Page 56 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #2

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as we trudge up the constant hills and stairs that promise us the moon. We leave the banks slumbering undisturbed like winter bears, our pockets full of euros and Swiss francs.
Marilyn
She signed her body away. One scribble on a dank afternoon cut off the flow.
Her body worked twenty-four-seven, selling toothpaste, cars, bleach. It was rendered in china, burned into plates, ashtrays, guitars, the greasy backs of cards. No one asked her how it felt, how a moment of desperation could burn itself through your life, how a man you’d only met once could own the S-shaped curve of your naked self.
Later, a man wrote notes with arrows on an outline, flat at the front and back. It looked nothing like her. You can buy that too.
Fringe
A sea of whispers from the Mile to Leith- “How are your buckets?” A squall of drums drowns out the answer as the city’s patience frays and restores itself again. Rain comes
and agents don’t. We’ve all become believers, begging, consoling. “No, it’s not us, mate,
it’s the audience, Tuesdays are always like this.”
A drunk bends his inked neck to the rain’s blades.
It’s all about the coins; their heat, their smell
of blood and hands, the dank long-suffering bars with tills awash in middle-class kids’ shrapnel, the firework storms embarrassing the stars
SophiA BlACKwell