Drawing 2 by Gary Cummiskey

Drawing 1 by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0049

I think my whole family may have been murdered by Welshmen, or eaten by bats or something. I knew it was going to be a bad day yesterday when I woke up exhausted instead of alert. I forgot my list of chores; I did everything in the wrong order; I got in a temper and tipped a bucket of dirty water over myself; I cursed myself and I cursed my life. And then the whole day turned sourer and nobody answered their phones when I called them. I used to be told frequently that if you think bad thoughts, bad things will happen to you, and to all those who claim this is not true I say, ‘Where’s your proof buddy?’ I can’t believe my family have run away together and I may have to live here for the rest of my life and take care of the tomato plants and this weird menagerie. I’m kind of touched that they thought I’d be responsible and benevolent enough to do that but the thing is I’m NOT.

Short Story by Anton Krueger and Pravasan Pillay In A Look Away 14

"The Dishwasher Woman", a short story by Pravasan Pillay and Anton Krueger, appears in Issue 14 of A Look Away.

Extract

“I spent two hours in there before my uncle Chei Pheakdei found me. He was so cross with me I can tell you! And he expressly forbade me to wash any more dishes. But, it had been my first taste. And that was enough to get me started.”

Adolescence 2 by Ashley Jewnarain

Cripple Songololo Stew by The Litchis

The songololo lies inside
the baking tin.
Ma tends the fire with a stick
and paraffin.

Sister chops onions while
Pa pours the oil.
Songololo retreats within
its black coil.

It begins to fry and surrenders
its legs.
Ma finishes it off with a scrape
of nutmeg.

The meal won't be tasty but
it'll be good.
For once I'm done eating
I'll walk as I once could.

Victoria Williams: 0048

Nowadays I like to comb my hair perfectly straight and have people address me as Miss Williams. I have been known to wear a tie. In the mornings (don’t even ask how I spent my mornings before all this) I get up, make black coffee and drink it while I deal with my correspondence. I smoke a well-known brand of cigarettes – mainly for show – and my typing is fast, lucid and error-free. Why isn’t all this making me happy?

Later: I just don’t think there is room in my life for David Bowie anymore, and that may be the key… I’ve been thinking carefully, and I’d quite like to have my hair cut short and spiky and dyed red – and thus renounce all structures and conventions of my current lifestyle. But I don’t trust hairdressers and it won’t be easy to find one who’ll understand this very special request.

Up Close With Anton Krueger

Adolescence by Ashley Jewnarain

Sunnyside Sal Reviewed by Mick Raubenheimer

[Deep South Publishing]

Teenhood is a strange place, twilit and melancholy, filled with slow mists of lament, nightmares in the mirror, and the heady whiff of future sex. It is an awkward space in which we begin to invent our future selves. It is also intrinsically mythic, with more than a touch of magic in the air. This, perhaps, is why pop music is so obsessed with the place, why it haunts literature and above all poetry. It is a space of giant romance and infinite kitsch, cliche’ as big as the sky and every bit as subtle and touching.

Highly respected playwright, musician and all-round man of words, Anton Krueger, has written an ode to a friend, and to a friendship which which took shape in this peculiar, rambling kingdom of teenhood. Sunnyside Sal perfectly captures the mystical innocence and arbitrary mythologies, the silly and immensely important codes and secret languages of the best of teenage friendships. Beginning in South Africa’s eighties, the crude giant of Apartheid approaching its fall, it is also a bazaar of loud cultural clashes - above all that between the sensitively personal and the mass-produced social. Dope and khaki, bright freedom and obtuse suppression, the disrupting gift which is the discovery of girls.

A slim, elegantly written thing, Sunnyside Sal is a labour of love honed by fine craftsmanship. It is also, in a more distant way, a study of how relationships and lives ebb, how people sometimes lose themselves in themselves, never to return - roughly two-thirds along, Mr. Krueger becomes more explicit in his gaze, and for a disruptive period seeks to analyse his friend, and uneasily drags brute life into the supplety of his fiction. His reasons for doing so are deserved, and, indeed, his own, but it does detract from an otherwise gracefully woven fiction. Time well spent between pages.

[originally published in Muse magazine]

Max Moodley:0005

They say that religion should be kept out of school. I'm of the opinion that school should be kept out of school.

Victoria Williams: 0047

Nicholas has stopped by and shared with me some Russian proverbs – and I will quote one here for the first time of probably many – “Without the flour, there can be no science.” Brief conversation ensued.

Nicholas is wearing his stomach like a skirt these days; it hangs down around his knees (and gently ripples in the wind). I can’t help but wonder when it was that he last saw his penis. And I can’t help but think that the lack of light and air can’t be doing it any good. And I wonder if one day it might shrivel up and drop off, like – I’m going to say it – like, autumn leaves.

(And now I’m wondering if I’ve ever in fact seen a movie, or read a book, or dreamt about dying penises shrivelling up and dropping off, and also turning black like ink, and rotting. Because I’m pretty sure I have, and if anyone else is experiencing déjà vu at this point, let me know.)

Croaks

He creaks when he sleeps then he croaks.

Bronze-Age Memes

Bronze

First published on McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Green Dragon 2 Available As Free E-Book

Green Dragon 2, published by Gary Cummiskey's Dye Hard Press in 2003 and now out of print, contains poetry and prose by Daniel Abdul-Hayy Moore, Allan Kolski Horwitz, Paul Wessels, Sumeera Dawood, Kobus Moolman, Gus Ferguson, Richard Fox, Aryan Kaganof, Alan Finlay, Philip Hammial, Joop Bersee and Arja Salafranca.

It is available as a free e-book HERE

Max Moodley: 0004

I married a snake when I was 19. One of the presents we received at the wedding was a set of monogrammed "His & Hiss" bathrobes.

Victoria Williams: 0046

I thought tonight I might receive an apology and I have waited and waited and this is it. I have had enough of this whole situation. I want it torn up and reconstructed. I want a confrontation and then a long embrace. And I want some un-stupid friends who know what I want and when.

Quoted by Danielle Naidoo

"I will be quoted at least once in my life."

Review of Sunnyside Sal by Anton Krueger

Sharing particles: Anton Krueger, author of Sunnyside Sal, in conversation with Janet van Eeden. Read it HERE