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September 2014

Rigor Terra

rigorterra

By Hugh Fulham-McQuillan.

Now see the riverrunning through the city to the sea, just ahead of me. I cannot compete with its easy flow: the wind fights my every pedal. I remember watching a video of Dublin, circa 1970, on the internet. The city looks unusual at first and then you realise why, it is that bicycles outnumber cars. The early, middle, and latter aged of the population can be seen in various uniforms atop their bicycles, enchained between their two wheels without knowing it. The wind, though invisible, reveals itself by its cruel humour: a lifted hat landing before a bus, the flippant hem of an otherwise modest dress, a drooping coat tail about to catch in that office worker’s back spokes. Having no mass it defeats us before we can put on our armour, before we have slid inside our underarmour. Those same bicycles now rot in forgotten sheds, beneath towering mounds of household waste. They have been transformed. They are flaking rust, torn leather, burnt rubber.

Black Chalk With Touches of White on Brown Paper

blackchalk

By Tristan Foster.

We exist in small rooms lit by twin lamps that, through their yellow shades, cast a sepia light. The world beyond the window, beyond the lip of the balcony, is dark. Maybe that’s light on the horizon, but the day is over. Inside, the light pulls the walls in tighter. We live in this, we live in this — I know no other way to say it.

Europe, in Winter

europeinwinterBy Niven Govinden.

He remembers roaming the forest one afternoon, and chasing a dog away from a tray of leftovers on a picnic table. Though he still recalls the taste of the meat; scraps on a chicken leg, still wet with the dog’s saliva, the overwhelming memory is one of relief: temporarily sating the cramps in his stomach; that an hour would follow when he would no longer have to think about food.

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