WesLee

the sound was . . . soft
maybe we're wired
for moments like that
the economy of strokes
on a painting
maybe we’re drawn
to a stroke
that suggests an eye

alex nodopaka artwork

Alex Nodopaka

God in the Mines

Underground
men worship God with cigarettes and alcohol
whisky poured at his feet
cigarettes set alight
smoke blown over his forehead
smoke blown up his nostrils
smoke blown up God's ass
they make him out of clay and beads
and some things you would think were
trash
are those the bottle-caps that were his eyes
the twigs that stand in for fingers
you might hear his weak voice
call out in the night
deep in the dripping cleft
of an underground shaft
the miners keep him there to ward off
death
and other mining misfortunes

Flash Fiction

Exotica

Lucy sends me a present in the mail. A comb carved out of boxwood with an inlaid Abalone trim. The comb smells like a freshly opened coconut, the wood looks dark and oily. I toss the comb in the bathroom drawer with all the other presents that she sends me. When something arrives from Lucy, it signals some kind of romantic crises. Either she's left someone or met someone. The larger, more exotic gift usually means something has begun. When something has ended, the offerings are thin and flaky like dusty, old ephemera.
"Are you serious?" I ask Lucy on the phone.
"It's really not an issue."
"You hated pornography."
"That was just a phase I went through."
"Has he got you on film?"
Lucy gets a twisted, raspy tone in her voice when she wants to hurt me, "I'm the strawberry blond who gets burnt in the sun. There's lots of guys who love to see peeling skin. They get off on seeing my nipples cracked."
"That's crap," I tell her.
"Grow up!" she shouts. I can feel her finger hovering over the END button on her cell phone. I can hear her breathing out there at the other side of the world.
"Do what you want," I say into the receiver.
"I will do what I want," her voice has a desperate high note. An uncertain tremor.
Do what you want, I whisper as I click off my cellphone and throw it out into the sea.

There was a time when Lucy would have booked the next flight out of Darwin before my cellphone had bumped onto the bottom of the Atlantic. Lucy would have sped towards me. Chewing up scenery. Swooping across oceans like a vampire in a bad movie directed by an ex advertising hack.
There was a time when Lucy had flown back on the slightest whim.
"Don't you drop me," Frieda had shouted down the telephone line. "I won't let you drop me."
And Lucy had said, "I'll never drop you."
And Lucy had arrived three days later. Her skin darker. Her hair brighter. In clothes unsuitable for a cold climate.
When Lucy was here, Frieda would get out of bed early, like a maid arriving in the dark to make sure the water was hot. Each morning she would make an inventory of the kitchen in anticipation of Lucy's every need.
"Tell us about where you're living?" Frieda would ask.
And Lucy would answer. Her garden filled with passionfruit flowers. Her pot belly pig tethered on the edge of the rainforest with a chain.

When I looked at our mother I could see that she wasn't listening. She was thinking of the moment when she would stand at the airport and watch Lucy's back moving away from her. Frieda would take photographs until the plane became a tiny mark on the sky. And later, in Lucy's room, I knew that she would smell the clothes that Lucy had let fall all around her.
The last time Lucy left, Frieda shouted, "take me with you."
Standing there like shabby baggage you don't want to pick up at the terminal. You just wish it would go around and around on the belt forever. After you've walked away.

Wes Lee

Bio: Originally from the UK, Wes currently lives in New Zealand in a little bolt-hole at the beach. She directed her black comedy, ‘Woman with a Weapon’ at the Maidment theatre in Auckland. Her writing has appeared in various online and print publications: Stamp, Trout, PopMatters, Snorkel, Pleasures and Dangers: Artists of the 90’s. In 2002, she was an award winner in the New Zealand Society of Authors National Short Story Award. She has work forthcoming in The Ugly Tree. My story "Painting Julia" is now live at Thieves Jargon My story "Those Days" is now live at Turbine.

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