his mood.

~ ~ ~

Rachel J. Fenton, Young Girl with a Sheaf

Avignon glows golden as an August field of ripe corn. A walled town: there is a sense of what it feels to be a mouse lost in sheaves, drowning in stalks. Will grips my hand and we go on.

I expected screams, terror-curdled wails, not this:

There was a rumour she should not be in Montdevergues, as there was a rumour the rumour she started (Rodin stole her ideas) had her committed. Every rumour holds at least one ear of truth.

My forehead to felt: her hat.

“They told me you were mad.” A tear’s lost in the creases of my face.

“You pester me.” She has woven the corn into a sunwheel.

“Avenie ventosa, sine vento venenosa, cum vento fastidiosa. Forgive me.”

She gives me the sun. The camera clicks.

Short-listed for The Royal Society of New Zealand Manhire Prize, Rachel J. Fenton was winner of AUT’s Creative Writing Prize. She lives in Auckland.

~ ~ ~

Maris O’Rourke, A Fairy Tale for Feminists

Once upon a time there was a brave little girl. She watched knights adventure forth while maidens stayed home. She decided she would rather be a knight and set about getting gifts to achieve that: from her parents a horse; from the groom riding lessons; from the mapmakers maps and navigation lessons; from the blacksmith a suit of armour and shield; from the tanner a saddle and bags; and from the carpenter a lance.

When everything was ready she set forth on her huge red horse Firefox. At first she was not a very good knight. She had had no practice but eventually she learned to kill or be killed. She travelled far and wide learning truths too strange to tell.

One day in a faraway land she met a tall, blond, blue-eyed Prince. “I have been searching for you all my life,” he said. “Come and be my Princess.” And she did. There was great jubilation throughout the land. People came from far away for the grand wedding bearing wagonloads of gifts and jewels.

She laid down her knightly gear and became a proper wife. She wrapped her three beautiful baby princes in her hand-woven blankets of many colours. She watched others adventure while she stayed home.

But she kept all her things locked in a sandalwood chest that smelt of strange lands and faraway places just in case she ever needed any of them again.

And lo and behold one day she did… .

Maris O’Rourke has been published in a range of poetry journals in New Zealand and overseas (including being Guest Poet in Poetry NZ #44) and placed in a number of competitions, including the South Island Writers’ Association National Competition, the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and the Robert Burns Poetry Competition. Her first children’s book Lillibutt’s Big Adventure has just been published by Duck Creek Press and she is now working on her first poetry collection while exploring flash fiction.

~ ~ ~

Kathryn Jenkins, The Ticket

When I won Lotto the boys insisted that, because they’d bought the ticket for my birthday, we should split the winnings three ways.

Henry took his share and went cruising in the Mediterranean where he met a Portuguese model called Maria. They emailed from Lisbon for more money so he could bring her home to meet me.

Ben took Sally and the girls to Africa on an extended safari. When they came home they decided Jade and Lucy needed a private education.

“We don’t have much left,” said Ben. “You’ll help out won’t you, Mum?”

And I did help. Henry and Maria as they flitted from country to country and Ben and Sally with school fees.

“But surely you want to travel, Gran?” Jade said when we’d gathered for my birthday, ten years after the win.

“No she doesn’t,” said Ben. “Besides any money left she’ll need for a retirement home. We must start thinking about that, Mum.”

I ignored him. “I’d like to trek to Everest Base Camp.”

“Cool,” said Jade.

Ben laughed. “She’s joking.”

I’d never joked in my life.

Maria said, “Good of you, Mama Jill. Then come too to Portugal?”

Henry sniggered. “Not likely.”

“Actually, I’d quite like to ride a donkey through the Grand Canyon,” I said. “Europe doesn’t really interest me.”

The boys smirked and rolled their eyes.

Today I posted a letter to each of them from the airport. I might not be a comedian but the last laugh feels good.

~ ~ ~

Daphne Clair de Jong, The Gift

Morning sunlight paints the shed next door. The children are sleeping.

I must get up, live another day. Life goes on. They say.

They who sent cards: “sorrow” rhymed with “tomorrow” (the sentimentalists), and “at this sad time” (the culturati), or “happy with God” (the religiosi). I never want to see lilies again.

They who attended the funeral: long-faced at the church door, chatty afterwards, catching up with old friends and distant relatives over ham sandwiches and lukewarm tea accompanied by occasional jarring laughter.

Our bizarre stiff upper lip mourning rituals. Don’t wail and scream and tear your clothes, like the bereaved of Eastern cultures. Stay calm, controlled, especially in front of the children.

“Be brave,” they say. “For the children.”

So I rise inexorably in the morning like the sun, and like the sun inch reluctantly into the day and move slowly through the hours, make light for the children through immeasurable cloud. At night I close the bedroom door and fall into a cold bed and inside me another woman screams and wails and tears at her heart.

I hear the children already. Oh please, one more minute.

I close my eyes.

They are at the door. Opening it slowly, gently. “Shh,” the older one admonishes. “Mummy’s asleep.”

Thank you.

I hear their breathing as they tiptoe closer. The mattress moves when they lean on it. Wait.

A small hand fleetingly touches my cheek. I open my eyes.

And smile.

Daphne Clair de Jong, author of almost 80 romantic and historical novels published worldwide, is a past winner of the Katherine Mansfield BNZ Short Story Award and other awards, has had numerous short stories and articles published in magazines and anthologies, and some poetry in literary magazines. She also tutors writing in nearly all genres and runs the world-famous-in-New Zealand Kara School of Writing and Karaveer Writers’ Retreat at her home in rural Northland. Find out more here.

~ ~ ~

Anonymous_Author©, Cursed

Jules picked at the cuticle of her left thumb until it bled. “I’m cursed,” she said. “Your voice makes me feel ill, like the shape of a headache slowly expanding.”

Dr. Jones didn’t look up. “You have a rare form of synesthesia,” he explained, tapping his keyboard. “Certain sounds cause discomfort.”

He wasn’t a real doctor. Well, he was real in that he existed, but the fact he had a Ph.D. in sociolinguistics didn’t make that any truer.

Jules shuddered. “When you type it’s as if I’m being trampled by a herd of goats.”

“You must re-frame this.”

Jules pictured a crayon scrawl elevated to fine art by an ornate border.

“Language is a powerful change agent…” Dr. Jones paused, “despite its arbitrariness.” He’d convinced himself of this in order that his patients (is that really what they were?) believe in him.

“I hear a ladybird flap its wings and my eyes burn,” Jules casually noted.

“Persuade yourself that what you feel isn’t. Rewire your Self to induce visions that are.

“Really?” Jules asked, “I can’t imagine how that will work.”

“You don’t have to imagine how it will work. Just imagine that it does work. Just imagine.”

Dr. Jones looked up. “You have a gift, not a curse,” he added.

Dubious, Jules rose from the couch and left the room. She repeated her new mantra: just imagine, just imagine, just imagine. An impalpable wind slammed the door. The air filled with dazzling cascades of stroboscopic light. She felt nothing.

~ ~ ~

Vivienne Merrill, Afterwards

You have to know this – I knew nothing of what had been planned. I was not much more than a doll passed from maker to husband. Predetermined to please him with my beauty and subservience.

Until the day my husband left me alone. I remember spring sunshine distilling through windows and great shafts of yellow lighting upon the vessel we’d been given to mark our marriage. The decorations livened in the sun, stirred a yearning.

I retreated to the gardens where peacocks’ harsh voices screamed coward. My palms bloomed small flowers of blood from my nails as I fought – in vain – to stay away from temptation.

Afterwards, I discerned a rush of air, a strange lingering, if that is the way to describe the whirling motion where nothing else moved. The sense of laughter, mocking and cruel.

I stayed kneeling for some time, the lid again pressed down, the weight of disobedience, the fear of punishment upon my shoulders. I would be cast out – disgraced. I recalled my husband’s gentle love and for a moment I raised my head, but lowered it again.

In the bower, at my feet, a dead dove. Jasmine flowers curling brown upon the vine. Like a bud opening, my mind suddenly filled with wildness.

A strange feeling drew me upright and my hands closed in man-like fists. Know this, I cried, I will not weep for trickery or fate but for the way all generations hence will l curse my once sweet name – Pandora

~ ~ ~

Sian Williams, Les oiseaux du Québec

When she was young she fell in love with a hippie. Half Iroquois, half French, tall and sinewy, he had long sensuous hair but no money. Instead he taught her the names of things: of butterflies, of trees and stars, and of birds. Their names, their calls and their ways – this knowledge, he said, was his gift to her.

Later she found his bohemian lack of avarice and his naivety less charming. She began to covet her friends’ lovers who arrived in shiny sports cars proffering bouquets, jewellery, and silky underwear. So she left him for a salesman prone to extravagant gestures of which she soon tired. But there was no going back.

Today she is wheeled out onto the terrace to breathe the crisp air and feels the tingle of the new sun on her face. Her cataract-clouded eyes reflect the pale spring sky which she can no longer see, but she hears the blue jays bickering in the woodland and, in the distance, the shrill piping of a bald eagle. The hairs on her arms stand up; she smiles. She is still connected, still attached. Not yet dispersed into the shadows, ash blowing on the breeze. The call is a thread tying her to the world of living things – of blood and bone and feather. Or perhaps it’s not a thread but rather a ribbon – a shining ribbon – such as might be tied carefully around an exceptional present.

Sian Williams is editor at Flash Frontier. She’s been given some exceptional presents, as well as some real lemons!

~ ~ ~

Michelle Elvy, Shine

Huck, Buck and Pluck were jewels in their mother’s eye. Shining stars, brilliant in mind and sparkling in spirit. Each different in his own way — a chemist, a baker, an unpublished poet who wrote beautiful things for his ma. They weren’t really named Huck, Buck, and Pluck, of course — this is what they came to be called. Huck was Henry, the oldest. No one remembered who started calling Sebastian Buck. The third was Peter, but at his birth, his mother looked down at his curled fingers, his ferocious sucking, the light in his eye, and said, “Hello, Pluck.”

When their plane burst into flames and turned the brothers to fire, fury and falling ash, their mother flew out the back door and ran mile after flat mile down the cold west coast beach. She eventually stopped because, against her will, her lungs kept pulling oxygen into her chest. Her mind kept moving; her heart kept pumping. She collapsed, willing herself to sink into sand and disappear. Then three stones caught her eye: emerald, ruby, diamond. She lifted them from the debris, fingered them one by one, then tucked them into her pocket and began the long walk home.

The stones remained on her mantle for years — all that was left of her boys, glowing through layers of dust. Those and the poem that Pluck had tacked on her fridge on his last morning, yellowed in the afternoon sun that came in through the window above the sink.

Michelle Elvy is founding editor at Flash Frontier. This year she’s finishing a collection of flash fiction set across the New Zealand historical landscape. This story is not in that collection.

~ ~ ~

Please also see this month’s interview with Auckland novelist, short story writer and editor Tina Shaw.

~ ~ ~

Coming in Febraury: the travel issue.

Interview with Tina Shaw

Michelle Elvy — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 23:44:19 +0000

Dec 2012/ Jan 2013

This summer, we had the pleasure of talking with Auckland novelist, short story writer, editor and judge of the 2012 National Flash Fiction Day competition Tina Shaw. Read on to hear more about dreaming in the Waikato, the importance of local fiction, travel and other inspirations.

On growing up and viewing the world

FF: You grew up in the Waikato in what you describe as an ‘idyllic’ childhood. What parts of your own childhood or upbringing have influenced the way you write?

TS: I was lucky to grow up on a farm at Matangi, in the Waikato, and wanted to be a writer from a young age, I think mainly because I used to be quite dreamy and read a lot; in that kind of rural environment, it’s easy for the mind to roam off into the stratosphere, and making up stories always seemed a natural thing for me to do.

FF: You had a stint as a photographer. Does viewing the world through a camera lens impact the way you view the world as a writer? How so, if this is true?

TS: Working as a photographer probably also adds to the creative process in that you tend to focus on both details and the broad picture – bit of a contradiction in terms – but thinking about taking a good photograph, whether it be of a person or a landscape, makes you think about the foreground and the background of a shot, while also wanting to capture the essence of your subject. In writing a short story or novel, much of what I do is about distilling the essence of a story.

FF: In a recent blog post, while discussing the state of publishing in light of the recent news of the Penguin/ RH merger, you also mention the importance of local fiction. This seems an especially important topic for Kiwi writers (resonating at the 2012 Frankfurt Book Fair as well). Can you discuss why this is so?

TS: Having been a published author for many years now, I really think that it’s so important to support our local fiction. I mean, if we don’t, who else is going to? By buying and reading NZ books, then we are supporting our own literature. That’s got to be good for everybody.

On short fiction and opening lines

FF: You were one of the three judges in the 2012 National Flash Fiction Day competition. Since we are a publication for flash fiction, we’d love to hear what you gained from that experience and what you see as most rewarding (for both writer and reader) in this genre.

TS: I loved reading those entries for the competition – what a wealth of talent. The main thing that struck me was how much certain writers could pack into such a short word count. It’s awesome. Again, it comes back to distilling the essence of a story or situation, in a similar way that a good poem can work.

FF: You say that writing short stories is an excellent way to learn the craft of writing. Tell us about some of your own short stories and how they helped you evolve as a writer.

TS: My short stories seem to often involve people at the fringes. The first story of mine which won an award was about a group of protesters wanting to open a road which had been closed by a rapacious landowner. More recently, I’ve been writing short-ish pieces (around 1500 words), about people in rather tentative situations, and I’ve been experimenting with a quite loose story structure – that is, not that much happens. You could say I’m becoming more subtle!

FF: Openings are especially important in flash fiction, but in novels they matter a great deal as well. You open the novel Birdie with the following:

It wasn’t until he had got deep into the bush that he thought there was the sound of her voice. Calling him? Not sure about that. Calling? Anyone? Maybe. He was sure he had heard something. Unless it was the crying of the trees.

This is the kind of opening that forces the reader to carry on. There is movement and longing and mystery and uncertainty here. How much importance do you place on opening lines, and do you think they matter more in short fiction or in longer fiction? And do they come first for you, or are they something you tweak once the draft is finished?

TS: Opening lines are really important. I want to establish the tone and situation of the story from the very beginning. I think you should take your reader quickly into the story, and not muck around with too much setting or abstract thought. And the first line is even more important in a short story where every line counts. I like to get the main bones of the story down, without worrying too much about the first line/s. The thing is, you can always go back and work on the opening.

On setting, myth and travel

FF: Your novels often take the reader back in time and setting – 1935 Berlin in The Black Madonna; 1953 small-town New Zealand in Dreams of America. Both of these books take the reader to places very different from modern-day New Zealand. Was writing the book about Berlin any more difficult than writing the one about a world in New Zealand that is by now quite different for readers as well? What challenges did you face in placing these stories in such foreign settings?

TS: My Berlin novel was easy on one level because I was living in the city at that time and making copious notes about what I saw and experienced, so some of that material went into the novel; it was harder to recreate what it might have been like in Berlin of 1935. That’s where research comes in. Writing about 1950s NZ had similar challenges but I talked to people and read various accounts from that time and looked at photographs. Even though I was dealing with a culture I had grown up in, it also presented as challenge because so much has changed in NZ since the ’50s.

FF: Myth and mystery are important in much of your writing – from the aforementioned Birdie to your novels for children and young adults like The Cloud Rider and Koevasi. The mysteries you explore always have at their core something about human connection, even when dealing with surreal elements or encounters. Why does mystery work so well for exploring human themes?

TS: I think mystery and fantasy genres can convey story really well because you are lifting the reader out of the ordinary and into a new kind of world or setting, so that the themes can be seen in a different light. Take Animal Farm, for instance, or The Left Hand of Darkness – we remember those amazing settings, but we also become more aware of the themes behind the stories.

FF: You’ve spent time abroad, for example during your Creative New Zealand Berlin Writer’s Residency stint, and you seem to bring travellers to life in your work, from the characters in Dreams of America to the anthology you edited, A Passion for Travel. Why is travel so important for writers, and how do your own travels affect your work as an author?

TS: What I like about travel is that it can take you out of your comfort zone and offer a fresh perspective on your own life and where you live. It can be transformational. I like to think that’s something which books and stories also allow us to experience.

Thank you, Tina Shaw, for the interview this month.

For the Dec 2012/ Jan 2013 the gift issue of Flash Frontier, please go here.

November: EYE CONTACT

Michelle Elvy — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:12:41 +0000

Sandra Whyte, Owl Moon, oil on canvas

Sandra Whyte, a New Zealand artist living in Northland, paints with a unique style of realism, achieved by painting layer upon layer with the finest oil paints. This painting was inspired by Whyte’s dad’s stories of the man in the moon chopping wood and the morepork residing in her friend’s tree. She captured this image of the moon seconds before a lunar eclipse. More about the artist’s work, including commissioned paintings, here.

~ ~ ~

Janet Pates, If He Could

If he could, Jeremia thought, he’d design himself a whole, different life. First, he’d give his parents an attitude transplant; make them more like the Prestons next door. Mum was always making sniffy remarks about the Preston kids – no manners, no respect, no shoes. But J escaped over there whenever he could. He liked the benign indifference with which Mrs P plonked the food on the table and said grace – “Come’n get it!” Over there, he didn’t have to keep one jump ahead of the old man.

Next, he’d change his name to something less biblical and easier to spell than Jeremia. Who wanted to be named after a weeping prophet? He’d model himself on Mike Preston. Laughing, joking, nineteen-year-old Mike came to help drench the lambs but, the way Dad spoke to him it was a wonder Mike didn’t tell him to drench his own bloody lambs. Instead he looked Dad in the eye and said, “No sweat boss.” Then when Dad turned away, Mike gave an exaggerated salute behind his back and winked at Jeremia.

Next year Jeremia would be sixteen. He’d leave school, work on the farm for peanuts then marry one of those creepy-mouse girls from church. At least, that was the gospel according to St Dad.

But J had other plans. Next year, he was going to look the old man in the eye and tell him he was leaving. Next year, he would, because he could.

Janet Pates lives in the small town of Tuakau, near the mouth of the Waikato River. She writes for children and for adults, she writes fiction and non-fiction, the latter with an emphasis on local history. In between times, she is trying to create an interesting memoir out of a singularly ordinary life.

~ ~ ~

Vivienne Merrill, Contact

Out of the blue forgotten mountains of my childhood – a birthday card. It says Happy Birthday Sister on the cover. I slice out the word sister and sit it on the table. Be good, I say, be nice, but somehow, the letters fuss and fidget, so I cut them out and try to make new people out of them. That doesn’t work so I try to make new words, but they keep shouting sis! sis! And then, resist! resist! so I do. I take a breath and open the card, but other words jump out at me like SPCA puppies and kittens wanting homes. Those eyes! My sister’s eyes are blue, spaced wide, and open. She wants to build a bridge, you say, but all bridges washed away and long ago, in a tsunami of betrayal. I cut up the card into very small pieces and then I mix them with the pieces of sister. Sorry, I tell my dead mother, as I scrunch and scrunch, until they are small enough to gently thread through the eye of a needle.

Vivienne Merrill lives on the Kapiti Coast where it is all too easy to beachwalk and dream her days away. Sometimes, when she’s lucky, some of these dreams become stories and poems.

~ ~ ~

Kathryn Jenkins, Crimson Tears

Ben left at dawn. Not wanting to return to our empty bed, I went outside and lay down on the carpet of red stamens coating our sea-front lawn. I watched the sun rise and as it crept higher closed my eyes against the rays piercing my pohutukawa umbrella.

Stamens continued to fall, tickling my nose, my eyelids, my bare arms and legs. I left them where they landed and wondered how long I’d have to lie there before I also became cloaked in red.

I heard the car return, and a few minutes later felt him lie down beside me.

“You were gone a long time,” I said, without opening my eyes.

“I’m always slower without you,” he said, “I never know which lettuce to get or if the avocados are ripe.” He paused. “You could come with me next time.”

“Not yet.”

We lay in silence.

“The doctor says we can try again. That there’s no reason why…”

“Not yet.”

More stamens fell.

“Please, Tara, let me in.”

I turned my head away. “Not yet.”

Soon, we’d both be buried beneath a crimson blanket. A raft of stamens floated down my cheek in the wake of a tear. His hand reached for mine. I started to pull away then stopped. My fingers curled around his, fragile like a baby’s.

~ ~ ~

Carolyn Smith-Masefield, Seeing is Believing

“Off in space again!”

I shot laser-eyes at my mother.

“Go! She’s waiting!”

I engaged my tiniest steps but still arrived. The neighbour’s front door groaned in sympathy.

“In here dear. I’m dying.”

I froze. Dying?? Nah… I grimace. The moonlight’s circling her bald patches.

“You’ve brought my last supper, dear?”

Gross old hedgehog with chin hairs sprouting. I put the dinner down.

“Come close, I’ve had these eyes such a short time.”

“Eh?” She’s like… 100!

“They came from a dead person.”

“Wha?”

“They want to go back.”

“A dead person’s eyes?”

“Not any dead person’s… and technically only the cornea.”

“The blue bit?”

“No, that’s the iris. The cornea goes over the iris.”

“Over…?”

“I had my corneas replaced. The cornea contains two thirds of the eye’s optical power.”

“So?”

“I can see the world back in on itself.”

“I gotta go.”

“I have the corneas of Neil Armstrong.”

“Shit!!”

“My surgery was the day after he died.”

“His eyes would’ve been… ancient!!” I shouted.

“I know, he left his body to science. But he wants his eyes back.”

Mad cow!! “Wha d’ya see?”

“Beautiful… so white. He kept his secret.”

“Secret?”

“He was so excited up there. He didn’t see it until he stepped on it…”

“What?!!”

“Three toes imprinted in the regolith powder.”

“Toes?”

“More like a paw…”

I backed out of the room.

*
At the funeral my mother whispered, “Her eyes were cloudy, wide open but her smile, well…”

My eye twitched.

Caroyln Smith-Masefield writes for sanity, teaches for humanity, lives for equanimity, dresses for vanity but can rhyme with manatee.

~ ~ ~

Sally Houtman, Dilation

Wilton likes the names of things. In the optician’s office he leans in close, studies the diagram pinned to the wall. Pupil. Cornea. Optic Nerve. The eye reduced to its component parts. He admires the precision of anatomical drawings, the way they map the body’s topography with primary colours and clean, clear lines.

Touching a fingertip to the drawing, he traces a triangular hollow between the retina and its partnering veins. He blinks, eyes tearing from the administered drops. As his pupils widen, letting in more light, the dissected eye appears to swell and waver. The room takes on a silvery sheen. He steadies himself, eyelids fluttering, searching for visual footing. Width and depth merge to murky blurs.

He blinks hard, eyes squeeze tight, triggering a branching after-image like luminous veins, jittery clefts and ridges webbing outward, splitting, opening into an inward mind’s eye spiral and he feels like he is slipping, heart racing with the sense of something passing, speeding backwards, time, dreams, things lost, images of the before and the forgotten, and he tenses, resisting its pull, but the trapped light pushes deeper, penetrating layers, doing what it will, and in the distance something flickers, a tiny spark of cosmic something, one small speck of star-stuff, and he reaches out, fingers clasping, opening his eyes.

PupilCorneaOpticNerve. An edgeless swirl of words and colours. A muddle, he thinks, but with an awkward, discordant kind of beauty. Like an abstract painting. Or the artwork of a child.

Sally Houtman is a Wellington writer. She began writing fiction and poetry in 2007 and threatens not to stop.

~ ~ ~

Gay Johnson, Making Contact

They’d been the bane of her life. One blue, one green. Teased at school, stared at in public: That girl with the weird eyes.

She studies rows of coloured contacts on a pharmacy display. “They’re fun. Playful. May sting a bit – but no pain, no gain,” the shop assistant tells her.

She purchases a pair. Dark brown like treacle, like licorice, like the toffee Milton so enjoyed before he departed, saying she was as crazy as her eyes.

The lenses debut at a party. She knows no one but when Sharif introduces himself she suddenly feels that now she does. She omits to mention the lenses when he compliments her in his prettily-broken English. Her eyes, almost as dark as his, are like “river at night-time”.

Days and dates fly by and her omission weighs heavily. Apprehension stalks her every waking moment – a big cat sniffing out its prey, soon to pounce. She should just come straight out and admit the truth. But the truth is, she’s afraid he’ll think her a coward, or even worse, crazy. Like Milton said.

Guy Fawkes saves the day. A stray firework lands on the tent where she and Sharif consume incinerated sausages – vegetarian for him. Screams and smoke and stinging eyes and “don’t cry, I save you!”

Removal necessitates the awful revelation at last. But Sharif just laughs. And laughs. “Brown eyes so boring, my darling. Everyone at home, brown eyes. I like blue eyes, and green. And what is this? Red?”

Gay Johnson lives on the North Shore of Auckland with her young son and her dog. She has lived much of my life in Ireland and also several years in Japan. She belongs to the International Writers’ Workshop and has published articles in the Irish Independent, NEXT and Woman’s Weekly, as well as stories in The Best New Zealand Fiction #6 and Home.

~ ~ ~

Campbell Taylor, Hidden Acts

I once had the romantic lead in a musical thriller where I killed off most of the cast while singing a selection of lounge and soft-pop classics. The finale had me bedding the leading lady, which, perhaps because of the poor houses the show enjoyed, became less and less simulated as the season wore on.

Miss X was quite experienced; a veteran of stage and (small) screen, she was full of tricks to keep the performance “real”. Bowing to her seniority in the craft, I followed her lead between the sheets, acting like nothing unusual was happening.

I asked Mum not to come. Proud of my work, I was nevertheless uncomfortable grinding away in front of her: albeit real or imagined. I had walked in on her and Dad the day before he died. I was five and meant to be downstairs listening out for my Badjelly request on the kids’ radio show, but had scored the elusive character in the breakfast cereal series I had been collecting. They didn’t see me, but I must have dropped AxeMonkey as I left.

Mum insisted on seeing the show, and loudly applauded all my songs from the middle of the front row; I couldn’t miss the look in her eyes as Miss X pulled me in during the climactic scene.

Mum had returned AxeMonkey to me after Dad’s funeral; it’d been in his pocket when the car hit him. Best I wasn’t there, Mum always said.

Campbell Taylor is a phlebotomist and soundman. His short stories have been published in literary journals and on websites in New Zealand, Australia and the USA. Born and raised in Christchurch, he lives in Titahi Bay.

~ ~ ~

Jaclyn Bergamino, Cicadas

She could hear his abdomen, even from eight storeys above. She knew he waited for her, dressed in new skin holding the bark of a mango tree. For thirteen years, she had dug and hid, dug and hid, a pale pearl of a nymph sheltered in flooding clay. Prematurely buried. She had fed on rootjuice and waited.

And now, the time for burying herself had gone. She no longer wore the tough soil skin of the past. The brightness of being was nearly unbearable. She was green and larger than herself.

She sat exposed, mesmerized by the equatorial sunlight and the sound of his clicking ribs. She could see him from here, just a speck, but she could tell even at this distance that he looked back at her. Through her ten eyes, he was a kaleidoscope of rounded cicada flecks, mirrored and moving in unison, calling her to the ground.

And then a closer sound. Behind her, ten of the same dark-haired girls with lightning eyes and cloud-coloured skin reached a catastrophic finger in her direction.

She heard him again, dry-fly ribs rubbing together to blot out the sounds of metropolitan traffic and children. The vibrations called to her.

She looked down at the expectant mango tree and imagined the future she would create: millions of shimmery nymphs sprinkling from the branches, raining onto the soil below, christening the ground with their sparkling selves.

There was nothing for her to do now, except let go.

Growing up in the sultry swamps of Florida, Jaclyn Bergamino developed an appreciation for the environment and how it shapes our experiences. Since then, she has taught English and art all over the world. Seeing the world through the lenses of other cultures, in other environments, and through the eyes of her students has shaped and informed her writing. Currently, she is based in Wellington.

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Bruce Costello, I Contact

The scent of his aftershave was still on Christine’s pillow. At two o’clock his face showed in her dream, and she woke crying at the phantom touch of his hand on her bottom. Arid images of life rose and set before her eyes. They faded, and his figure appeared, like a screensaver, until it vanished into blankness, and she was left alone with the awful discovery that her self in itself was insufficient.

In the morning she cursed as she ripped the pillow apart.

A week later she returned to work.

“How are you?” asked her secretary.

“We’ll see if I make it to lunchtime.”

First client was a Mrs Miller, face down, who burst into tears.

Shit, thought Christine, but her lawyer’s mask was in place.

Scattered sentences cascaded from Mrs Miller’s mouth. Christine’s head ached.

“I never used to mind being by myself,” Mrs Miller muttered, looking at the floor. “But now it’s like I have no self to be by. There’s no me to be.”

Christine’s mask slipped. Sensations too deep for words arose and like a tsunami overflowed her features. Mrs Miller’s head jerked up.

The two women gazed into each other and saw themselves.

Later, over lunch at a café, they talked and grew angry together.

Heavy rain was falling, but it was dry under Christine’s umbrella as they strode back to the office. When a red BMW drove past, Christine gave it the fingers and Mrs Miller burst out laughing.

Bruce Costello left Dunedin in 2010, retreated to Hampden, joined the Waitaki Writers’ Group and began to write. He has three times won the HER magazine bi-monthly contest and one of his stories features in Pink Magazine 2012. Other stories appear in online journals including Snorkel, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Fiction 365, NIB, Cyclamens & Swords and Alfie Dog Ltd. He was short-listed in the 2012 Victoria Cancer Council Art Awards.

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Lesley Marshall, Transition

Renata’s labour is long, slow, wrenching. Pain followed by pain followed by even greater pain.

The doctor is an isolated patch of calm in the heaving chaos. “I think we might need to try a C-section,” he says.

Anything, Renata thinks, just get it over with.

More pain as the judder-bar wheels carry her to theatre. A prick, then blessed oblivion swamps her.

Afterwards she’s pushed in a wheelchair into the baby ICU to meet her daughter, imprisoned behind Perspex. Tubes bristle from every orifice, and her tiny head and chest are polka-dotted with sensors.

What are they finding out? Do they know what she’s really like inside? Renata wonders. Her daughter – a terrifying stranger she’s afraid to even approach.

The nurse smiles. “Isn’t she lovely?” she says.

I don’t know. I don’t know her.

“We’ll have to be careful but you can have a hold.”

Do I have to?

The nurse opens the incubator and gently lifts out the baby, tubes and all. Ceremoniously she places her on Renata’s lap – a special present, gift-wrapped in technology.

Bruised eyelids lift and navy-blue eyes focus on Renata. A gold-leafed joy imbues her, stronger than anything she’s felt before. Messages pass between them.

You’re here.

Yes, I’m here.

Lesley Marshall lives in Maungatapere and divides her time between teaching and editing, and answering needy phone calls from various children, both biological and surrogate. It makes for a very interesting life.

~ ~ ~

Mike Crowl, It’s Only A Game

Saturday afternoon. Teenage rugby. Near blizzard weather.

“Beauty day for a game,” says the bloke beside me. I think he means it.

The ball slips out of the halfback’s hands, bounces across the field, down and up, down and up. Two lanky youths from opposing teams leap for it in a moment of bone-crunching contact, thunder-crack collision.

“Eyeball to eyeball!” shouts my neighbour. “That’s the ticket!” He grins, revealing a missing tooth.

The two boys are flat on their backs, each completely winded. Parents jostle around. From where I stand, the kids don’t seem to be breathing.

“Move aside!” A rotund man strides towards the group. “I’ve done the St John’s course!”

“He’s never done the St John’s,” says the bloke, still grinning. “Kidding himself.”

One of the boys is moaning, louder and louder. “Look at his teeth,” says an adult. “He’s smashed his front teeth.”

“That’s what you get when you play rugby,” says the man beside me, insisting on drawing me in. “You take the rough with the smooth.”

I realise his nose has been broken at some point, its spine bent to the right, leaving a valley where there should be a mountain. “Looks as though you know what you’re talking about,” I say.

“Bloody oath.” As he steps onto the field, I notice his left ear: it’s more cauliflower than ear. “Souvenirs of war, mate.”

He glances back, giving me the grin again. “Better check on me boy.”

Mike Crowl is a 67-year-old writer, pianist, composer and actor living in Dunedin. He has been writing for publication since 1989, and has written his own blogs since 2005. He wrote the script and music for an original musical, Grimhilda!, which was produced in Dunedin earlier this year.

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Bev Robitai, At the Café

Sitting alone in a café, trying to get a grip.

“Excuse me, are you Miriam?” Pleasant voice, kind face, anxious look. He’s carrying a red carnation. Oh God, he thinks I’m his blind date.

“No, I’m not Miriam, sorry.” Retreat behind my latte bowl.

“Oh dear, it seems I’ve been stood up.” He hesitates. “Could I possibly join you for a moment? Just to save face?” Winning smile, blue eyes.

Contact. Oh, why not?

We chat. Surprisingly comfortable. We linger, talking, laughing. Late sun casts golden light through his hair. Bad luck Miriam, wherever you are.

“Shall we walk along the river?” he says. “Stretch our legs after sitting for so long?” Twilight. Gosh, almost romantic. Thought those days were gone.

“Sure, just give me a moment.”

Quick pit-stop to freshen up. Glance at a newspaper left behind. Is that him? Oh.

Deep breath as I walk out of the café.

“Actually,” I say, “there’s a shop I want to visit first. This way.”

“Of course, no problem.” He smiles and takes my arm. Quite a firm grip. “The riverbank will wait. It’s quieter now most people have gone home.”

“Good.” Hope I sound convincing. We walk another hundred metres towards safety. Is that resistance as we approach the police station? No, he’s perfectly relaxed. Have I jumped to conclusions? The first nice man I’ve met in years and I brand him a mass murderer! What a fool.

We head towards the river as darkness falls.

Bev Robitai lives on the North Shore of Auckland and writes murder mysteries in between wrangling words and editing projects for other writers. She is occasionally interrupted to take photos of houses, but never to do housework. Her books can be found on Amazon.

~ ~ ~

Sian Williams, Badger: A reflection

The road runs deep between the hedgebanks: a dark ribbon striped with moonlight.

A creature snuffles along, head down, shoulders up – a badger, old brock, striped like the night. He passes under a gate and into a field where the cows lie still as dolmen or stand sleeping with their legs wraithed in mist.

Not so long ago they would have dragged him from his sett and baited him, with dogs. Then, no longer barbarians, they poisoned him, with gas. And now they tell us his population density must be reduced again, with guns. He spreads tuberculosis, it’s a known fact.

Yet he is as old as the red-earth hills and has dug-delved-dwelt there since before they came with their Friesians and their Holsteins, their black-n-whites.

If they looked into his dark-adapted eyes they would only see their own reflected back. If they listened they would only hear the wind in the treetops or the clatter of a distant train. But, in the dripping mushroomed copses of autumn, he hears the sighing of love-crazed slugs; under icy Wenceslas moons, he hears the hoar frost encrusting the blackthorn and the whitebeam; and, on hot harvest nights, when the moon hangs low, bloated and bloodied, he hears the passing footfalls of the ghosts of the pagan gods.

Over the high moors the sky lightens, dawn is approaching. In the valley shadow and moonlight – black and white – dissolve into grey. And he is gone.

Sian Williams is editor at Flash Frontier. She has been following with interest the recent debate about badger culling in the UK.

~ ~ ~

Michelle Elvy, The View from Pencarrow

If you stand at Pencarrow long enough, you’ll hear the wind carrying voices of scattered souls, thousands lost on the shores of Aotearoa.

2012
I’ve climbed every lighthouse since you were lost. Up and down, up and down. Keep a sharp eye out. Keep an eye out for ships, for storms, for you.

This storm has no eye, no calm: it lashes manic. I bend myself toward the lighthouse, hunched, stabbing into the wind that dries my skin, shrivels my voice. A wind as sure of itself as I am of never finding you. It carves the hard face of these cliffs, whistles metallic past the iron face of this tower. There’s nothing soft in its dark hum.

I climb the lighthouse steps quickly, look out to sea. I wonder if you know I am watching, watching still.

1859
Mary Jane’s eyes search the night. She wonders what George saw as the waves swallowed him: the eye of God? the eye of the Devil? the eyes of his six children, his wife?

She polishes the lenses daily, encased in her cast-iron tower. She touches the cold sure surface as she descends the stairs: pieces pieced together to save lives. Children’s voices screech manic across the wind. She wants to gather them to her and hide them under her skirts. She is married to this headland, to this dark hum.

She climbs the lighthouse steps quickly, looks out to sea. She wonders if he knows she is watching, watching still.

Michelle Elvy is founding editor at Flash Frontier. She has navigated her life along coasts dotted with lighthouses and lost souls. She recently became acquainted with Mary Jane Bennett, the first lighthouse keeper in New Zealand and the only woman to hold this position. Mary Jane Bennett carried out her husband’s position as keeper of the light at Pencarrow Head near Wellington after he drowned at sea.

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Please also see this month’s interview with poet, novelist and short story writer Keri Hulme.

~ ~ ~

Coming in December: stories about the gift.

Interview with Keri Hulme

Michelle Elvy — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 09:10:48 +0000

November 2012

This month, we caught up with novelist, poet and short story writer Keri Hulme. Readers will know her best from her novel The Bone People, which won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for Fiction and the Booker Prize in 1985. All of her work engages myth and dreams, violence and tenderness, the here and now and the other. But instead of discussing themes in her work, or style choices, or present work as a writer, we took a different turn with our interview series this month. We caught up with Hulme to talk not about writing but about everyday life in Okarito.

FF: Keri Hulme, you are heralded as a uniquely New Zealand voice. But besides being a writer, you are deeply connected to everyday living. Could you tell us about how the following are important to you, not only as a writer, but as a reader and a Kiwi in general (or a South Islander, specifically)…

KH: I’m not unique except as being an individual (as we all are.)

On place: the coast and the sea

KH: There are very very few people who write about the places that mean most to me – Okarito? Okarito! Baiting. Birds of all degree. The skid of flounders under your feet, the stab of spear, the taste of their meat. Bait! The total excitement of good catching, and the parties we used to have after.

Unfortunately, there are not many of us left in Okarito who did this kind of stuff.

Moeraki? Ditto. Far south (e.g. Colac Bay & Rakiura) – little stuff written that is anything other than local histories…! Hey I *collect* local histories! I cannot live away from a coastal place. I have tried but I just get depressed & sick, drink too much and don’t do anything creative.

On flavour: fishing and food

KH: O I could talk for hours about this – fish is best when tasting of fish: of course you can enhance that taste – but shit o dear! People who advocate eating pickled &%$!@@! onions with whitebait fried in BEEF FAT! A leetle egg goes well with ‘bait or blue cod the old flour & dip in beaten egg trick – great for a clean fry – but can I say I lurrrve sashimi? And ika ota? And that the best fish is that which you have caught yourself, filleted/cleaned almost immediately, and kept lightly chilled until you eat it (desirably, within a couple of hours).

On connections: history and family

KH: I’m southern (Kati Mamoe/Kai Tahu), bred & born in Otautahi, brought up there & in Oamaru/Moeraki. Have lived on the West Coast (Tai Poutini) since I was 23 (the last 40 years at Okarito.) While my greatgreatgrandmother, Piraurau, came from that area, I don’t want to die there. I’d prefer the south.

Other ancestry include Orkney Scots (which is important to me) and Lancashire English (which isn’t).

On disconnects: myth and reality

KH: There’s a disconnect? Really? Myth informs our realities, can make sense of our lives, teach us about the horrors that are part of our lives, and connect us to all the other beings that we share the Great Round Beast, our mother Earth, with.

On language: humour and horror

KH: Well, humour is the leaven, whether sly, snide, a bellylaugh or a giggle. Humans are unique in as much as we can laugh/interpret funny drawings and written/spoken/otherwise portrayed comedy – but we, sure as, are not unique in enjoying a humourous situation (I’ve experienced bonobo humour – and no, it didn’t involve shit (the youngster was a pickpocket)). Even cats have a sense of humour (and so definitely, do birds).

Horror – is everywhere: we come easily to the language of horror…

Thank you, Keri Hulme, for the interview this month.

For the November ‘eye contact’ issue, please go here.

October: FLIGHT

Michelle Elvy — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:29:01 +0000

Sheri L. Wright, Spiral Staircase, Harrodsburg, Kentucky

Sheri L. Wright, Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of six books of poetry, including her most recent, The Feast of Erasure. Wright’s visual work has appeared in numerous journals, including Blood Orange Review and The Single Hound. Of her photograph ‘Spiral Staircase’ she notes: “Journeys are seldom a straight line to anything, much less out of our own fears. Sometimes we need to circle them like vultures, waiting for an opening to feast on what we most dread, what we cannot understand until we experience it for ourselves.”

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Nuala Ní Chonchúir, One For

A magpie sits on the shed roof, beaking his call to the wind – cacacacaca. I see his tongue judder with the force of his complaint; he looks like he is about to vomit. My stomach shifts and falls. One magpie; he couldn’t bring more sorrow than is already here. He fans his wings and sails away.

I slip into my shirt, pull on my jacket and knot the tie borrowed last night from Mr Slaughter next door.

“You’re still her husband. Always will be,” Mr Slaughter had said, hoping, I guessed, that I would agree, to make safe his widowhood, to validate it.

I thought of my wife, stretched out, stilled.

“Yes,” I said, “she will always be mine.”

The wardrobe mirror makes wings of my arms, plumage of my chest; my eyes are black beads, haunted. I open my mouth to call my wife, remember that she is gone. Before I can swallow it, a long sound emerges from my throat – cacacacaca.

Nuala Ní Chonchúir, interviewed this month, is a short story writer, novelist and poet, born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1970 and living in Galway. Her fourth short story collection, Mother America, was published by New Island in June 2012. For more, go here.

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Marcus Speh, The Butterfly Collector

We lived on a dahlia once. Then, a fresh breath of creation still lay upon the land. We were happy people, flower folk, and we didn’t mind that success came in all sizes, small and large, because failure did, too. After a hard day’s work in the fields, we met at the pub to flush away any anger that stood between us. We danced, we made music and we were bards, every one of us. Butterflies used our homestead as a breeding ground: when they were still wet from birth, we wrote songs on their wings. One day, a very old butterfly returned to us. He said he’d been captured and travelled the globe in a world-famous collection owned by a great man. We were not surprised, because this old lepidopteran was a beaut: many eyes of red and black were arranged in a semi-circle on his blue wings, which cried dark tears, and he was sprinkled with gold dust all over. “One day,” he said, “another man bought me off the butterfly collector.” – This man wasn’t after our bloke’s markings, but after the tiny letters that we’d put there before his colors had even dried. “He copied the poem of me and set me free,” said the old one. “He was a collector of truth, that human,” he said and fluttered up, right into the sun above our heads.

Marcus Speh is a German writer who lives in Berlin, writes in English and spent a wonderful year in NZ. ‘The Butterfly Collector’ is an unpublished flash from his mosaic novel Gizella (forthcoming from Folded Word). Marcus blogs at marcusspeh.com.

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Andrew Stancek, Pigeon Dreams

Pigeons are what I know best. We’ve always kept them, Father and I. He says Mother used to help, too, but I don’t remember. In the only picture of the three of us, he’s looking at her like she’s a dollop of whipped cream he’s about to lick off his Kaffee mit Schlag, and she’s frowning, holding her bulging belly. I’m the bulge. Although the picture is black and white, I imagine her hair is blonde and her dress is red. I stare until she looks like she’s going to talk to me, right from the picture, but then she doesn’t. Father will talk about pigeons till his voice grows hoarse but if I ask about her, he gets quiet and his mouth turns down like he bit a peppercorn.

Pigeons have flown at 170 kilometers an hour and can travel 1800 kilometers. That’s the distance from here to Madrid. Maybe Mom is in Madrid, sipping sangria and thinking of me. When I turn eighteen, I’ll find her and ask why she left.

As I coo and dash around the barn, pretending to soar, I wonder if Mom decided no more pigeons. I know I’m the only boy at school who loves them. I tied a note to the leg of my favorite, Traum, and sent him on a quest. When he lands on his perch tomorrow, I hope for a return message.

Andrew Stancek was born in Bratislava and saw Russian tanks occupying his homeland. His dreams of circuses and ice cream, flying and lion-taming, miracle and romance have appeared recently in Tin House online, r.kv.r.y, The Linnet’s Wings, Connotation Press, THIS Literary Magazine, Flash Fiction Chronicles, Istanbul Literary Review and Pure Slush.

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Tania Hershman, Flight

The fox, the rabbit and the ants stood on the edge of the cliff. The fox and the rabbit had parachutes.

– What will you do? said the rabbit to the ants.
– We will hold onto the parachute, said the ants.
– What if you fall off? said the rabbit.
– We’re tenacious, said the ants.

The rabbit looked at the fox. The fox shrugged.

– Okay, said the rabbit.

When they were ready, the fox held out his hand to the rabbit. In their other hands they held their ripcords. The ants clung to the parachute. The fox and the rabbit looked at each other. Then they stepped over the edge.

At the bottom, they stood up, dusted themselves off. The ants formed an orderly line in front of them on the valley floor. The fox and the rabbit were still holding hands. No one looked up to where they’d come from. No one looked back.

– Okay? said the fox.

Everyone nodded, and they began walking forwards into the new world.

Tania Hershman’s second collection of 56 short fictions, My Mother Was An Upright Piano, is published by Tangent Books. Her short stories and poetry have been published in print and online and broadcast on BBC Radio. She is writer-in-residence in Bristol University’s Science Faculty and editor of The Short Review, the online journal spotlighting short story collections and their authors. More at Tania Hershman … making things up.

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James Claffey, turned to tiny vessels

Strewn leaves over cold water, I am in green trunks, the banana spiders mere inches from my face. The leaves are colored bruises, camouflage for my body which will soon rest amongst them. Ignoring the freezing east wind, the sun shattering into pieces off the face of my watch, I move out along the thick branch that stretches to the middle of the pond. So strongly it blows, the blood in my cheeks turns away from its force, and a shower of rain falls on the earth. You have to face your demons, she told me. You can’t keep running away forever. Not true, I said. Instead, I laughed at her, guilty of rejecting her love, thrown off by the narrowness of her wrists, the nothingness of her frame. Dandelion stalks, browned to husks, juniper bugs turned to tiny vessels, the natural decay spread beneath me in all its intricate beauty. Nothing about it is haphazard – not the veined wings of the dead bluebottles on the window ledge at home, nor the piping call of the warbler above me in the tree – nature’s ordered world. Toes grip rough bark, one foot placed deliberately in front of the other, the same slow meditation I practiced on the Via Crucis in Taos, all those years ago. She accused me of flight, of always running away from my responsibilities – fight or flight she said, fight or flight. And on the limb, high over hidden water my limbs refuse to work and I cannot alight.

James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, California, with his wife, the writer and artist, Maureen Foley, their daughter, Maisie, and Australian cattle-dog, Rua. His work appears in many places, including The New Orleans Review, Elimae, Necessary Fiction, Connotation Press and Word Riot. His website is at The Wrong Corner of the Sky.

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Sharon Stratford, Flights of Fancy

Sophie had a magpie mind that flew across the world swooping on shiny thoughts and dazzling ideas. She loved to soar in that supernatural space filled with wild one-day-dreams where she could escape the washed-out cavity of her days.

In her magpie mind she could think of ways to help her dad care for her mum, while Alzheimer’s nibbled at their days together. She could spend effortless hours with her mother, accepting the childish ways of the parent she had known.

She could ease her new compulsion to flick the light switch three times before she entered a room and three times before she left.

In her magpie mind Sophie could juggle numbers, multiplying them and adding to them until they divided into herds that stampeded towards her debt. Those thunderous herds dented hire purchase and credit card figures, destroyed bank loans and devoured digits off her bills. She could make her business succeed, rising high on her latest marketing plan or the creation of another innovative service.

She could remember her man and the fire in their relationship before he left her for someone more grounded.

In her magpie mind, Sophie created stories and had conversations with characters. She could imagine the imprint of a king’s naked arse in the snow and laugh so hard she snorted.

She could reinvent herself.

One day, Sophie got lost in her mind.

She hasn’t been heard from since.

Sharon Stratford is a Wellington writer. She loves spending days at the beach with a good book for company, playing with words and swapping stories with children.

~ ~ ~

Ken Pobo, Kites Over Branches

In second grade Miss Rogers put Gwen in the yellow reading group. Learning to read came slowly, words rolling on her tongue like gumballs. How could she tell Miss Rogers that the books she was given bored her silly. Who cares if Spot runs? What else would he do?

That was sixty years ago. Reading is now a snack eaten between customers or after the dishes are done and before bed. When her husband, Tree, asks her what book is her favorite she says, “Something on Lincoln, I think.” Tree can name, in order, his Top 10 books. Every one is about World War II.

Aunt Gwen tells few people about the high school afternoon when she burnt a copy of The Bible. It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. She has no guilt. After all, it’s not like there aren’t scads of them all over the place. She grinned as the white cover flamed yellow and red—before fading into an ashen gray. At first the smell was like autumn leaves burning. It grew more sour.

She tells her daughter to read more.

“Trash those movie magazines and read something fulfilling.”

“Movies fulfill me,” Annie replies. “And music magazines.”

Aunt Gwen thinks of herself as a book. The pages turn way too quickly now.

Soon they’ll litter the lawn, amble down the street. Her sentences released, like kites breaking free of branches, flying over her sagging roof.

Kenneth Pobo had a collection of his micro-fiction called Tiny Torn Maps published by Deadly Chaps in 2011. Recent stories appear in Philadelphia Stories and Wilde Oats.

~ ~ ~

Elaine Souster, Fantasy Fears

I remember this beach as a child; I had no friend, only my shadow.

I ran, skipped and played as it danced in front or behind me. If I jumped off a rock it disappeared but it was always at my feet when I landed. It belonged to me.

Today I stand alone; I face the sea and look towards the islands in the gulf. Behind me the sun is setting and from its fading light it creates a shadow of me that stretches down the sand to touch the water’s edge.

I turn round to face the hills and watch the last of a summer’s day take flight over the horizon. The night creeps down and my shadow dissolves into the dusk of twilight.

The moon rises and as I walk I’m guided by the glimmer of its light though the trees.

A breeze awakes shadows in the trees and in the light of the moon they strive to be free. They prance in and out of the darkness and I become entangled in their warped shapes.

I feel fear as they touch me and their black branches try to pull my shadow into the depth of night.

Like a child I run. Shadows cross my path, I duck and weave to escape them and hurry to my house.

I open the front gate and the moonlight shimmers down the path, in front of me my shadow grows tall and strong as it leads me to the door.

Elaine Souster is an accomplished artist who several years ago discovered a love for creative writing. She is active in various writing groups and supports other writers. She loves to take her view of human nature and turn it into a story.

~ ~ ~

Len Kuntz, Over the Wing

There is nothing left to do and so she flies. It doesn’t matter where.

The man in the middle row won’t shut up. His belly keeps spilling over her seat. It reminds her of a mudslide, of jelly sandwiches she used to make for her boy when things were better.

The man’s name is Ed, his hands huge mallets covered in fur. His wedding ring looks painful, squeezed by all that swollenness.

He orders double scotches that come in miniature bottles. The topaz liquor makes her think of the Aztecs and Mayans, then Mexico of course, their first trip post-honeymoon, her husband saying, “Let’s be adventurous this time.” So they’d gone hang-gliding, learned to scuba. When a waitress wouldn’t stop flirting, he suggested a threesome and she went along with it but cried for days afterward.

Ed slurs when he says, “I’ve flown 100,000 miles this year.” He asks if she belongs to The Mile High Club and when she says “No,” he nods toward the plane’s restroom. Then Ed tries to touch her hand, so she points to his ring. “Oh, that thing,” he says. “It might never come off.”

She’d been married ten years and could never get the threesome out of her mind, thinking he probably never really loved her if he could ask for something like that. Then she came home one day and knew.

She looks over the wing now, her flying, the rest of them below, living, destroying everything.

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington state. His work appears widely in print and online. Len’s story collection debuts from Aqueous Books in 2014. You can find him at People You Know By Heart.

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Maris O’Rourke, Flighty Thoughts at Charles de Gaulle Airport

When I look at them I always wonder what are they thinking?

Those fat-bellied old farts in their crapulent crimpelene pants of boring beige and open-necked shirts of shitty green. You see them everywhere waiting for flights – just sitting, legs stuck out in front of them, arms crossed, staring into space, surrounded by bags you could fit a body into.

They’re usually on holiday with the wife. If she speaks they grunt, nod, mutter, mumble or stare at her with who are you? surprise.

Sometimes they nod off, twitching spasmodically, like old dogs dreaming. Occasionally they look at their watches but mostly they sit unmoving, arms across their corpulent bellies.

She’s dressed to the nines and clearly looking for adventure, excitement, some frisson with her croissant! Guilt produced, obligation met, old fart in tow – ensuring it won’t happen.

Maris O’Rourke has been published in a range of poetry journals in New Zealand and overseas (including being Guest Poet in Poetry NZ #44) and placed in a number of competitions, including the South Island Writers’ Association National Competition, the Caselberg Trust International Poetry Prize and the Robert Burns Poetry Competition. Her first children’s book Lillibutt’s Big Adventure has just been published by Duck Creek Press and she is now working on her first poetry collection while exploring flash fiction.

~ ~ ~

Christopher Allen, Flight

The field: doubtful of morning, calm like a blanket smoothed for the last time but nervous like a million sleepwalking birds. The fence: barbed, a jagged song on a staff between hell and hope.

I only have to cross it. They will see me, shoot holes in me – but I’ll cross the field. To be remembered, to be noticed. For daring to try, for knowing how few succeed.

The sun rises. The field begins to sing a tune my father taught me about the hope of flight and the sad truth that both are reserved for other species. I close my eyes, conjure the celebrated place beyond barbs and forget not to breathe. A wisp of steam curls into the gelid morning grey like a decision I can’t take back: the decision to die in the unforgiving light of day.

They must see how biology betrays me – the ones with guns. I convince myself their arms are unloaded, like a critic’s inkless pen. I tell myself their guns are licorice hanging flaccid at their sides as they sleep. I’m an artless liar, and I cannot stop myself from breathing.

The field ripples – a light wind – the bird blanket trembles. The forest behind me joins the field singing my father’s song. A battle hymn. I open my eyes. I run, I write. And the world – the trees, the field and the hope of home – bursts into flight.

Christopher Allen is the author of the absurdist satire Conversations with S. Teri O’Type. His fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous places online and in print. Allen blogs here and here.

~ ~ ~

“You. After school. Basketball court. Snap my fingers snap your neck.”

Kevin’s experienced fist thwacks his palm. A rainy afternoon scrap’s arranged to test the mettle of the new boy on the block. I’ve no choice, and at 3.30pm unwillingly comply. For too long I flail miserably, impotently. The repugnant young spectators bray. Then I see red, as they say. Thrash him. Give him a nose twister, a nasturtium. Cave Kevin’s face in. Bones splinter. Kevin sees red, too. Blood red, then grey. He crumples with an awful permanence. Something has shifted forever.

I freak out. Fight or flight? Fight and flight. Across the field, out the gates, into town. It’s rain-dark. Silverbeet-coloured trees, which are neither silver nor red, shroud the slick roads. I run fast, bouncing off strangers. Mist permeates their angry, sibilant voices with coldness and the white noise of tyres on wet asphalt becomes ugly. I would have welcomed the punch in the face – it was the threat of the punch that caused more damage. Peering back every few steps, through the inkiness, I feel sick.

“We want to see the colour of your fear,” he’d told me. Well, this was it: a boy tearing through blackness, all his light absorbed. I’m inseparably linked to the end of the world. Or think I am. Or want to be. It pours. The sky pounds a percussive dirge on the footpath. Bleak rhythms belt against the concrete. I’m still running.

Anonymous_Author© is the literary voice of an unknown writer. He is an existentialist suffering from an identity crisis and exists only through the benevolence of language. He is currently working on his UnAuthorised AutoBiography. Follow him on Twitter (@anonauth).

~ ~ ~

Abha Iyengar, A Travelling Life

She could only imagine it now. Darjeeling. Pondicherry. Kolkatta. Europe. Images flashed in front of her eyes. How she had loved movement, leaving one place for another, but always with Rahul. Sitting behind Rahul on his bicycle as they careered down the mountain roads, her navy blue pleated school skirt flying, showing her brown legs and red boxer shorts. Then in college on his bike, her printed long skirt lifted above her knees, riding astride without a care in the world. They travelled all over the country, never settling down.

At Pondicherry she had conceived her son and given birth to him in Kolkatta. Finally, she had opted to settle down but it was not for her. They had lost him to a monkey bite! A monkey had come to their verandah in the night and bitten her son to death.

“Come, Shona,” Rahul had said to her, his eyes mirroring her sorrow, “we shall travel again.” How hard Rahul had tried to cheer her, taking her across Europe for a holiday. So many flights, so much movement. But with the stone of sorrow sunk in her centre, she was immobile. Soon after their return to Kolkatta, Rahul left her. “I have to move on,” he said, giving her a last forlorn look. She had not followed him out.

Within a year she lost all feeling in her legs. Now, sitting on a wheelchair, she flew over her past every day, circling her life.

Abha Iyengar is a widely published poet and author who doesn’t let the term ‘genre’ faze her. She lives in New Delhi, India and loves travelling on foot and via her mind. Her flash fiction collection Flash Bites is available as an ebook on Amazon and Smashwords. More at her website and her blog.

~ ~ ~

Gus Simonovic, Kidnapped

And, once again, all the stars hide behind the horizon, and unite into one. Paint the dark sky into grey, red and blue. Restore the shapes of birds and the clouds. I open my wings and, in one snatch, I kidnap the morning. I cover you with my shadow, and we fly. Filled with lightness, free, frivolous. We fly, hand in hand, blindfolded by sunlight. We chat, we talk, we laugh, we are quiet. And you sing – we sing – to scare the night away. And I talk and we talk; we speak the same tongue, have the same fears. We talk ourselves into another day: friends, lovers, family. We play, we laugh, we tell the truth, we lie, we dream, we run, we promise, we lust, we fly… Away from that scary night, away…

Away?

When sun crashes over the hard-edge horizon and breaks up into the many stars, again. The darkness blinds me with a special kind of silence, one that bodes danger, muteness, that yells at me: “Talk, tell me: what were you saying behind my back?” Clouds fall heavy and I hear the whisper: “Give me your hand, I am good for you, I’ll light the candles, entertain you, tell jokes. I’ll take off my clothes and sprinkle my body with lightness, laughter, lust and promise. Remember me? Spread your wings, we can fly together!” I howl my wordless reply as I try to hide in the shadows of the birds.

Gus Simonovic is a performance poet and producer. Along with his own poetry collection, his work has been published in NZ and UK magazines and anthologies. In 2010 he created a spoken word show “iWas” and in 2011 released a 15-track poetry/music collaboration CD. He is a Poetry Slam winner and a regular guest poet at poetry events in Auckland and internationally. Gus is currently working on his new solo spoken-word show “Aotearoa – Lost in Translation”, as well as a new collaborative multimedia performance “Insomnia in a Daydream”. More at Printable Reality.

~ ~ ~

Sally Houtman, Two Flights Down

Every Saturday we go with Mama, take the bus to the three-storey house. We stay upstairs, Sophie and me, while Mama works. It’s our job to fold the washing. She brings us the basket filled with sheets, pillowcases, fluffy towels, warm from the dryer, smelling lemony and sweet. When Mama’s gone we play a game. We knot the sheets around our heads, drape our shoulders. We are angels, brides, fairies, sheiks, sometimes peacocks, the washcloths our tails. The house is big with white walls and a twisty marble staircase. We can hear Mama in the kitchen, rattle-clatter-clink, sounds echoing through the halls.

Sophie stands on the bed, arms outstretched. She flings the sheet and twists. She is a dancer, centre stage. Her dark hair hangs loose around her shoulders, lit by a skylight above. The room has cushy carpet, closets filled with boxes, dresses, shoes. I wonder what it would be like to have a cupboard just for handbags, a coat for every season. Sophie giggles. Downstairs I hear water running, metal clattering, woosh-klunk-splosh, Mama singing a gospel song.

We lie on the bed beneath mounds of linens, look up through the window. We are dolphins, Sophie and me, swimming in the white-capped waves. Sophie’s breath is warm against my neck. From two flights down I still hear Mama, laa-la-aah, her voice a cello-hum. I reach for Sophie’s hand, squeeze her fingers. It’s all I need, just Sophie’s breath and Mama’s singing and a perfect square of sky.

Sally Houtman is a Wellington writer. She began writing fiction and poetry in 2007 and threatens not to stop.

~ ~ ~

Townsend Walker, The Gun Wasn’t Hers

She hadn’t wanted it, but there it was on the seat beside her. For your protection, they’d said. Just in case.

She was driving I-90 from Seattle to Chicago. Running a package out for this guy she knew. A delicate instrument, he’d said – didn’t trust UPS. The pay was good and she was between gigs. Lots of empty country out there, they’d said. True. Miles of nothing but dirt and sky flying by.

Out past Billings, a rock hit the windshield. Shattered it. She jerked the wheel, nearly drove off the road. Where the hell did that come from? She slowed the car to a stop and sat there until her breathing got down to near normal. The sun caught hold of the edges of exploded glass, turning her windshield into a web of rainbow colors.

She couldn’t see driving far with a slivered windshield and had no clue where she was going to get a new one in this wasteland.

She looked around. In the rearview mirror, she saw something move – back alongside the road, by those loose rocks. Her stomach lurched. Grabbing the gun, she found the safety, clicked it off, then willed her legs out of the car, onto the pavement. Caffeine-alert, she walked down the road, scanning the horizon, hair whipping around her eyes.

But he wasn’t out there; he was behind her.

Townsend Walker is a writer living in San Francisco. His stories have been published in over fifty literary journals and included in six anthologies. One story won the SLO NightWriters story contest. Two were nominated for The O. Henry Award. Four were performed at the New Short Fiction Series in Hollywood. During a career in finance he published three books: foreign exchange, derivatives and portfolio management. His website is here.

~ ~ ~

Rebecca Simons, Nothing New

Frown deepening, she considered the top of his head. “If you don’t want to come, say.” He cleared his throat, raising eyes to focus on that spot just above her right shoulder – she hated it when he did that. “Well,” she demanded, insisting he meet her stare. His eyes flickered, briefly making contact before sliding back to the spread-out newspaper. She stood abruptly, bumping the table, and moved to the bench. Her back towards him, she poured more coffee. “I’m quite happy to go on my own, it might give me the chance to meet someone who actually wants to be with me.” The coffee pot thumped back down. “Honestly, I don’t care. Just let me know.” Four years of breaking up and making up marched wearily across her shoulders. She sat, pushing the newspaper aside with her free hand. He gave her that lost kitten look. She hated that too. After all those empty promises, the emotional yo-yoing, he could still make her feel like the bitch. She sipped the coffee, determined he speak next – it was cold. “Well,” he cleared his throat, eyes unfocused, “you know I’ve got to be here for the boys. I can’t just drop everything and go whenever.” She swallowed, anger familiar as his face, tracking bitter liquid. His eyes briefly met hers. She nodded, carefully placed the mug on the table and let go. She said, “You stay. I’ll go.”

~ ~ ~

Matt Potter, Move Over

I shoved the over-stuffed backpack into the locker overhead, slammed the door shut and looked the Singapore Airlines steward – medium-height, slim build, unlined expression – in the face. “I reserved this seat two days ago. I’m not fucking moving.”

The steward, bent towards the old woman in a velour leisure suit sitting in my seat, smiled. “You won’t have to.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I hate flying.”

“Isn’t Tyson swapping with me after we take-off?” the old woman asked. Her pale blue eyes, perhaps vacant, perhaps possessed, flickered, seeking assurance.

I looked past the steward’s shoulder – I hate anywhere but the steady middle of the plane, over the wing – down the aisle to the toilets. Three months travelling the US and Canada. Portugal and Spain. France. Belgium. The UK and Germany and the Czech Republic. Then fourteen more hours flying from Berlin and an eight-hour Singapore stopover. Six more hours and home.

I sighed. I also hate going home.

“You’re not in the right seat, Nana.”

I looked across inquisitive heads towards the other voice. Eight? ten? twelve? ferrety, pinched faces, three generations of new Thailand tans and I love Phuket t-shirts, looked over at Nana. A lottery win enjoyed by the whole family?

My fingers drummed on the headrest beside me.

“Oh dear,” Nana sighed. Her knees parted like the Red Sea and before our eyes, her lap turned dark and wet and spreading.

“You can have a seat in First Class,” said the steward.

I white-knuckled the whole way home.

Matt Potter is an Australian-born writer who keeps part of his psyche in Berlin. Matt has been published in various places online, his anthology Vestal Aversion was published earlier in 2012, and he is also the founding editor of Pure Slush. Find more of Matt’s work here.

~ ~ ~

Carolyn Smith-Masefield, Wings of Conscience

1.
The toilets were empty.

“How long we got, la?” His little suffix whispered against my ear. He rubbed against my hard on. I was his La, he’d told me, always at the end of his thoughts.

“Three days.”

He squealed. I froze. His forefinger circled my captain’s wings.

“Come, la.”

His breath caused tiny hairs to lift off – three days of him eclipsed 300 nights of the one-at-home.

“Where?”

“Four Floors of Whores, la.”

My mouth twisted up. Insidious city, its grey head in the world of business while its dimpled legs spread under the table.

We parted for our rendezvous in the sultry underbelly, his pleasure-seeking nose sniffing out 30 grams of white death, my treat.

2.
Cocooned in the belly, fuzzed by drink and erotic play, I missed him inhaling his nose-candy. I didn’t miss his slow drop to the floor, his hand flopping on my ankle. I didn’t miss eye whites… spittle flying… shuddering…

My feet flew me away beyond breathing. Gasping on a street corner, I reached for my phone.
“Harris? Look, been thinking. I’ll take the Bangkok hop in the morning.” My breath flew out.

3.
“Sir? Breakfast, la?” The suffix thudded against the door.

“Wait!!” Wrenching on pants, shirt, jacket… wings?! Realisation winded me, fear dripped down my face. He’d lifted them again, like always. They’d be pinned to him…

Think! New wings… Who’s on today… Harris! His locker, his wings!

My mouth spread, my eyes widened. Time to fly.

Caroyln Smith-Masefield writes for sanity, teaches for humanity, lives for equanimity, dresses for vanity but can rhyme with manatee.

~ ~ ~

Daphne Claire De Jong, Lunch with Dickinson

The old man looked sinister – ragged coat and equally ragged beard, watery deep-set eyes. When he claimed the other half of the park seat the young woman’s muscles gathered for flight. Stuffing her book and the rest of her sushi lunch into the roomy bag by her hip, she toppled it, spewing the book and plastic food box, followed by her keys and wallet, onto to the maltreated grass and damp earth at her feet.

As she grabbed her cellphone from the brink, righting the bag, the old man dived forward and snatched up her wallet.

She gave a gasping little scream, thinking Dial 111?

“Here.” Knobbed fingers with surprisingly clean nails handed her the wallet.

“Thank you.” Blushing, she recovered her keys and abandoned lunch while he rescued the book.

He straightened wheezily and gently wiped the mud-smeared pages. “Ah,” he said, “Emily Dickinson.”

“You know her?” Blinking.

“Intimately. He ate and drank her precious words/His spirit grew robust/he knew no more that he was poor/nor that his frame was dust…“

“He danced along the dingy days,” she cried. Then hesitated. “Do you like sushi?”

He gave a little bow, and dropped the proffered box into a large, drooping pocket of his coat. “You’re fond of Miss Dickinson?”

“Yes, but…” frowning at the page, “I don’t understand some lines.”

“Ah.” He held out his hand for the book. “Let’s see…”

She was late for her Eng. Lit class that day.

~ ~ ~

Sian Williams, On the Road to Damascus

Leaving his friends at the guesthouse, the young man walks into the desert.

On the treeless plateau the heat is intense, presses him down into the ancient sandstone. He squints into the glare and in the distance sees the glint of abandoned tankers on the highway and the greasy coils of the river. He walks downhill towards a gully, seeking shade. Further down he finds puddles and bulrushes – home to frogs, invisible birds, and, he suspects, snakes. The canyon rises imperceptibly around him. As he walks, the sky fades: blue, pink, apricot. The wadi twists and divides, labyrinthine now, the walls too steep to scale.

As the first stars pulse in the thin slice of sky above, he notices, on a high ledge, an eagle owl. Huge. Omnipotent. It turns its orange eyes on him and he is transfixed. He sees a ruler who knows no sin or salvation, neither good nor evil, only life and death. The owl spreads its wings as wide as the sky and takes flight. The young man drops to his knees and cowers in the reeds as it passes silently overhead, pulling the night behind it like a mantle.

Now he’s alone in the dark valley. Panic-stricken, disorientated, he stumbles over boulders, through bushes, into pools. Then, unexpectedly, the rock walls open out and in front of him lies the Euphrates: wide, slow, moving like oil under a perfect Muslim moon. And beside the river is the road – his way back to Birecik.

Sian Williams is editor at Flash Frontier. She is slightly obsessed with owls and once encountered an enormous eagle owl in a wadi in Turkey.

Michelle Elvy, The Fantail and the Blowfly, 1940

The Pied Fantail has shown up three days in a row. Mrs Morris can see it from the kitchen window. It comes at dinnertime, flits from branch to branch, then dives to the verandah and returns to its perch among the trees. A pīwakawaka, she’s heard it called. A messenger.

Mrs Morris makes soup. Supplies are scarce but she has onions and potatoes in the pantry. The fantail swoops again and plucks a blowfly out of mid-air. It’s a large meal for such a small bird. She thinks of her son, Elton. The last letter arrived weeks ago, when he was bound for Britain. He’d dreamed of flying since he was a boy. Now Europe seems impossibly far away. It will be getting cold there, just as her verandah is warming in the October sun. She wonders if he’s eating well, if he’s getting enough sleep. She wonders if they have fantails there.

She dices an onion. Her eyes water. She wipes them on the corner of her apron. The fantail is battering the blowfly now. He lets it go and it flies away, staggering, slowing. The fantail swoops again, grabs it in its claws and pecks wildly. The fly is torn piece by piece. It crashes to the verandah and the bird dashes to swallow the now bite-sized morsels.

The fantail flies back to its branch. Mrs Morris shivers.

She dices a potato. Her eyes water. She wonders where her boy will be flying at Christmas.

Michelle Elvy is founding editor at Flash Frontier. She recently found herself reading notes from the New Zealand Ornithological Society, housed in the Auckland Museum Library.

~ ~ ~

Please also see this month’s interview with Irish author Nuala Ní Chonchúir.

~ ~ ~

Coming in November: stories about eye contact.

Interview with Nuala Ní Chonchúir

Michelle Elvy — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 00:26:50 +0000

October 2012

This month, we had the honour of sitting down with Irish writer Nuala Ní Chonchúir for our special international issue of Flash Frontier. Poet, novelist and short story writer, Nuala has published her newest collection of short stories, Mother America, this year.

On language and form

FF: You were first published as a poet but you’ve diversified into short story and novel writing, and in all these forms, your writing stands out for its intensity, strength and passion which is handled with a delicate appreciation of language. Do you think this balance comes from being a poet first? Does poetry influence the way you go about writing short stories or even novels?

NNC: Certainly as someone who writes poetry I value concision in language and beauty. I was also brought up bilingual – English at home, Irish (Gaelic) at school – so I have always been steeped in language and asking questions of it. Language is hugely important to me as a writer and as a reader – I love those who take risks with language, I love stylists like John Banville and Annie Proulx. Kevin Barry is doing great things with Hiberno-English.

For my own writing, I like to use interesting language because, I feel, it adds richness. Having said that, plain language – like Hemingway’s – can be equally rich. I guess I value writers who take great care with words.

FF: In short story writing – and especially in flash fiction – the opening is critical. You pay a lot of attention to the way your stories open (and readers can see the careful opening of each of the stories in your collection Nude here). Do you think this is the most important part of the story?

NNC: The opening is the hook and it has to be arresting. I don’t like stories or novels with lots of preamble. As Jim Dickey said, “If the story is about a bear, bring on the damn bear.” I don’t think it’s the most important part of the story but a good opening is certainly crucial to keep the reader reading.

All my writing starts with an opening line that occurs to me, or swirls in my brain, until I get it down. I then see where the story will lead me. I usually have that, a vague notion of a character, and an even vaguer one of a situation (which often changes as things progress). So I don’t think in ideas, more in feelings. The idea (the story) comes as I write it.

FF: And what about titles (which you also do so well)? Do they come first or last or somewhere in the middle?

NNC: The title often comes very early, along with the opening paragraph. I don’t struggle with titles but I have to have the appropriate one for things to sit right. I sometimes tinker with them until they feel exactly right. I hate wishy-washy titles and try to avoid them. The title has to woo the reader – it’s as much a part of the story as any other part and writers would do well to give titles a lot of thought if they don’t occur to them easily.

On your short story collections, Nude and Mother America

FF: You open your story collection Nude (Salt Publishing 2009) with a quote from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing: “Nudity is a form of dress”. The stories in this collection paint nuanced colours of everyday people and their relationships, layered with rather extraordinary experience and emotion. So do you paint your characters nude, or are they intentionally clothed in layers for the reader to peel back?

NNC: I don’t mind what way readers unlock characters but I try not to be deliberately obscure or secretive, because, as a reader, that irritates me. Fiction is a temporal form so I place my characters in a section of time where something is going wrong for them and see how they cope. Literary readers are very clever and they can pick up on hints but it is probably better to just present your character as they are in a bad situation. I’m not a fan of twist in the tail stories, for example, where ‘all is not as it seems’ but in a really obvious way.

I love this quote from Kurt Vonnegut (while not entirely agreeing with the last bit of it…): “Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.”

FF: Your latest short story collection Mother America (New Island 2012) is about the connections and gaps that exist between people across generations and time and place. These stories travel the world just as do your poems of The Juno Charm (Salmon Poetry 2011). And while your stories and poems take your readers to so many places, you remain an Irish voice, as if these stories could not be written from any other hand. Do you feel first and foremost like an Irish writer, or an international writer?

NNC: This is a hard one. There’s a ‘thing’ in Irish writing (among critics?) whereby as an Irish writer, you are meant to represent your country in your writing. I am Irish and I feel very Irish but I don’t always want to write about Ireland or Irish people. I also feel very European; I go to Europe a lot. And I love America. (I am positive I will love the Antipodes when I make it there too!) I love travel and inevitably that comes out in the writing.

Some critics don’t know what to do with you if you don’t sound Irish or talk about Irishness all the time. It annoys me when critics make demands on writers, shoulding them about Celtic Tiger novels and, now, Recession Novels. Piss off! We can only write what we are moved to write.

Having said all that, I love writing about Irish people and places, and I love Hiberno-English and will continue to use it because it is what comes most naturally to me.

FF: Mother America has been met with much critical acclaim. Órfhlaith Foyle comments that in your stories “wishes for happy endings lead to fragile and transparent fates through which the past creeps back to take root.” Is it something in your own upbringing that makes this a trend in your stories, or is it more a deliberate plan to work those themes and make them speak to each other, and to your readers?

NNC: Like every writer (like every person) I have passions, interests, ambitions, obsessions, losses, experience. I am also melancholic so I am continually looking back to a lost past and trying to make sense of it and that comes out in the writing.

I like darkness but not utter gloom in stories, though. So I try to keep even a seed of hope in my stories.

FF: You read an excerpt from the story ‘Letters’ here, which is part of Mother America. Did you choose to read this story for the book trailer because it’s part Ireland and part America, a story that reaches across an ocean between people and their histories? How is it representative of this collection overall, even though it’s not the title story?

NNC: Yes, that was the idea. I called the book Mother America because I thought it was a strong title. All the stories feature mothers but not all are set in America. For the book trailer, I wanted something that hit both. There were a few too many f-words in the title story to use that!

I think ‘Letters’ represents the book in that it is about loss and misplacement and a broken mother-child relationship. The scene where Bridie tosses the letters out the window is an homage to a non-fiction scene from the writing of Maeve Brennan, an Irish writer who lived in New York. So there are a few things going on there.

FF: ‘Queen of Tattoo’ is one of those stories dealing with the difficult themes of power, sexuality, identity and bad roads taken – themes you tackle in a lot of your stories. For New Zealand readers, this story will particularly resonate, as the tattoo in Māori tradition is artwork and intricate storytelling, a display of identity and history. Those themes are prevalent in ‘Queen of Tattoo’ also. How did you come to this idea, and is there something about the tattoo artist that particularly fascinates you?

NNC: Yes, I’m kind of obsessed with tattoos, though I only have one myself. I had a poetry collection a few years ago called Tattoo – Tatú, and I have other tattoo stories. I’ve done a non-fiction piece on tattoos as body art too (unpublished as the mag that commissioned it never published it – grrrr.)

‘Queen of Tattoo’ was inspired by the old Groucho Marx song about Lydia the tattooed lady. I love that song and I decided to see if I could invent a life for Lydia. It was enormous fun to write.

On flash fiction and play and the meaning of birds

FF: Sometimes you are quite playful in you approach to POV, as in the story ‘Roy Lichtenstein’s Nudes in a Mirror: We Are Not Fake!’, first published at Everyday Fiction in 2008. How does a story like this come to you and how do you decide to take a particular point of view?

NNC: That one was totally about the voice – the voice came to me and went from there. That kind of story can feel like a gift because it’s like the character tells you the story and you write it down. It’s just occurred to me that I do a lot less obviously voice-driven stories these days, though it’s something I really enjoy.

FF: What’s most challenging about writing flash fiction? And what was specifically challenging about the story ‘One For’ that you wrote for this issue of Flash Frontier? Did it begin from something larger and become something trimmed down? Or did it start out as a 250-word story?

NNC: I wrote ‘One For’ for you! I was in a hotel in Cork when you asked me to submit something and I had seen a magpie on the roof that morning who looked like he was about to throw up. I love magpies – they have such presence – so I started with the bird and went from there; I was also thinking about a friend who recently lost a spouse. I knew the story had to be short so I envisioned it short.

As to what is challenging about flash, well, you have to move and/or surprise the reader and there’s only a certain amount of room. You also have to trust that the reader will get it. I like that flash fiction is amenable to the surreal – it works well in small spaces.

FF: You’ve noted that one of your heroines is Sylvia Plath and that symbols are important to you (and indeed Plath features not only in your poetry but also in your story ‘Cri de Coeur’ in Mother America). Two symbols that recur in your writing are the moon and birds (in your Flash Frontier story as well). Why are symbols so important for you, especially in the forms of poetry and short fiction? And are there particular Irish symbols that are meaningful to you, and why?

NNC: I think things become symbolic to you and, because they do, you carry them over into your writing. I (foolishly) think I am neither religious nor superstitious but I am clearly influenced by both. I was brought up super-Catholic and the church is chockers with symbols – I loved all that and still do: bleeding hearts, mournful statues holding arrows and olive branches, water into wine etc. It was the colourful aspect of an otherwise dull and frightening regime.

In terms of Ireland, we have a rich mythology complete with animal goddesses, emphasis on tripartite gods, fertility charms etc. I love the hare, I love peacocks, I love the moon; I love these things as things of beauty and I love how they can have meaning to a character, so I use them for their vivacity, for their colour.

On your personal connection to places and finding your voice

FF: You grew up in Dublin and now live in Galway. Can you tell us what is special about each of those places to you personally?

NNC: I had a very happy childhood in Dublin – I was a bookish tomboy in a big family, in a rural home-place but I went to the city centre for school and uni, so there were lots of enjoyable aspects to my growing up. I love Dublin’s compactness, grittiness, friendliness; I love its language. I use all that in my fiction, particularly in my novel YOU.

Galway has been many things to me: I became serious as a writer here (maybe I needed to leave Dublin to write it out); I married, divorced and re-married here; I’m raising my three kids here. But, in a sense, it has been an isolating place. It is not my real home and never will be, so I always feel temporary here, even after 16 years. Dublin beckons. I will go back.

FF: Your story ‘Peach’ was the winner of the Jane Geske Award and also nominated in 2011 for a Pushcart Prize (readers can hear you read from it here). Is this story in some way emblematic of your stories, a fair representation of what you try to achieve in short stories? What elements make this a ‘typical’ Nuala Ní Chonchúir story, if there is such a thing?

NNC: I rarely feel content with a story when it’s done but ‘Peach’ is one of the few that pleases me a little. The pace feels right, unhurried; I like Dominic’s haplessness.

I guess it’s a typical story for me in that it deals with broken love and a man whose default position is dread. An interviewer (male) asked me recently why my male characters are so unlikeable. I was taken aback – I think they are just struggling, like all of us. I have deep affection for my characters because they are flawed not in spite of that. My women are probably equally ‘unlikeable’ in that I don’t write about boring people with boring lives. There would be no point then, no story.

FF: You credit a fiction writing course with Mike McCormack with the turning point for you, back in 1998, when you decided to become a serious writer. Has your writing changed since then? And, given the long and worthy tradition of Irish storytelling, is it easier or harder for an Irish writer today to follow in the footsteps of Joyce, O’Connor et al?

NNC: My writing has changed. I have tried to slow down a bit (I’m always in a bit of a hurry, it’s a personality trait). I have learnt so much over the years from reading other writers and I continue to learn. That’s why I love lit fests – they are an education.

Yes, every Irish writer is inevitably sized up against all our great writers, it’s unavoidable. A reviewer said recently that I was “carrying Edna O’Brien’s flame” which was very pleasing as I have worshipped at the altar of Edna since I was a teenager. I love the writing of most of our greats and it is nice to be in their company, in whatever small way.

FF: What do you like most in short stories? Who are some of your favourite short story writers, and why? And what about flash fiction? Who are some of your favourite flash writers and why?

NNC: When done well, short stories can be sublime, achingly gorgeous. I love Alison MacLeod, particularly her story ‘The Heart of Denis Noble’; such an elegantly written, moving and original story. I loved Ron Rash’s collection Burning Bright. I cringed and spoke out loud to his characters who were all brilliant wrong-decision makers. Beautifully done. I love Sarah Hall’s collection The Beautiful Indifference – such command of language, such tension. Caitlin Horrocks, Anthony Doerr, Flannery O’Connor, Annie Proulx, John McGahern…

Flash: I love the writing of Tania Hershman (concise, surreal, funny, moving), Nick Parker (funny, off-the-wall), Ivor Cutler (the original short-short maestro), Jim Crace (writes brilliantly about food), Robert Olen Butler (postcards, beheadings, post-coital thoughts – the man is a true maverick who can write anything and make me believe it).

On home and habits

FF: In another interview you mention things that you collect that clutter your writing desk – lucky pennies, things you’ve found on the beach, a paperweight. Are you a superstitious person? Do you have any rituals that accompany your writing or publishing? And do you believe in the luck of the Irish?

NNC: You see, I think I’m not superstitious but why do I collect this stuff? Why do I rub Buddha’s belly every morning? I like charms, talismans, stuff. I guess they are something to fill the religion hole…

As to rituals, I do like to surround myself with things relevant to what I am working on. So for my novel Highland, which is as yet unpublished, I have beach-combed bits from a Scottish beach, the aforementioned paperweight etc. For my novel YOU I made a collage to draw positivity towards the book (it sounds mad when I say that aloud…).

The luck of the Irish? I think we’re lucky that we have a rich literary heritage and that people are literate and like reading. I think we’re lucky that publishers are approachable in Ireland and we have a small scene. (There are downsides to that too, of course!) I think we’re lucky that there is an academic discipline called Irish Studies.

FF: What are you reading this month?

NNC: I have about ten books on the go. I’m reading Silver Threads of Hope a new anthology of short stories by Irish writers in aid of the suicide charity Console. I have another tattoo-related story in it called ‘Squidinky’. I am re-reading Angela Bourke’s fab bio of Maeve Brennan, Homesick at the New Yorker. I am also enjoying Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner’s short story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth. I’m reading Bishop, Chekhov and Scottish author Dilys Rose. I’m reading the current issues of Five Dials and Mslexia. I read a lot.

FF: What are you writing this month?

NNC: This month I am writing a short story set in Brazil where I have recently been. And another one about a man meeting his son for the first time. I am also working up the courage to throw myself into another novel. It is proving difficult. Procrastinators ‘r’ us.

And finally…

FF: Travel is important to you both personally and professionally – and we’ve already seen how your collections such as Juno and Mother America take the reader to many places, from Paris to New York, from Ireland to Mexico. In another recent interview here you say: “There are other places I would like to set stories but I would like to visit them, to get a proper feel – Russia, for example. The Antipodes.” So we wonder: which New Zealand authors leave an impression, and why? And do tell us, Nuala, when are you coming to Aotearoa, and will you please stop in and pay us a visit when you do?

NNC: Keri Hulme – I read The Bone People as a teenager and was blown away. I wanted to live in that house.

Janet Frame – I loved her trio of memoirs; she was extraordinary.

Witi Ihimaera – I met Witi recently at the Cork Short Story Festival. I had read Whale Rider and loved it. He’s a gorgeous person, warm and sweet and funny.

Alan Duff – Once Were Warriors is a powerful, painful novel. A friend who lived in Australia sent me that when it came out. Jake the Muss lives on in my head.

Charlotte Grimshaw – she writes masterful short stories. I’ve met her too – I was on the jury that short-listed her for the Frank O’Connor Award the first time she was shortlisted, for Opportunity.

Katherine Mansfield – of course! We studied her in school and I came back to her recently.

I would travel to NZ in a heartbeat. My son has family there so it is something we have on the cards for when we are rich. I have been very fortunate with the invitations I have received to travel with my writing and I am hopeful that someday New Zealand will enter that mix. You’ll be the first to know!

Thank you, Nuala Ní Chonchúir, for the interview this month.

For Nuala Ní Chonchúir’s story ‘One For’ which opens our international October ‘flight’ issue, please go here.

Flash Frontier

April 2013: HIGH TIDE

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FLASH FEATURES

April 2013

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Tim Heath, Hydrangeas (June 2012/ HOLD MY HAND)

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Leah McMenamin, Wanderings (June 2012, THE ROAD)

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Elizabeth Farris, Afternoon Tea (April 2012/ AFTER THE PARTY)

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Mike Crowl, Scropian (September 2012/ TURN THE PAGE)

February 2013: TRAVEL

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Interview with Sally Houtman

February 2013

On work habits and influences

Dec 2012 /Jan 2013: THE GIFT

Janneen Love lives and paints and works in Auckland.

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Interview with Tina Shaw

Dec 2012/ Jan 2013

On growing up and viewing the world

November: EYE CONTACT

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**On w*ork habits and influences***