CROW
Ben didn’t want to think about Pearl. It hurt right in the middle of his chest; an aching hole, clean-edged as if she’d slipped his heart through a paper punch.
He nodded to the barman. Another whiskey appeared. He slouched lower, staring at the glass. Christ, was that him reflecting back? Round-shouldered, slack-jawed. The glum sort of boozer he’d laugh at.
Pearl and Cesar – six months secretly screwing. Well…him and Pearl hadn’t actually been married, but Cesar was his mate.
Probably doing it that very minute in the flat above Cesar’s martial arts studio. More like sexual arts, with poetry as a cover. Cesar spouting on about the greatest ever English poet, Ted bloody Hughes – infamous screwer – quoting his poems…Man’s bodiless prodigious head bulbed out onto the earth.
What the? Yet it had all made an insane kind of sense, when they’d been drinking.
The bar door opened. A draft reached Ben’s neck; he shuddered.
Woman’s vulva dropped over man’s neck, and tightened.
Pearl had smiled at Cesar, and Crow flew guiltily off.
copyright Leanne Radojkovich Posted with permission from the writer.
*
Not exactly a poem, but poem-oriented, at least with regards to Ted Hughes. Very glad to post this piece by Leanne Radojkovich this week, as a follow-up to last week’s poem by Frankie McMillan.
Leanne has been in the NZ national literary news lately with her National Flash Fiction Day second-place win on June 22. The competition was judged this year by Owen Marshall and Fiona Kidman. Leanne placed second with her story ‘First Fox’.
The winning stories from the 2015 NFFD competition are listed at the NFFD site and will be published in a special forthcoming issue of Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction.
Read a recent interview/ feature with Leanne and a few other short- and long-listed 2015 NFFD flashers from around New Zealand — Pete Carter, Kate Mahony, Celine Gibson and Louise Miller — here.
Thank you, Leanne Radojkovich, for sharing.
*
Leanne Radojkovich’s stories have appeared in literary journals in the UK, USA and NZ, and she’s won or been commended in various writing competitions. She lives in Auckland and shares her work on YouTube and SlideShare, and posts flash fiction street art around town in unexpected places. www.leanneradojkovich.com
*
Tuesday Poem is a collective of poets who share poetry on a weekly basis across borders and time zones. Please check out the other poets and the main poem at the TP hub this week — Sangan River Meditations: Spring, by Susan Musgrave, brought to us by Hub Editor Kathleen Jones.
For more Tuesday Poems, go here.
Glow Worm 