I Remain Indoors by Gary Cummiskey

At last some
sunshine, but still
I remain indoors

Julmust

Jag flyttade till Sverige
för kärlek men
jag stannade i Sverige
för julmusten.

The History Of The Kota, Gatsby And Bunny Chow

Eusebius Mckaiser spoke to food anthropologist  Anna Trapido and Historian  Vashna Jagarnath about the history of the Kota and how food is linked to politics.

cherry bomb: 0047

New Poems by Gary Cummiskey

Six new poems by Gary Cummiskey published in US online literary journal Empty Mirror.

Victoria Williams: 0320

Texts I have sent, No.3

WHATSAPP GIRL

Her blue ticks
hang in cliques.

Birth Of The Cool

EyeI by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0319

Texts I have sent, No.2

My Wife And Bunny Chows

"The bunny chow is without doubt one of my favourite dishes in the world. I’ve spent – some would argue “wasted” – a great deal of my life thinking deeply and arguing fiercely about this simple yet elegant culinary masterpiece consisting of white bread and curry – which is somehow greater than the sum of its parts."

On The Physical Death Of 'The Times' by Carlos Amato

"About two years ago, the circulation of The Times overtook that of The Star, which had been Joburg's biggest English-language newspaper for much of a century. For a paper less than a decade old, with a staff much smaller than the Star's, this was a spectacular feat."

Collages by Gary Cummiskey

12 new collages by Gary Cummiskey.

Victoria Williams: 0318

I forgot what was happening to you,
Sometimes I succeeded in forgetting and sometimes I had to work at it,
When I got home my boots were full of your fingernails

Getting Ahead

"The boy came up to Niren and stood next to him at the pinball machine. He must have been around ten or eleven and was still dressed in his school uniform. Niren glanced down at him."

Honeymoon

From Centuries Of Passage by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0317

I view the day outsiderly
I look at things outsiderly,
All day until the evening when,
I slip back into your mind again.

What Does Your Choice of Bunny Chow Say About You?

"Who needs Jungian archetypes when you can have Bunnyian archetypes? Are you more chicken bunny than broad beans bunny? And what does your preference say about you? The Con’s resident bunny chow scholar, Pravasan Pillay, continues his long-term study of this iconic South African street food."

Meet Me In Maoriland

The Adoration Of The Magi by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0316

When my legs are next to your ears,
What can you hear?
What my knees tell you,
I have the satisfaction of never knowing

Whose Record Is It Anyway?

"Legendary UK Radio DJ, the late John Peel used to play Zimbabwe’s The Bhundu Boys on his shows. A lot. Throughout the mid-80s, their jit-jive would appear alongside Mancunians The Fall’s post-punk and Einstürzende Neubauten’s German industrial noise."

Watch Out, Billy Boy! by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0315

Bread Pudding

In Search of Lost Time by Niren Tolsi

"Grahamstown is a madeleine cake. A sleepy student town where its history as a centre for English colonial expansion in the Eastern Cape remains apparent on its streets, and in its architecture — in its material, physical and social structures."

Adrian Manning: A Poetic Microcosm

"Adrian Manning is an English poet and micro-publisher. He has had a number of chapbooks published, including Wretched Songs For Out of Tune Musicians, Down At The Laundromat, Bring Down The Sun (with Henry Denander), These Days, Days Like This (with John Dorsey) and 13 Poems from the Edge of Extinction. His poems have been published around the world and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the founder of Concrete Meat Press, a micro-press that publishes poetry broadsides and chapbooks. He lives in Leicester, England."

I'm Just Kinda Frugal

When I'm in South Africa I buy Med Lemon
sachets to bring back with me to Sweden.
It's my tried and tested cold medicine.
But sometimes I get anxious as the expiration
date on my Med Lemon approaches and I
haven't used it all up yet.
What a waste of this precious citrus-flavoured
paracetamol, I think to myself. Then I go out
and ask folk on the subway to cough in my face.
It's not a sex thing, I promise them if they object.
I'm just kinda frugal.

Wooranda: The Jekyll And Hyde Of Fritters

"Goolgoolas are one of those staples of Hindu prayer-time that I have a soft spot for."

Harafinso

Ridin' the spheres by Gary Cummiskey

Q&A With Trade Secrets Contributor Pravasan Pillay

"Pravasan recently chatted to Joanne Hichens, curator of the Short.Sharp.Stories Award, about his interest in pulp fiction, trickster folklore and why Chatsworth is the only place he’s interested in writing about."

U.G. Sato

ODE TO A YO-YO

Shall I compare thee to a fidget spinner?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buys of May,
And summer’s trends hath all too short a date.
But thy eternal rotations shall not fade,

Try For The Sun by Gary Cummiskey

The Tramp: Illustrated by Gary Cummiskey

The Remaking of the Comrades Marathon by Kate Janse Van Rensburg

"At 5:30am on June 4 more than 20 000 women and men, people from all walks of life, will meet before dawn at the Durban City Hall to be part of this year’s Comrades Marathon. When they set off on the 86.7 kilometre run to Pietermaritzburg they will become part of one of the great events in world sport."

Still At Breakfast by Gary Cummiskey

Dolly

Lukka

Lekker
vs.
Lukka

Thanks Vickie!

The Whole Family Can Play This Game by Gary Cummiskey

Internet Sentences: 0068

"You okay hun
Pm me"

Mukhwas

Bridge

Talk To You by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0114

cherry bomb: 0046

Ranjith Kally And I by Rafs Mayet

"Growing up in the Sixties, I first began to know of Ranjith Kally through his work in The Post, a Durban newspaper, as well as in Drum magazine. Back then, he was among a group of Durban-based news photographers who became local household names: people like GR Naidoo, Moosa Badsha, Mickey Padayachee, Gopal Narainsamy, Ralph Johns and, later on, MS Roy, Morris Reddy and Steven ‘Even’ Naidoo."

Out For The Night by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0113

The Remaking Of The Comrades Marathon by Kate Janse Van Rensburg

"At 5:30am on June 4 more than 20 000 women and men, people from all walks of life, will meet before dawn at the Durban City Hall to be part of this year’s Comrades Marathon. When they set off on the 86.7 kilometre run to Pietermaritzburg they will become part of one of the great events in world sport."

Short Story "The Fence" in New Contrast

I Ain't Gonna Let No-one Steal My Jellyroll by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0112

Fish guarding an egg

Victoria Williams: 0314

What’s your favourite colour?
I don’t have one – that’s racist.

Tacos

Like Brown Fire by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0111

Home Square

I am in a box

Pitching to left and right between the parking and the garden

Sounds carry through of an engine

Much more powerful than mine and I mime it:

Big fat man behind the wheel

Shouldering other passengers in traffic

Someone’s baby is yawping, crying

Like a Loerie who lived by the house I've just left.

The Future

‘The Libertarian Lenin’ 100 Years On: A May Day Reflection by Nigel Gibson

"Cognition not only reflects the objective world, but creates it. - Vladimir Lenin".

A Corporate Sell-out (Real Girls) by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0110

Dream

I’m going to an ice rink. Walk in the doors and change near a slightly run down display. I have long red hair and a black fake fur jacket, and a short white skirt. I’m shorter than usual. Something stops me initially from getting onto the ice and I walk on the fringes with my skates on. No hiring, I had them with me. Then I’m on the ice and realise I have no fear of speed, that when I go powerfully fast I remember an assurance and brilliance from some other life. I purposely head towards and scale walls with the lightness and strong momentum, I reach out for greater speed, I made rapid turns and stretch across the ice, and it’s not like figure skating or any skating, it’s just access to pure and perfect speed and control without control. I keep losing my phone, my phone is clearly important to me. I’m recording myself singing in between rushes of skating, and at times the battery falls out and the phone skips onto the ice and I chase it, digging it up with my fingernails because here, it could go through the ice and be lost forever.

Ketchup

The Gentrification Equation

“Look at the road you’re standing in”, says 27-year-old Yusuf Toefy. “You see barber shops, you see fish and chips eateries, you see clothing stores. Now remember how this place looks and come back in a few years’ time. This road is not going to look the same”.

When The Deal Goes Down by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0109

Lemon And Herb

Manichean Delirium by Richard Pithouse

"The Damned of the Earth was published at the end of that year, shortly after his death. It was immediately banned by the French state. Often read as heresy or prophecy rather than analysis the book was, simultaneously, a brilliant and electric critique of the colony and a driving and frequently scathing critique of the gangrenous degeneration of what has since come to be called the postcolony. It offered compelling legitimation to the anti-colonial forces in Algeria, across Southern Africa, in Vietnam, and elsewhere, as well as a forceful warning to these struggles. Its vision is both stereoscopic and, given its strong sense of movement and change, and the articulation of ideas to experience, fundamentally dialectical."

Beginning Onward by Gary Cummiskey

Long List For Trade Secrets

Thank you to every writer who entered a story for this year's Short.Sharp.Stories Awards anthology, TRADE SECRETS.
The standard was generally high this year which is good news. It means writers expressed care and thought about the theme, and requirements, but also spent time polishing their work more thoroughly in order to give stories the best possible chance to elicit positive responses. As is inevitable, a number of noteworthy stories and stories with great potential could not be accommodated as part of the Long List. Thank you again to every entrant. The next part of the process will be to choose the twenty stories which will make up the Short.Sharp.Stories - National Arts Festival Awards Burnet Media 2017 anthology, TRADE SECRETS, to be published June/ July.
Long List
Alex Smith
Andrew Salomon
Andiswa Kula
Anna Hug
Amy Heydenrych
Bobby Jordan
Christine Coates
Cynthia Kristasamy
Darrel Bristow-Bovey
Duncan Rodseth
Frieda-Marie De Jager
Jo-Ann Bekker
Jumani Clarke
Kamil Naiker
Kerry Hammerton
Linda Daniels
Megan Ross
Michael Yee
Mapule Mohulatsi
Mishka Hoosen
Mmabatho Mathope
Ntsika Gogwana
Olufemi Agunbiade
Pam Newham
Patricia Crain
Philip Vermaas
Philisiwe Twijnstra
Pravasan Pillay
Sally Ann Murray
Sally Partridge
Sean Mayne
Sinovuyo Mcunukelwa
Tim Murithi
Yasthiel Devraj

Eva Jackson: 0108

Nacka

Another Saturday Night by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0313

Sitting in the library, and I don’t think that my efforts to surreptitiously undo the top button on my jeans are going unnoticed…

Eva Jackson: 0107

Racism And Academic Philosophy In South Africa

"Mabogo P. More, the eminent philosopher, won major international recognition in the form of the Frantz Fanon Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. Last month he entered the debate that has followed the eruption of acute racial tensions in the Philosophical Society of South Africa with a response to an earlier intervention by Rafael Winkler. Philosophy is not the only discipline that confronts what seem to be unbridgeable divides. A number of senior academics have declared their refusal to publish in or collaborate with the official Political Science journal and significant tensions are brewing elsewhere. In the interests of giving more space to the critique of the racism entrenched in parts of the South African academy The Con has decided to publish the full version of More’s response to Winkler. More has recently completed two new books, one on Biko as philosopher and the other on More’s own experiences as a black philosopher in South Africa. We look forward to publishing excerpts from both of these books when they are published."

Rock Me Baby by Gary Cummiskey

I Am Your Boyfriend’s Lover by Anonymous

"I am the deleted messages on his cell phone. I am his late nights and early mornings. I am the plans with you that he cancels. I am sometimes the smile on his face, sometimes the aching guilt that makes him seem distant to you. I am your boyfriend’s lover."

Eva Jackson: 0106

A Chatsworth Smorgasbord

Pravasan Pillay samples a selection of food from some of Chatsworth’s takeaways, restaurants and market stalls.

Won't You Come On Over, Valerie? by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0312

Toffee is my chewing gum. #LivingDangerously

Snobben, Kom Hem

Capitalism, Fascism, The Future

‘To stand with the world at your feet’- Capitalism, Fascism, The Future.

Glad To Be Unhappy by Gary Cummiskey

Eva Jackson: 0105

Hot Chillis

Essential Music From A Shitty Year

Lloyd Gedye scans 2016’s musical landscape and, in between the grave-stones of David Bowie, Prince, Mandoza and Leonard Cohen, picks 21 albums that made the year just a little bit better.

Eye In The Sky by Gary Cummiskey

Victoria Williams: 0311

Advice on your third birthday:
I would sweetly bring him all the open and mostly full cans of alcohol I’d taken a sip of and not liked, and in return he would hold the can in his lap, lean back in his chair and squint, and tell me: You don’t get through life by never meaning anyone any harm. 

Bananas

The Meaning Of John Berger

"John Berger, who died on January 2, turned 90 in November last year. A Jar of Wild Flowers (Zed Books), a collection of essays written by his friends and artistic collaborators in celebration of Berger, and edited by Yasmin Gunaratnam and Amarjit Chandan, was published at the time — as a present to this singular poet, art critic, writer, filmmaker and humanist.  The Con publishes Chandan’s essay on The Meaning of Berger from the collection. The Long White Thread (Smokestack Books), a collection of poetry written for Berger, was also released at around that time."