short stories | Johannes Punkt’s Flaskpost

16/Aug/2013

How Little Girls in Schoolyards Lie

Is it true that, at the bottom of a deep well, with your eyes adjusted to the darkness, if you look up you will always see stars? Down where there is always night unless the sun, directly above, reaches down for you?

The answer is no, there are no stars, they kept you here with only the gurgle of water for company, no bucket or ladder or sky, stone lid above your head. Once a day, the sun reaches for you, but it only has a minute or so and it is not enough.

She said they would be back.

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15/Aug/2013

Freeverse Smiles

Our metaphors fuck like we do. My poetry leers and wants to know what it can do to yours. There is a smile on your face that is both innocent and not at the same time. Coy, devious. A soft purr hangs in the air, poise of a cat ready to pounce. You smirk, and you lean against me, and you move your leg an inch more; that is a pounce. I kiss you progressively: cheek, corner of mouth, lips. You beam. There is an innuendo in here, somewhere. There is want. There is a stupid grin on my face.

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14/Aug/2013

Doppelgänger

Your death seeps through from that other world. That place where the colours are different and your doppelgänger is dead. Don’t worry, I say, people in alternate realities must die like flies, surely, but your body temperature still falls. Your eyes are less green today.

I try to save me, you ask me why. From the circumstances given, it is not entirely clear which question you are asking, but I answer: “I love you.” I excuse myself to go to the restroom. I lock myself in a stall. Some of my original colours seep through when I cry this much.

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13/Aug/2013

Slow Now

You want to move your body. The electric signals traipse down your spine to the right muscles, jolting them into sluggish action. Far off in the distance, something happens, a man gets shot. An eternity after that, you find out. The photons reach your eyes, they are translated, distorted, flipped, until you see what happened. By that time, it has already happened and something else is happening. You don’t know what. Your leg finally starts to move. You actually don’t have time to think about it, but you know you are living in the past. You can never be now.

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12/Aug/2013

Tears of St. Lawrence

Grey, fibrous strings of light fall from the sky, and lead the way. The fireflies dance around them. The little girl spends all her time with her neck craned. She went out into the woods because she always knows her way home.

She looks down for just a second; there is a pinecone all dark and prickly like a hand grenade. When she looks up, a cloud has rolled in far too fast. She cries big tears that roll down her cheek like shooting stars.

The fireflies dance up in the sky above her, assuming the patterns of the constellations.

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11/Aug/2013

Ecto-urbanisation

Places with no jobs, no life, aclash with bureaucracies that have acquired such inertia that, like with rushing trains, stopping them or even halting them takes as much energy as sending them hurtling into space. So there are these ghost towns like the skeletons of urban sprawl, built in the shadow of fallen regimes, and not a living soul living there. All the houses’ fronts are sloppily painted white, their sides and backs uncoloured. All the grass has died. And at the edge of town, there is a lonely construction crew setting up new houses, trying to avoid the ghosts.

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10/Aug/2013

Career Mobility

You’ve had this itching all day, like it’s time to move. You want to get to a higher place, you want to move up in the world. You want them to see you for who you really are. You want a flat on the thirtieth floor. One where you can see the city, open the windows, and let birds fly through. A place made of glass. You want it to stop itching. Maybe if you find such a place, they will know you for who you really are. Apply some salve. Start wearing more pungent cologne. Make them see you.

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9/Aug/2013

Jam

I turn on the radio, and clear some space for you. This is that song you like, which goes thump-thump-thump. The lyrics are immaterial. You’ve never heard the song in full, never all the way through the fadeout, where everything slows down. You’ve danced like mad to this song, you’ve danced your brains out on the floor to this. This is your jam. I can see you dancing to it now, if I imagine really hard. I clear some space in my room for you, roll up the carpet so your light steps can be heard against the wooden floor.

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8/Aug/2013

Windowsill

There is a human sitting on a windowsill, staring out over Brisbane. Cars zoom past each other, visible only as small foursomes of eyes, two yellow and two red. She is sat in a structure that is just a shape, filled with colourful wallpaper and stale air. There are moving boxes and pizza cartons full of crusts. They are stacked neatly, so she can barely see the wallpaper. Maybe the open window will let some real air in, maybe tonight she will open one of the boxes and hang her clothes in the wardrobe. This structure could become a home.

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7/Aug/2013

Too Many Knives

This family has too many kitchen knives. They are all subtly varied, but that does not change the fact that there are too many of them. They are all branded knives, from three different companies. I think Mother had a set, and that Father brought a set when he moved in, and I think some relative gave us another full set for some anniversary or other. There is actually not enough space in the drawer for all the knives, so some of them are always in the sink. But the good news? No-one will notice if one knife goes missing.

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Tag: short stories