fictions & poems
Tenses Change In Moments Like These
The Quietus
There was no real need to go in there. There’s never been any real desire to venture in there before. There was nothing much going on. There wasn’t much to do. The day was cold, without sufficient light to muster up thought or imagination. It was the simplest thing to do really.
Vantablack
[extracts]
3AM Magazine
Vantablack is so black that you can barely see it. Anish Kapoor lost Eurydice — his claim to be an artist — when he acquired exclusive rights to the world’s blackest pigment. His name is not even mentioned in Vantablack, unlike those of Malevich, Hammershoi, Hitchcock, Trakl, and Francesca Woodman.
Vulgar Things
[extract]
3AM Magazine
I try to act normal, but this only makes things worse. It’s obvious that I have things on my mind and that I’m unable to control the alcohol in me. I swallow huge gulps of air, one after the other, hoping it’ll revive me, but it doesn’t and I soon give up and just sit there. I must look a mess, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.
The Gravediggers
3AM Magazine
To begin with transformations. We have decided to throw away our own rules. We have planned crimes against Shakespeare by immersing ourselves in the ruins of Shakespeare. Around Curtain Road. North, East, South and West. The area is changing. The original suburb of sin is no more. We’ve read our Stewart Home. Down & out in Shoreditch and Hoxton. Home has provided us with the evidence that common economics has plied its trade here for at least 400 years.
Two Poems
3AM Magazine
Riveted to an existence that makes no sense even in the cold light of day
The Roof
[Excerpt from ‘Everyday’]
He was now alone. His colleagues were at the pub, he had been asked to go but had politely declined the offer — much to the perplexity of his fellow colleagues. Irvine Doyle didn’t usually turn down such invitations. Anything would usually suffice to get himself out of the office for a while. But this particular day was quite different, a thick cloud of inertia had suddenly descended out from the ether, it cloaked Irvine Doyle with indifference.