Monster Movie Overture
My overthinking is an overcoat, done up to my chin with
leather buttons like half footballs and a loose belt that girdles
my hips like stars. I’m thinking Mintaka, Alnilam and
Alnitak, and I’m thinking about a loose dog snapping at a
hunter’s heels. I’m thinking about how time runs faster in a
planetarium and how the sky sneaks closer each time I blink,
like a hunter’s hound approaching prey, its rheumy eyes
baleful as a doubt-filled priest. I can’t decide whether I don’t
feel the cold like other people, or whether it’s just not that
important in comparison to that hunter lumbering over the
city skyline like a kaiju creature of white fire. A giant bull,
clean out of laser beams, backs away, and I know how it feels
to be the animator’s second choice, with no real backstory
and even the popcorn-munching masses in my own head
cheering on the other guy as he raises his club, or his spear,
or his imagined lines between points which are only
connected by our need to see stories. I overcompensate for
variables, though I oversimplify the situation. I overreact to
certain stimuli, though I have learned to overcome the most
noticeable repercussions. I overuse some words – hunter,
loose – but I can edit later, once the movie’s over.
The Moving Image
She discovered TV like her ancestors had discovered fire,
terrified and ecstatic at the uncontrollable chaos of it all. The
voices in her head at last found faces, grew fingers, and grew
into the shapes of things she loved. There was beauty that
transcended all language and the need she felt when she
couldn't sleep, all boxed and available at the flick of a switch
and the short revolution of a Bakelite dial. Silence departed
like a shamed ex-lover and the pictures that had haunted her
since childhood removed their white sheets and revealed the
living pixels underneath. This is what happened: she learnt to
die at midnight in a blaze of anthems and tears.
Whiteout
Ice leaves footprints in supermarket aisles long after the
shelves have been emptied. It leaves handprints on bare skin
when we dream with windows open. It leaves a white line
like a motorway or a mirror when we can’t sleep at all. In a
messy house, there’s ice under every stack of magazines,
between the textured leaves of part-used cheque books, and
behind the storage boxes which haven’t been opened in
generations. Outside, laundry waves like accountants and HR
personnel on a sinking raft, out of their depth on a bonding
weekend. Ice will smooth over the ripples. Flowers bow their
heads like uneasy kings and grass imagines itself into upstart
spines in search of a straw horse to bring to its knees. The
one thing I need/don’t need/fear is imagination, so when ice
struts up the path bearing boxes piled to the silver sky, I lock
the door and stop breathing. I am vaguely aware of a
motorbike or a mirage, of fingerprints like leaves. When I
come to my messy senses, the cupboards are bare and all the
kitchen appliances are ice sculptures, inexpertly carved by
those same office bodies before they were lost.
Flights, Issue Eight, March 2023
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