21 June 08 - 15:29Oblongs of Oblation
Published 'Psychotrope' 1997
I do not want to alarm you, but something dreadful has happened. Our hair restorative company in which we invested lock stock and barrel - well, it went belly-up yesterday.
I didn't want to have to say this, but I told you so, dear Uncle Mark. I bloody well did.
Too many eggs in one dilapidated wicker-basket, if you ask me, which nobody did, and we would not be in this classic case of up shit creek, if you'd listened to me a teeny weeny bit more. But I'm not one for crocodile tears over an oil-tanker load of ground nut oil spilling into the sea, as you very well know. The reason I'm alerting you of all people to the situation is not so much in a hope of salvaging something from the wreck, but rather to spike Uncle Burl's guns. ...
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10 June 08 - 19:20Rituals of the Clock
Published 'Writer's Block' 1997
Donald used to enjoy Patience. Especially the clock version, where he dealt out the playing cards in a circle of twelve piles, with four in the middle. Since Mother “went away”, it seemed even more important to “get it out”, play the game to the ultimate turn of the card. Of course, it was a pity he would not be able to run to her in the bedroom to brag of his success, when success eventually came. A pity beyond tears.
Mother used to sit up in a bed whose round wooden knobs at the four corners gradually, over the years, grew bigger than her head. The bolster pillow was double-ramped behind her so that she could eat properly, a thickly knitted bed-jacket slung around the scrawny shoulders and tied with a precarious ribbon at the hollow of her neck. There was a tray which Donald had painstakingly made from a chest-drawer, fret-sawing the wooden sides into curves to fit over the shape of her legs. ...
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