Creative
Flash Fiction: Close
Teck-Phui Chua They stood, scattered across the field, heavy heads bent down touching the ground. Dawn broke and the warmth of the sun’s rays evaporated the dew off them, bringing them back to life. Slowly they stretched up, straightening themselves, facing up towards the sky. Their bright white petals popped open one by one revealing […]
9 December 2020
Google Reviews of Places I’ve Been Dumped At
★ ★ ☆☆☆ (2 / 5 stars) U-BAHNHOF KOTTBUSSER TOR, BERLIN Terribly unromantic! Couldn’t even have a proper last kiss without a toothless crackhead smashing bottles and yelling at us in German. Even the “it’s not you, it’s me” spiel was ruined by the awful sound of coked-up nightclubbers vomiting in the corner of the […]
9 December 2020
In the Middle of the Empty Woods
A small cloaked figure hurried across the barren earth as the last of the sun’s light leaked from the sky. The only thing between him and the horizon was a lonely little house, nestled in the shadow of the last starving tree. The tips of its leafless branches split and splintered like a hundred bony […]
9 December 2020
5:45
Those who don’t notice the green Ford creaking into the lot are first alerted to the arrival of the Smoking Man by his voice ripping across Temple Park. ‘Sadie!’ Heads turn as the German Shepherd galavants toward the gathering. The Smoking Man has limped across this field every day since I started coming here and […]
9 December 2020
balikbayan / body
in the storage area beyond our kitchen boxes often wait to leave one home for another’s taped and overwhelmed with the new and old pleather girl boots, men’s polo shirts starched anew, biscuits destined for manila city mothers send human-sized containers bearing gifts of hard-won labour with as much as their hearts could fit […]
9 December 2020
Intra Uterine insertion
Stirruped! cold air creeping there along field ruts (here, squeeze this) never forget, ever forget it is there once buried deep underground but (you should only feel a pinch) now buried deep in me, bloody flinch, lick a copper coin and stick it be- (stay still – I’m just cutting the strings) -tween my lips, […]
9 December 2020
Living Creatures
Crows are leaping from the cliff’s edge, bounding forward and falling fast. They barrel down like black vessels until, mid-air, the wind cracks open their cocoons. As unravelling wings span across the sky, I wonder what would happen if, rather, they kept themselves screwed up, just to plummet like rocks. But, of course they don’t. […]
9 December 2020
The Sound of Silence
Midnight, and you begin your walk home. In the abandoned suburban streets, you imagine you are the sole survivor of an apocalypse. Though once afraid of the dark, necessity has forced you to grow up quickly and now the night is your friend. Traffic lights flicker, continuing their rounds. Their metallic hearts beat alongside yours. […]
9 December 2020
Dissection of a Piglet’s Heart
right atrium how strange it is. how fragile, wobbling watery yolk in my palm ribs bending between my fingers like pipe cleaners scattering blood onto a sanitized tray right ventricle how strange to imagine its first stirrings, moth wings wedged between slumped lungs, foetal halfthoughts that never grasped the taste of oxygen left atrium […]
9 December 2020
snowshoe hare
childhood me watches the cold snow-encrusted darkness drape itself over backyard pines – little bruises, blue-black imprints in the snow trailing to the porch’s frozen underbelly – refuge from foxes mum says. after breakfast I will go out and make hare tracks […]
9 December 2020