Eva Jackson: 0064

Google Earth

The paddling pools are like the mandelbrot
Set. The waves are finished rendering, they just look
Like that, fragmented as the foam overlaps
And the piers cut out into the sea.
The swells are truly regular. Truthful
Indented like a net over which
A CGI/satellite skin is laid of photographed
Constructed low dimples for drowning.

Victoria Williams: 0225

Today is cancer Friday. Light up.
Can you now get cancer from sex?
Not sex in general, but sex with you possibly.

Internet Sentences: 0030

I hope i can trust you with
I hope i can trust you with

Source: Junk Mail

Impulse by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0063

We are two tightrope walkers

We are two tightrope walkers
On either side of – a string – a pole – a solid wall – a filament.
It shudders from state to state, it protects
From mosquitoes

cherry bomb: 0030

Victoria Williams: 0224

When you think, I mean when you hear your own voice in your head, does it have a lisp?
I couldn’t help over-reading your text conversation... how come you don’t text with a lisp?
Ok, I’m sorry for being mean. I got picked on a lot in high school.

New Title From Dye Hard Press: Off-ramp by Gary Cummiskey

Off-ramp is the debut short fiction collection of Gary Cummiskey and consists of ten stories often characterised by a surreal eroticism. Set mainly in contemporary South Africa, the book opens with a young man’s hallucinatory encounter with a derelict in a Johannesburg street; there is a couple’s visit to a sinister Free State farm; an editor who reluctantly agrees to meet an aspiring woman writer at midnight; two young men who go out on a drinking spree as the country teeters on civil war; a restless teenager who stalks an unknown woman; and a middle-aged academic who engages in an obsessive, sadistic relationship with a prostitute.

The stories in this startling collection offer a vision of individuals who are slowly being devoured by paranoia and absurdity. Beyond the off-ramp lies a pervasive, heavy dread and an unnameable, perhaps unknowable fear. Cummiskey creates an off-kilter reality that is both disturbing and compelling.

140 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-9869982-3-2
Estimated retail price: R145.00

Keep On Riding by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0062

Visit

I stood naked and the dog
Came to me in the shower,
Having snapped its chain
Pulling tail behind like a fan.
The dog
Who gamed gamely with other dogs
But was not permitted to go loose
Because it was a she, an avid she
Capable of straining until the links holding her to the bench
Opened begrudgingly and she split.

cherry bomb: 0029

Victoria Williams: 0223

The ruins of a poem,
Sand sweeps in,
I’ll see her wearing beads on her brow,
A crown of silver discs,
We’ll clean out the palace.
Him destined to wait,
Me destined to pine,
Mr. Marshall even though,
You’re nearly 100,
You’ve still left a girl,
Staring an asp in the face,

Max Moodley: 0074

The Dream Continues by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0061

Eat

Cheese and fish are notorious bedfellows.
This floor is washed constantly, like Lady Macbeth’s hands, it’s
fine.
Learn to be patronising, it’s a very useful skill.
Pick it up off the floor and eat it.

cherry bomb: 0028

Victoria Williams: 0222

Dear J,
I’ve been watching Burnt by the Sun. The piano is a very important character in the film, as it has been in all of our lives. Mitya, the pianist is loquacious but it’s the music he plays that is often the subtext of a scene. There are also many shots of the back of people’s heads. It’s rather like The Odyssey in that Mitya returns to his master’s home 10 years after being exiled and finds someone else married to his love. He too is disguised as an old man. There are also burning orbs that appear throughout the film – they resemble little suns. I still don’t quite understand them – I think they’re alluding to a certain kind of cosmology where underlying human feelings are played out in the atmosphere.
Anyway Pete has a bacterial infection on his lip. We’re not supposed to kiss on the mouth, which doesn’t leave us with many options. Or am I not being imaginative enough?
Write back quicker than last time. People in olden times could spend half their lives waiting for letters you know.

Max Moodley: 0073

Boogie-woogie by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0060

Ride from Pidurangala

Vehicles in the dark, in the parkland
At roadside, lights blazing, lines of people
Homes away from home, stopping at Buddhas
Behind glass like gracious Sleeping Beauty
To bless them at festival.
Rice paddy sits still on its own, in the nearly dark
You can imagine sinking your feet into it while the
Party continues and the white flowers cluster in the bush.
We run along the train track in the night.
The balla (dog) is always nursing itself and sensitive to love.
It will curl in the middle of the dirt road, black, or growl
With friends at a wandura (monkey) at an ancient site.
Some of the dogs have little nips taken out of their backs
In a fight with another one. They protect their friends and cultivate their enemies.
The bells are ringing – it is a train.
A man standing in the dark leaning to one side looks like a clenched fist
His shirt stripes are veins and wrist, his shoulders knuckles.

cherry bomb: 0027

Victoria Williams: 0221

[SCRAPBOOK: January 9th 1349: Suspected of causing bubonic plague, the entire Jewish population of Basel, Switzerland is incinerated.]