Freelance Copywriting & Climbing Instruction in Nottingham, UK
A little microfiction. Short shorts, flash fiction, micro-fiction, whichever epithet you prefer, fills a pretty little niche between narrative poetry and the short fiction. Here is a piece written on an ‘Empire Aristocrat’ (essentially a Hermes Rocket made in England). They (David Gaffney, the undisputed master of the form and many more) say you should not rely on a ‘punch-line ending’ which… well, I’ll let you be judge.
Picture credit goes to: track0.com
NapoWriMo #21
Spirit of the Staircase
That night we smoked cigars and broke onto the roof of a seaside diner
just for a better centre in the sky,
that night when someone became half-cut under inspiration,
ran screaming headlong into the canopy night,
a life ring around his head, an illicit halo keeping him buoyant through the air,
how we gave chase, regained a friend,
wasted no time inundating arcade high-scores with our initials,
we shouted from the dark cove of a seawall stairwell
(themselves a rock pool)
to strangers passing in twilight
‘we aren’t thugs, come this way’,
impromptu guiding lights in a black world of human reefs.
That very day we had skinny dipped in the North Sea,
not one hundred yards from where I and my family
have ritually placed our infant feet,
generation after generation, from various walks
and an orchard of trees,
for the first time, in salt water.
.
Do not worry anyone (all three of you), who regularly read finapowrimo, I did not write a poem about a deceased pet and then spend days in melodramatic, Victorian-widowesque mourning. I felt like I needed a break, what with academic commitments and a quick trip to the beach, and now I am back.
To the people who came on the holidays that are the subject of the above, thank you again, they are still my favourites. Especially 2009, they know who they are.
Lazy Sunday afternoon, I got no time to worry,
Fionn Coughlan-Wills.
Fionn Wills 