Cherrypicked stories

Cherry

Dear Sir, (poem)

DEAR SIR Dear Sir, Please excuse my sons absence He slept in We slept in The night before he studied into the small hours the mechanics of Skateboarding counting new bruises and fading others how he can ‘ollie’ sets of steps without broken marrow, it releases his anger. How the words of Curt Cobain relates to his 180 degree kick flip and the thrill of a half pipe. That being 16 messes with his head no one understands. And how is it fair, his girlfriend lives ten mile away and he’s no car, why work at the weekend tires him and grunge pulls him through.
Cherry

R v Cort

No, no, you see it wasn't kidnapping per se. He stopped at bus stops where women - no, listen.
Cherry

Buffalo: Diary of a (non) smoker

Fifteen years and 75, 600 (15x7, x4, x12, x15) cigarettes later, and I've decided enough is - cough, hack - enough. As much as my gold-and-white-adorned friends have supported me through the ages, the little blighters are starting to blight me in more ways than one. The lines around my mouth are deepening; in fact, I could probably stick mini matchsticks in them and they would hold fast.
Cherry

Black-eyed Angel.

When he was young and very small, and the world was very big...
Cherry

Errata: Fifteenth Episode - Enter Screamo The Clown

Satan was too intent on doing good to stay in power for long.
Cherry

The Glass Labyrinth

He took a deep breath. The air tasted untamed and ancient, seafood baked in garlic, oven warm bread, bitter lemons. As the goats moved into the distance the sound of their bells grew sad and mournful, a death knell for some part of himself, an ideal, perhaps. He'd never killed anything bigger than an insect before. The cloying heat of the afternoon had waned to congenial warmth. Mosquitoes were waking famished from their slumber and hummed about his ears. He reached a junction where he was unable to read the signpost, but the turn promised a destination in two kilometres.
Cherry

He put a crimp in my day

He put a crimp in my day It all came as rather a shock, he opened my door and threw it in like a grenade. I held out hope for it to keep its eyes closed like a new baby, but it opened its welt mouth
Cherry

Under my duvet

I saw the man I might love take a sharp right out of Waitrose, with a bag of new potatoes and some half dead calla-lillies. I thought he might notice me caught like a leaf in the doorway, but he looked very busy thinking about things.
Cherry

Taproot

Taproot Several hours walk outside of Bakau, dirt track after dirt track and any tarmac hissing with heat mirage. I pry past the prop-roots of mangroves into rusting wire and diamond
Cherry

Skeletons

"What harm could it do? We sit in the kitchen of our Roxborough twin, drinking coffee and reading the Inquirer, our Sunday ritual. She glances at me from across the top of the Image section. "Gilly?
Cherry

Hanged Man

It all began the day the hanged man said 'Hello' to me. ------------------------------------------ Back in those days I still lived at the church. I wasn't training to be a priest or anything of the sorts, to be honest it was far from it. I was only there since nobody else didn't care or didn't want to be burdened with the load and shame of being bestowed to the town orphan. It's because of that I was shoved into church under the watch of the ever present, Sister Caterina. It was Sister Caterina's self-imposed duty that she made me of my burden to her everyday, and fairly recently she has also tacked on new lectures about my neglecting the available work force for me. From the stories I've heard in town my father was much the same when he was my age. I guess that's where I get it from.
Cherry

The Generous Moon

A rewrite
Cherry

Holes

Do you know how long it takes to dig a six foot hole? All day. And it wasn't even six foot by the time I'd done. Five, more like. It had already got dark so I took the bike and picked up a Chinese, a treat to end a hard day. Not like yesterday. Yesterday there was Carly. I had her before I got up and had her again before I went out. Sweet Little Sixteen. 38-24-34. I cut her out and stuck her in pride of place, right next to the bed.
Cherry

Detonation

A rose blooming from bad seed?
Cherry

The Pigs are Back.

Proper nonsense. With pigs.
Cherry

Scarthin's

I came back, didn't I? And I drank in a cafe that got stuck in your throat
Gold cherry

Laundry Day

into spin or from one side to its twin
Cherry

You don't think of these things in Jerusalem

Of roman candles summer new year's and Guatamelan shirts For R.
Cherry

The Catcher in the What?

If you've read J. D. Salinger's 'The Catcher in the Rye', you might make some sense of this.

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