I thought epistolary poems were great until I started to write one. The paper I wanted to write on screamed at me and I lunged back in fear.
Two Lives
The river warden stood submerged up to his waist in the mid-stream, where the braiding sinews of a syrupy undercurrent had relaxed to create a skewed ellipse of near-motionless water. After many years on the river he found that he could easily spot these dead zones within the slowly-circulating continuity that eased itself interminably between the banks.
Mark Sadler’s When We Fell in Love
The American Beat writers circled back into fashion in the UK during the late 1980s / early 1990s. Their resurgence coincided with a spike in the counterculture that was perhaps a reaction to the grind of over a decade of conservative leadership and Thatcher-ism.
Leprosarium; Napkin; Street
I remember lovely sunny October day: last year of medical school. Field trip to the leper colony 100 km outside of Moscow, town of Zagorsk. That is how lepers live: small apartments in one-story barracks, thick cabbage soup, cabbage from the nearby village, thick smell of the slow-smoldering life as you enter the porch of the dwelling.
Someone’ll Save Yer
The only Asian hobo in Vicetown sits cross-legged on the street corner with a Jesus figurine for company. Emblem of patience, thin hair telling you the direction of the wind, bare feet black as soot. Nothing underneath his unbuttoned linen shirt, back rounded like a curled-up centipede. A red rubber band collects his beard like a bouquet of flowers.