'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!
There is a snuffing out when the synapses stop firing. The ex-wives fade to black. His hawks blink. Extinguished. The Co-op, Jesus, trains and snow glimmer. Cut. Planets spin off the axons. Our kisses are ashes blown to the wind. He lies alone, like a great house with all it’s furniture moved out; windows smeared […]
I am your pain. Like Puck; quicksilver, impish, mischief-making. You’re easily fooled, you make my nonsense real, you feel what is not true. I stab and prickle, or transform into A metal straitjacket, squeezing your foot, your leg. Imprisoned. Around each toe, elastic bands pulled tight. You call me neuropathy; I say there’s no such […]
hey Leah ive been worried about you. theres this site i want you to see, ive been putting poems on there about chronic pain. you dont have to do this alone. by socks England
My grandma had 7300 sleepless nights Until a Shanghai doctor said ‘You have restless legs’ Pills prescribed Leaflet read, Pramipexole Hydrochloride The 1st good night’s sleep In the 7301 nights. by Xie Licheng UK
Like a tennis ace, all Crisp white shorts, and shirts Fresh every day, He sits over the breakfast Table, too big For any chair, an elbow Planted, a one-hand scoop Of eggs and bacon, Solid muscle in the arm And thigh, his neck A bronze pillar Of glowing flesh. And then you see Slight tremor, […]
When the pain goes I half suppose my flesh marked, transformed. A growth of lichen, say, with its warm turmeric tint; a layer of cool, silvery fish-scales; traces of the glacial burn of chain-mail melting into skin. Best of all a delicate, graceful articulation of relief on the site of its worst excesses: once the […]
Worst days pain ricochets like shooting stars with pinball crushes. Oh the love! Releases fiery goo when ramming rib, tooth, bone. Skull reels alone; body razed by frequent flyer flares, flags pushed here there, declaring consternation zones. Each smart begets another, emulates, and brass bands march in new-laid grooves, playing their loudest, most discordant tunes. […]
Helplessness. It’s worse for me you know. You are only suffering but you do that every day. But every day I wake up and with the reddened sky I know that I can never help you. Hopelessness. It’s worse for me. You can imagine a cure or some relief though you know – you know […]
by Sara Wasson U.K.
When he was dying, I swallowed a CoCodamol before bedtime as if it were hot chocolate. I craftily attributed my zen-like calm in the face of helping Dad as he pissed blood into a plastic pot at 3am – I don’t know what’s happening to me, he said, again and again – to my sensible […]