Our World: Merged
‘Our World: Merged’ is an extract from Lynne Bryan’s memoir Iron Man, published by Salt, 2021. The extract contains four of seventeen fictional letters to artists that Lynne uses in Iron Man to unpick her thoughts and feelings in relation to her disabled father and his prostheses, a pair of wooden crutches and a leg iron.
Extract from The Large Door
An extract from Jonathan Gibbs’ novel The Large Door: The painting itself was not large, but in its heavy frame it seemed so. The wood of the frame was the colour of old church pews, with thin grooves to it that caught and held the light in long vertical lines. It was not the only painting in the room – there was a miniature on the wall by the door to the landing, a floral composition of some kind – but this was the one that drew the eye.
Water Falling
A new story by Carl Oprey: The first year their summerhouse was built they counted a total of seventeen drips. Seventeen buckets and bowls filled slowly with forest rain tainted grey with new mortar. Water drops in the living room seeped through the patio above. Water drops in the kitchen next to the stove pooled across the slate floor. The summerhouse, called so because that would be the only time it would be used, was built as a favor to the architect whose business had been all but wiped out by the after-war recession. The man liked this architect’s work; factories and offices. His wife needed convincing.
Madra
Madra, by Emma Hutton, won the Mairtin Crawford Award in 2019: My name is Madra. Where I come from it means dog. My mother said that when I was born I was red with fury and howling at the moon. For eighteen years, I have lived in a stone house that’s built on black land that sinks. My blood is close to the skin; you can see the branching of my veins. I like to run my hands over doorframes and pull out the splinters. I like to eat gravy with a spoon. I like to pinch the petals off asters and think about the motherless butcher’s girl.
Miss-Communication
Funded by the Markievicz Award in the Republic of Ireland, which commemorates Irish women of the past hundred years, on International Women’s Day Joanna Walsh’s AI, by her very existence, poses some questions: how does gender relate to language? How are women’s words and history recorded and commemorated? What is the economic status of the contemporary female ‘content provider’? And where, in our digital world, does creative autonomy reside?
from FAILSAFE: a choreography
New from Scott Thurston, FAILSAFE is an ongoing series of choreographic prose poems: Amongst them I found behind whenever you remember: prepare a meal for God. A lighter touch, toy soldiers rescale. This edge, again, of how far to dress up, curate and present the desperate and contingent. Realised I’d interpreted space behind as moving backwards.
Twisted, Crumpled
Twisted, Crumpled is a new story by C. D. Rose: No one knows what the man, who may have been a Danish film director or a French art dealer or a Ukrainian journalist, was doing in the Pallonetto, a neighbourhood rarely frequented by tourists even of the more intrepid kind. No one, victim and perp aside, saw the theft happen. The man had been walking along the seafront at Santa Lucia, it was suggested, and only ended up in the warren of the Pallonetto as he attempted to give chase to the tyke.
Ghosts Passing along Sunset Boulevard
A new story by Hiromi Suzuki: I go out to buy a toothbrush or something, return to my apartment keeping with coins in pocket of my overcoat. I am not sure whether I should choose a light bulb of 80 or 100 watts for my bathroom. The light bulb in my brain is also about to burn out. I cannot enter my room because of the lost key.
Charms
When they cut the lunchtime visit, Joan became aware of her own incontinence and worried that it might affect her future in her own home and so she began wrapping solid turds in brown council notice envelopes which she could then ask certain visitors to dispose of. The window in the envelope made this high-stakes stuff and as a certain visitor, your hand had sprung open when it understood from the warmth, the contents. ‘I’ve had a dog in,’ she said.
Mollspeak
Mollspeak is a new sound work, written and directed by artist Maria Fusco, with an original score by Olivier Pasquet and voiced by actor Maxine Peake. Presented here for a limited time only, the piece, experimental in form, explores and embodies working-class voices of eighteenth century servants in England. The work’s title, Mollspeak, is taken from a phrase used by employers to denigrate or belittle their servants’ way of speaking. Its negative connotation is subverted by headlining a work that illuminates the importance of working class narratives. Servants were not allowed keys to the houses they tended, Mollspeak kicks down these doors.
![Extract from Adamo[1], a novel in progress](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ec6bd9a2948e50763ff3ab9/1639340898152-QWLJ5OVVYCIDD44MQ7QC/Baker+Miller+Pink.png)
Extract from Adamo[1], a novel in progress
An extract from a novel-in-progress by Aoife Casby: The house needs her. As if the rooms want her help. Her presence makes their purpose but there is something about the way the rooms are that make you feel as if they know this. Peculiar. How can the spaces know her. Or maybe they don’t. That the place needs her help to be, to remember its function as kitchen, as hallway, as threshold, as a necessity between rooms, just is.
The Seam and The Drop
The Seam and The Drop is a new story by sally O’Reilly: Lying on her back in the grassy, dandelion-clocked clearing, the cool albumen oozed on to her pale torso and the yolk thudded lightly on her sternum. She smeared the glossy, fishy viscosity over her belly and breasts, careful not to break the yolk at her centre like the sun.
The Stranded Sugar Dispenser
The Stranded Sugar Dispenser is a new story by Imogen Reid: her left arm rests on the smooth formica surface, and her cheek is pressed against the knitted sweater that extends the entire length of her arm. the woolen cuff is stretched tightly over her knuckles before she begins to force her index finger through a small hole situated just above the vertical ladder that has recently started to form there. once the feat is accomplished, she proceeds to grip the under edge of the cuff with her fingers so that her hand forms a small fist
Extract from West
An exclusive extract from the beginning of Megan Bradbury’s novel-in-progress, West: Rae starts dating a Mormon. They roam the city. They never go up the towers. Rae doesn’t want to see anything from up high. The Mormon is an artist and activist. His causes are the same as her mother’s were. After protesting in Battery Park, he’ll be moving west. That’s where the greatest battles are. The Mormon has Clint Eastwood posters on his bedroom wall. Clint Eastwood wants to be seen to look after women in stories, but the women themselves aren’t free. He always looks after the Wild West towns.
A conversation near a window
A conversation near a window is a new story by Ben Pester: We sat with his walnutting for a moment. He touched his face, gasping a little as he explored the new contours he had. His eyes, on rigid stalks, were layered with a kind of papery rind: his new eyelids. They made a hushing sound as he blinked.
ROBIN
Robin is the opening chapter of Sara Baume’s novel A Line Made By Walking: Works about Carpet, I test myself: Mona Hatoum, 1995. An expanse of silicone rubber entrails fitted impeccably around one another to form a flawless floor. Our intestines are several metres long; a fact which has always astonished me. So maybe Hatoum’s piece is about the astonishing capacity of the human body. Or maybe it’s about how extravagantly attached we are to the things we own, as if they were the insides of our bodies and not just the insides of our houses. Furnishings, ornaments, even the upholstery. Such that we end up devoting more effort to preserving the carpet than we do preserving our intestines.
Translation
Gura learned to speak French because she heard a man once speaking it to his dog, and it sounded simpler than her native tongue.
Ode to Red Vienna
It was right when the quarantine was about to lift that the cases spiked again. A whole new strain they hadn’t seen before. The text came through this morning. Just when it seemed like the end, here we all were once more, back in the middle of it; or perhaps, still only at the very start.
The Tale of the Elephant Tail
It is well known that people of means prove their status in society by indulging in luxuries that few can afford. Some may prefer an over-priced artwork by a master, while the more adventurous among us will no doubt include an elephant hunt on their bucket list.
The Tediophile
The day the Tediophile was born was just like any other day…
The never-ending quest…
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