January 2016 ~ Helen Hagemann

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Flash, a very short story!

Children's Poetry - a selection of three ©

The Subject Tonight is Towel

The subject tonight is towel

And from tomorrow night

And days after

Dad has no better topic

For us to discuss

Until we all

Hang up our towel

After showering.

Walls

Some people love walls.

They keep in yelping dogs,

But never cats or birds.

No one sees them talking at night

Yet walls do talk – to each other.

They compare positions, compositions.

Are they stone, cement or brick?

When they need our attention

They crumble for repair.

In winter a storm will blow them over.

Make gaps for geckos and hens.

Can you see the creatures scurrying

Passing two abreast?

Robert Frost loved walls, and said

They make good neighbours

Especially if they talked,

Had one’s garden trimmed,

Kept apple trees to one side

Pine cones to the other.

Do you love walls?

Leaves

There are

So many leaves

Each hangs on a branch

In thousands of different ways

Your eyes will see differences

Infinite shapes: ovoid, needle

Heart-shaped, linear or pencil

You can draw them green in spring

Paint the tree from where they came

Crinkle a gum leaf for its scent

So many leaves

Unfolding and falling

Into your world

An Ekphrastic Poem: Reinventing The Scream ©

Reinventing The Scream

How agreeable it is to live

under a blue sky.

To watch garden roses budding

and crimping; fragrant hybrids

unfolding their cream/carmine skirts

into a garden system

of care and sunshine.

How terrible then, an expression on a face,

standing on a bridge, swirl of dark water beneath,

a red sky full of pain. And so many

steadfast hours going into the work

of a silent, yet unsettling scream.

Nothing about Edvard Munch’s scene

will ever change. Yet I want to reinvent

that unhappy face. Lower hands to pockets,

zero in with a pencil-point of smile.

Bridge gone, water gone, a swirl of blue

should enliven Machiavellian thought.

I want the screamer, nosey as a ladybird,

bum up, inhaling an Iceberg rose.

The view should be this urban garden

where rough beds thirst

and a stocky Butcherbird on the tippy

buoyancy of a branch turns,

catching that depressive moment

an instant before the scream.

An Ekphrastic poem inspired by The Scream by Edvard Munch, 1893, Oil, tempera, pastel and crayon on cardboard. Dimensions 91 cm × 73.5 cm (36 in × 28.9 in). Location: National Gallery, Oslo, Norway

Grammar Police

Flash Fiction: Is it the Flowers or Little Bells that are Chiming?

Is it the Flowers or Little Bells that are Chiming?

The sound comes up over the roof and travels towards a rear window. In the early morning the noise peals and rips the air like unexpected thunder. Already at four am, the call is heard in the street; the only street that goes from pastured lakes and kangaroos to paths that lead to untended bush land. One wakes to this lively throaty blast, as the cock crows, as a cat mewls, as anything else that is singularly painful. Interval comes. The household returns to sleep thinking about fractured rest as change, just as dawn lightens the dark. Within the hour, a new burst heralds sleeping men, drowsy women. The whole earth summons the shock, and signals the eyelids to prise open, the head heavy with anger that this noise is no different to loud Sunday bells mingled with the irritant clinking of glasses. The body shifts, turns over on a warm spot. What is left of the night opens, shines as a white moon, as white clouds enter the sky. The open air, the grass and the lakes in the distance within and around every bend are finally dawning. In the middle of the street, on the right-hand side, the second house is next to the last and before that a smaller cottage sits amongst a set of three. The awakened family lean their heads to the window, listening. Slippered feet stand beneath a cool basin, the body dresses, walks towards the noisy property where the trees are extremely dry and the grounds are bare. One hopes, like all those familiar companions that talk and agree and are accustomed to the quarrels of people, that civil communication will solve the problem of this constant early morning rooster call. As the din augments into brooding sounds, and cars pass along the main upper road, and no-one knows if it is the flowers or the little bells that are chiming, yet one can feel the crush of thorns underfoot, hear bursts of laughter. In the blazing sun, when the whole landscape is finally awake, and where the trees line a high wall, the neighbour walks with a bird under his arm. And against all the trembling of disagreement, lack of sleep, the differences of one's background, ethnic or religious proclivities, marked opinion or no, a motion is carried, an agreement is reached to keep that squawking, bawking, hen penned.

5th draft
Submitted to Overland Journal: Ben Walter, Editor
Ben writes:

For this special online fiction issue of Overland, I am calling for anti-/dis-/un-Australian stories.
I think, perhaps contentiously, that many Australian short stories suffer from a lack of ambition. They tend to be characterised by a flat, minimalistic realism. The events take place over four, maybe six hours. The relationships between people are not so good – and then they are very meaningful. And people dance on the beach in the middle of the night.
I will be looking to publish stories that embrace a distinctive style or voice, that are not terrified of adornment or a little pizzazz. Wordplay. Humour. Experimental forms, non-linear structures, fragmented sentences, abstractions. Anything, just as long as it doesn’t sound like the winner of a moderately prestigious competition.
I’d be so grateful if you could send stories like this to me.

https://overland.submittable.com/submit/21321

Tilting the Train

Looking at my watch I notice that I have just missed the 5.10 train. Of all days, I am wet through standing on the Summerville platform, the wind howling along the tracks all the way to the coast. I am alone, except for an old drunk swearing into his tattered mac; most probably his anger rising from an empty swig of a papered bottle.

5.25pm and my pacing begins. Except now the station is filling with people for the Stirling line. The drunk has disappeared replaced by tired white-collar workers. I walk along the edge, close to the tracks, my head down as I pass the newly arrived commuters. Most have fingers on the pulse of their mobile phones or there’s one guy, a good looking Colin Firth- type, talking to his beloved; throwing his head back now and again, laughing as if he is happy. I imagine him going home to a talk blonde, a woman of impeccable stature and means, re-heating a lamb curry on the stove. Lucky her! Since Marcus left, my meals are made by Weight Watchers. I usually throw the packet in the microwave, sometimes adding some grated cheese or added peas and broccoli. That ABC program Checkout is right, they do look like emaciated meals when they come out. Usually I’m too tired to cook after a long day at Martin Sawyers. Oh yes, the notorious criminal lawyer who represents the bad John Does of this world, especially when they're trying to avoid illuminated cell blocks at night. One of the John Does gives me a wink when he comes into the office. How can that be bad? I don’t mind the attention, the eye-candy.

Finally the 5.30pm arrives, offloading people for the inner-city car parks or for those heading to the Oxford Street bars and cafes. My quiet contemplation is interrupted. A woman standing beside me yells and points towards the middle carriage of the train. A man runs to the driver, screaming. Tens of people are milling beside the middle carriage and I can hear the shouting above my earphones.

I take a few photographs of what is happening. A young man who was ready to leave the train has caught his foot in the gap between the train and platform. He’s just sitting there. There’s panic in the air, and people yelling, ‘Don’t let the train leave!’

In seconds, the train driver arrives with an assistant. They try to lift the man up from underneath his armpits, but they can’t budge him. The train crew methodically call to several passengers to assist, waving them over and pointing towards the windows of the carriage. A rather tall man is standing next to me, conducting the scene. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing before in Singapore,’ he says. ‘Best way is to use soap. Get some soap!’ he shouts.

‘I want to know what’s going on. What is he saying?’ I raise my head above the melee of people gathered near the carriage, but see little.

‘He’s asking them to stand alongside, to push their weight away from the man, but I can’t see that working.’

‘What are they doing now?’

‘The driver’s asking everyone to get off.’

I move away and take more photos. Just as well, the know-all’s constant yelling is beyond favour and subsequently I find a space further along the platform and use my iphone on zoom. This is such an incredible moment. It’s as if there is one combined understanding to free this man. No one is arguing, and with quick decisive action about fifty people including bystanders and rail staff physically rock the train. One of the staff lowers his arm to the count of three, 'One, two, three, push,’ he orders.

The train tilts and moves from its suspension; manpower force holding it for a few seconds.

The man frees his leg.

We all clamber back onto the train.

We pull away from the platform.

The tall fellow has further things to say to me as I find one remaining seat.

‘I thought it was always a bit of a joke “to mind the gap”, but I think we all will from now on,’ he laughs, leaning into his own reverie.

2nd Draft
Inspiration taken from a true story.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-06/man-freed-after-leg-trapped-in-gap-on-perth-train-station/5652486