Author photo courtesy of Matthew Wyndham
Jellyfish
There’s no doubt she thinks he’s lost at sea. A smudge of blood on her glasses.
She looks healthy. She wishes he looked healthy. Her weird stare drifts across his
sick face like the shadow of a murder weapon they called love. Her new boyfriend
is a taxi driver. He is a quiet man with at least one tooth missing, so obviously
he’s a paedophile. When their little girl says the new boyfriend’s name her father’s
fingertips go numb; he has visions of the taxi driver’s dismembered corpse
scattered on a cold beach full of baby jellyfish, broken phones, the nights he dies
without her. They share a joint in his parents’ garden, negotiating a future that bites
too hard. Her saliva moist on the filter, he takes the cigarette, inhales, wonders
if this is the last time her spit will touch his lips. The word divorce is sharp,
sound of sirens, fire alarms, flying saucers shining through a nightmare of winter
trees. He stares at her chest, the line of cleavage that may as well be a crack in his
bedroom wall, thinking maybe the sun will explode if he reaches out and touches it,that she might hold his haunted hand tight against her heart until it gets dark, and tell him their marriage was a message that failed to send, and tell him their
daughter is a dream, and tell him to go dig a hole far away from here, as their tears
scatter like silver shrapnel through his mother’s evil flowers and all the sorry
gardens beyond.
Odaxelagnia
She told him her new fella can do magic tricks inside her, then slammed a slimy
white rabbit onto the table, spilling cold tea into his crotch and putting him off his
spaghetti. He said, ‘My girlfriend has a tongue like a spinning clock, hurls me back
in time, when childhood sunsets were sugary ghosts and Grandma’s vegetable
soup. She told him her smile is so wide they had to rearrange the furniture because
the corners of her mouth scratched the new sofa and smashed the hallway mirror -
she used the shards to slash their wedding album and their daughter’s favourite
teddy bears. He told her his girlfriend is so good at head she sucks out his skeleton
and spits it onto the windy balcony where it dances the dance of life! She said, ‘Oh
yeah? My fella isn’t a drug addict… He can always get it up!’ He said ‘Oh yeah? My girl drinks a ton of wine, she’s crazy when she’s pissed, she bites my biceps so hard I growl joyful jungle music through my coke-damaged nose as my skin breaks like yesterday and all the days that came before! We use the blood to write shit about you on our parents’ bedroom walls. We use our cum to mask the stench of poems I never truly meant…’ Outside, two half-dead cats were fighting on the toxic lawn. They stopped to watch them awhile, tea-light candles reflecting off their broken fangs as she looked at her phone, and he looked at his phone, both of them pretending to read funny, sexy text messages, when in fact they didn’t have any funny, sexy text messages at all, only low batteries beeping in the absence of real grown-ups to guide them into paradise.
Thank You For Swallowing My Cum
I tell cats on the street, ‘Hey kitty, she swallowed my cum!’ I told the shy Indian
woman in the corner shop, ‘Do not be afraid, for she swallowed my cum!’ I even
told my mum but she burned her elbow on the frying pan, then showed me a pile
of depressing bank statements as my dad blew a perfect ring of smoke that broke
like the ghost of a cheap wedding band above the empty fruit bowl. Last week,
while pissing into the sea on a beautiful day in Wales, I cupped my hands around
my stoned smile and yelled, ‘Hey sunset, she swallowed my cum!’ but it shrugged
between misty hills as the tide rolled over my shoes, and my ex hates me. Or she
sometimes hates me. And she never swallowed my cum. What am I doing? Where
am I going? Are you okay? Can I get you anything? I won’t swallow your cum but I could make you a sandwich. I should probably send her a message, make sure it’s
cool to share this with my friends. I don’t want to make her feel awkward;
awkward that I saw myself clean in her company, my blood baptismal water;
awkward that I saw myself happily dying as her fingers scribbled sad stories onto
my pale chest; awkward that I tell cats and nervous Indian women and my stressed
parents and amazing, far out, gore-porn sunsets that Oh Wow! when she swallowedmy cum I forgot how dead I am, because when I’m living inside her mouth I don’t even need to breathe. My stupid life pops right out of my happy mouth, bouncing away like a scruffy old tennis ball under the wheels of the sky and all the things we thought we knew before we knew each other.
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Bobby Parker was born 1982 in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, in the UK. His publications include the critically acclaimed Ghost Town Music and its equally oddball sequel Comberton (Knives Forks & Spoons Press). His poems, stories, artwork and journalism appear randomly these days (since he is often on the road touring) in places such as The Quietus and other reputable—and not so reputable—print and online magazines. His full-length debut collection of poetry, BLUE MOVIE, is due for release in October from Nine Arches Press.
