NEW PAPERS 1
Reid Williams (contributor: ‘August Poem’)
Gabrielle Sicam (contributor: ‘He Oils The Cogs’)
Henry Woodland (contributor: ‘New Norwood Scale’)
August Lamm (contributor: ‘Word Count’)
Paris J.B. Reid (contributor: ‘Ghost Story’)
Gabrielle Sicam (contributor: ‘He Oils The Cogs’)
Henry Woodland (contributor: ‘New Norwood Scale’)
August Lamm (contributor: ‘Word Count’)
Paris J.B. Reid (contributor: ‘Ghost Story’)
I lost my pleasures some time ago. The world is kind to me; I have nothing to offer in return.
I’ve adopted idle paranoias. To get closer to belief. I’m afflicted by obscure infections, and I must phone the clinic. I’ve left the oven on… and the lamp without a shade. One or the other is likely to set the apartment ablaze the moment I’m out. My clothes and linens are filthy: I’m doing laundry again. I need to fumigate my home today, to buy a kit crowded with toxicity warnings — the kind you find in the vitrine at the drugstore — and eliminate any possibility of a furtive mold.
The radio whirs. I listen to the static. Somewhere far off a male voice assures me, “You are already protected.” In the corner of the room, a slight white spider sits equably upon its web. The encyclopedia extols the virtues of the spider’s presence as not simply innocuous but apparently salutary, deterring more deleterious peers from moving in.
For the third time this morning I’m getting dressed. I crumple two extra shirts into my beaten leather bag, an article passed through the family that, owing to my negligence, could no longer be described as “well-kept” but could, perhaps, masquerade as “well-loved.” It’s not: only well-worn, overburdened by trifles, slowly coming loose. Yet the thought of loving unto disintegration seems more defensible than wearing down, gradually, devoid of intensity or possession.
I’m aware it’s unlikely I’ll change. Into a different shirt. Regardless, I take them with me, in case of an elemental shift: I have to stay out for five hours while the chemicals subside, and it’s plausible enough that my present outfit could begin to irritate me.
“What would happen,” the voice asks, “if you lived in a universe of infinite support?”
I unplug the radio and watch the clock’s limegreen digits die.
I once went to a man’s house and his whole room was empty except for a round bed in the centre. An island: luxuriant, entirely adrift. The scene disturbed me.
Observing my silence, he prodded, “What do you think?”
I blinked, twice, and said to him, “You seem like a man who has been frustrated.”
This pleased him, of course.
I come home late — later than necessary — and open the windows. An acrid scent lingers. I notice the cautionary pyrocumulus cloud and the sterile if emboldened warnings on the canisters. I dispose of them. The web billows in the cross-breeze; its vacant threads weigh on me. But it’s not the first time that I have respected something and nonetheless allowed it to perish. The bed is disassembled, still: the mattress stripped and the skirt of the box-spring at its feet. Keening, my sheets hang to dry in disarray, not yet promoted to the order of the closet.
I understand the scene to be tragic.
I check the stove and turn off the lamp.
Abandoning the stage of the bedroom decisively, I lie down in the centre of the floor. The air of nightfall converges with the faintly noxious particles inside. The admixture settles on the surface of the hardwood like a thin coat of ice. My sacrum itches.
Discomforts might be tried. Perhaps they were only circumstantial, contingencies. Or perhaps they were pleasures. Unplumbed. And we could have emerged rich and free of reservation.
I’m getting closer to sleep, already chilled, and in pain. I believe I’ll become very sick someday, and the clothes I wear will fray and unravel, and those I don’t will rot from disuse, and the final fire will warm my hands.
I’ve adopted idle paranoias. To get closer to belief. I’m afflicted by obscure infections, and I must phone the clinic. I’ve left the oven on… and the lamp without a shade. One or the other is likely to set the apartment ablaze the moment I’m out. My clothes and linens are filthy: I’m doing laundry again. I need to fumigate my home today, to buy a kit crowded with toxicity warnings — the kind you find in the vitrine at the drugstore — and eliminate any possibility of a furtive mold.
The radio whirs. I listen to the static. Somewhere far off a male voice assures me, “You are already protected.” In the corner of the room, a slight white spider sits equably upon its web. The encyclopedia extols the virtues of the spider’s presence as not simply innocuous but apparently salutary, deterring more deleterious peers from moving in.
For the third time this morning I’m getting dressed. I crumple two extra shirts into my beaten leather bag, an article passed through the family that, owing to my negligence, could no longer be described as “well-kept” but could, perhaps, masquerade as “well-loved.” It’s not: only well-worn, overburdened by trifles, slowly coming loose. Yet the thought of loving unto disintegration seems more defensible than wearing down, gradually, devoid of intensity or possession.
I’m aware it’s unlikely I’ll change. Into a different shirt. Regardless, I take them with me, in case of an elemental shift: I have to stay out for five hours while the chemicals subside, and it’s plausible enough that my present outfit could begin to irritate me.
“What would happen,” the voice asks, “if you lived in a universe of infinite support?”
I unplug the radio and watch the clock’s limegreen digits die.
I once went to a man’s house and his whole room was empty except for a round bed in the centre. An island: luxuriant, entirely adrift. The scene disturbed me.
Observing my silence, he prodded, “What do you think?”
I blinked, twice, and said to him, “You seem like a man who has been frustrated.”
This pleased him, of course.
I come home late — later than necessary — and open the windows. An acrid scent lingers. I notice the cautionary pyrocumulus cloud and the sterile if emboldened warnings on the canisters. I dispose of them. The web billows in the cross-breeze; its vacant threads weigh on me. But it’s not the first time that I have respected something and nonetheless allowed it to perish. The bed is disassembled, still: the mattress stripped and the skirt of the box-spring at its feet. Keening, my sheets hang to dry in disarray, not yet promoted to the order of the closet.
I understand the scene to be tragic.
I check the stove and turn off the lamp.
Abandoning the stage of the bedroom decisively, I lie down in the centre of the floor. The air of nightfall converges with the faintly noxious particles inside. The admixture settles on the surface of the hardwood like a thin coat of ice. My sacrum itches.
Discomforts might be tried. Perhaps they were only circumstantial, contingencies. Or perhaps they were pleasures. Unplumbed. And we could have emerged rich and free of reservation.
I’m getting closer to sleep, already chilled, and in pain. I believe I’ll become very sick someday, and the clothes I wear will fray and unravel, and those I don’t will rot from disuse, and the final fire will warm my hands.