Kirsty Lewin
The Last Dinosaur
Turned out it was skiffs of red felt skelfed under Morticia’s finger nails. The press briefing said 31,213 dead. Fallow troughs form in dehydrated epidermis. Equinox. The godliness of a horse's autumn breath. One day Evelyn was too scunnered to get out of the bath. Crossed contrails pilot Christians. It's a little known fact that chimney pots get lung cancer. Cement holds teeth together. And monuments. Old Geordie kept a line of bleached-out desiccated sea creatures on his bathroom sink. A tribute to the affectionate fidelity of Greyfriars Bobby. Soon we’ll be ruled by underwater molluscs. Anthropocene. A chair with a missing leg is not afforded the opportunity of a crutch. Wasting lists. Flies zip themselves up on the fly. The last dinosaur was aloof but not incurious. Lilac works better as a smell than a colour. No ball games. Roof racks rap the beats on mixtaped motorways. Only the child in the scarlet dress knows who sullied the chalice. Pens run out in the middle of librettos. Toddlers run out into traffic. Red Onion Paper. Counterfeit is cumbersome in Cumbernauld. A rolling moan gathers no sauce. Masts in mourning fly their flags half empty. Dogs. Always dogs. Crocodile tears are low in sodium. Seeding clouds make heaven grow. Tissues gossip. Carbon crones dating bones. An eclipsed moon is merely learning to pleat its secrets. Heft and bereft are the only words worth saving in a fire. Maria was always longing, never shorting. Hold onto your tat. She lost her finger in the hand dryer in the museum. He kept it only because it came free with the yellow plastic spade. A miniature city thrives in the poison ivy on the north facing brick wall. It has its own health service. Click and collect. When he went blind his right eye twinkled crumpled violet. In she goes. Indigo. They had to shoot her twice before she died. Citizens Disassembly. Turns out treason is tougher than reason. On his final Thursday his bruschetta tasted like a carpet tile. Even after thirty years of scouring that stain still stokes her up. The man with one arm wears an emerald cuff-link: a belching toad blinking parallelogram eyes. Contactless. Every book is half read by somebody called Iain. Emperors struggle to find semmits that fit. Crochet is just crotchety knitting. That rueful hum of pylons skipping long rope. Bark is rougher than owl.
Axis of weasels.
Starveling.
marmalade
the fact is he was never Peruvian wrong kind of eyes, wise, lies, Peruvian kids haven’t even heard of him, foreign, toboggan, begotten, the only bear in Peru is spectacled, black brown, down, clown, rimmed-eyes, the fact is mermalada means jam in Spanish, not marmalade, Adelaide, Lucozade, renegade, no bear worth its honey would have a red felt hat on its head, shed, shot dead, parading, displaying, divulging illusions, the fact is its too bitter, marmalade, sends a shiver, quiver, bother, shudder across my tongue and I gag when I see the orange goo and who came up with the marmalade idea anyway how could a bear even open a jar with its claws, jaws, maws, roars, with all its sores that must itch is that why it scratches and licks and picks at the ticks in its hide, the fact is Sevillian oranges aren’t for marmalade at all they’re for cordite, bauxite, luddite, Marmite, fairy cakes and tray bakes and lava lamps according to Twitter so it must be true, the fact is there are 40,000 orange trees in Seville and no Paddington not one, not in the streets, sheets, heaps, hops but the smell of azahar is amorous, amative, alluring, beguiling, rewilding, excising and I’d bury my face in the satin-soft blossoms of the Citrus sinensus if only I was allowed over the border, the fact is orange blossom essence cures redness, lewdness, sunburns, sideburns, bloatings, coatings, insomnolence, insolence, and intelligence and that’s why I add three drops to my tea every night, flight, fright, blight to highlight that everything you thought you knew about marmalade is not right, not right at all
Kirsty Lewin lives by the beach in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her short story "Aphonia" was recently published by The Blue Nib (December 2020). She is taking time off from paid work to write, and to campaign for safe cycling infrastructure in the city.
Turned out it was skiffs of red felt skelfed under Morticia’s finger nails. The press briefing said 31,213 dead. Fallow troughs form in dehydrated epidermis. Equinox. The godliness of a horse's autumn breath. One day Evelyn was too scunnered to get out of the bath. Crossed contrails pilot Christians. It's a little known fact that chimney pots get lung cancer. Cement holds teeth together. And monuments. Old Geordie kept a line of bleached-out desiccated sea creatures on his bathroom sink. A tribute to the affectionate fidelity of Greyfriars Bobby. Soon we’ll be ruled by underwater molluscs. Anthropocene. A chair with a missing leg is not afforded the opportunity of a crutch. Wasting lists. Flies zip themselves up on the fly. The last dinosaur was aloof but not incurious. Lilac works better as a smell than a colour. No ball games. Roof racks rap the beats on mixtaped motorways. Only the child in the scarlet dress knows who sullied the chalice. Pens run out in the middle of librettos. Toddlers run out into traffic. Red Onion Paper. Counterfeit is cumbersome in Cumbernauld. A rolling moan gathers no sauce. Masts in mourning fly their flags half empty. Dogs. Always dogs. Crocodile tears are low in sodium. Seeding clouds make heaven grow. Tissues gossip. Carbon crones dating bones. An eclipsed moon is merely learning to pleat its secrets. Heft and bereft are the only words worth saving in a fire. Maria was always longing, never shorting. Hold onto your tat. She lost her finger in the hand dryer in the museum. He kept it only because it came free with the yellow plastic spade. A miniature city thrives in the poison ivy on the north facing brick wall. It has its own health service. Click and collect. When he went blind his right eye twinkled crumpled violet. In she goes. Indigo. They had to shoot her twice before she died. Citizens Disassembly. Turns out treason is tougher than reason. On his final Thursday his bruschetta tasted like a carpet tile. Even after thirty years of scouring that stain still stokes her up. The man with one arm wears an emerald cuff-link: a belching toad blinking parallelogram eyes. Contactless. Every book is half read by somebody called Iain. Emperors struggle to find semmits that fit. Crochet is just crotchety knitting. That rueful hum of pylons skipping long rope. Bark is rougher than owl.
Axis of weasels.
Starveling.
marmalade
the fact is he was never Peruvian wrong kind of eyes, wise, lies, Peruvian kids haven’t even heard of him, foreign, toboggan, begotten, the only bear in Peru is spectacled, black brown, down, clown, rimmed-eyes, the fact is mermalada means jam in Spanish, not marmalade, Adelaide, Lucozade, renegade, no bear worth its honey would have a red felt hat on its head, shed, shot dead, parading, displaying, divulging illusions, the fact is its too bitter, marmalade, sends a shiver, quiver, bother, shudder across my tongue and I gag when I see the orange goo and who came up with the marmalade idea anyway how could a bear even open a jar with its claws, jaws, maws, roars, with all its sores that must itch is that why it scratches and licks and picks at the ticks in its hide, the fact is Sevillian oranges aren’t for marmalade at all they’re for cordite, bauxite, luddite, Marmite, fairy cakes and tray bakes and lava lamps according to Twitter so it must be true, the fact is there are 40,000 orange trees in Seville and no Paddington not one, not in the streets, sheets, heaps, hops but the smell of azahar is amorous, amative, alluring, beguiling, rewilding, excising and I’d bury my face in the satin-soft blossoms of the Citrus sinensus if only I was allowed over the border, the fact is orange blossom essence cures redness, lewdness, sunburns, sideburns, bloatings, coatings, insomnolence, insolence, and intelligence and that’s why I add three drops to my tea every night, flight, fright, blight to highlight that everything you thought you knew about marmalade is not right, not right at all
Kirsty Lewin lives by the beach in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her short story "Aphonia" was recently published by The Blue Nib (December 2020). She is taking time off from paid work to write, and to campaign for safe cycling infrastructure in the city.
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