'Flash' writing anthology about chronic pain - submissions welcome!

Tag: body (Page 4 of 7)

‘A MEDLEY OF PAIN POPS’, by ford dagenham

PAIN AND ITS KILLERS

relief
is
an 
acceptable inevitable storm-head alarm
that holds back its rain
and mumbles thunder instead

a hard-sell of cotton ignorance
on the sofa that’s the world

MOON

the days hurt
and
the nights – well 

they’re a VHS video-nasty
trembling on pause

I only hope 
the
the
moon
knows
why I yell at him

FAR FAR AWAY

drugs argue 
in my blood
and
bedside drawer

like married pensioners and their TV shows

I
just
wish
they could get along

far far away
without me

ITS THE WAY I TELL THEM

I told the Dr
that it all hurts SO much
and I’m SO tired SO much
and its SO very hard to THINK now
that it makes me want to CRY
but I CAN’T cry
I told the Dr
cos of all the antidepressants

and she barked involuntary laughter
and suggested I swim

 

  • by ford dagenham

hatchbacks on fire: author website

UK

‘The Diagnosis’, by Roseanne Watt

A rookery, long abandoned now, 
had been built inside my body.

I don’t know where the birds went
or why, one day, they uninhabited,

leaving only their barbed-wire 
residues, strung across the boughs

of my hips; all sticks and spit, 
all hollows meant for holding 

something small, still desperately
alive. I’m sorry – I’m afraid 

I know only my own dark canopy, 
its filtering bones of light.

 

  • by Roseanne Watt

UK

‘Seczema’ by Isabel White

I flirt with my itch.
By turns it niggles, seduces, pesters;
as it gapes, festers,
I reach down,
don’t dare to look,
rip legs to shreds with nails, shorn short 
(but not short enough);
viscous red
smeared across my calf,
warm to touch.
I suppurate for art;
as if sawed in half,
shriek a pain.
I climax;
vow to abstain 
in future;
fail.

 

  • by Isabel White

United Kingdom

‘The Ache’, by Kitty Frilling

It wouldn’t be fair to say the ache starts
every morning as I wake.
Or truthfully that I wake at all,
more I become conscious… of the pain. 

The fire started small and young.
Fickle flickering up my spine.
Across my shoulders like a seasoned log,
spreading further, faster as I age.

It took hold.
It ravaged me, left me weak and wincing.
Scared to stretch my body,
as if it would elongate my pain. 

The ache doesn’t care how I adjust. 
Turn this hip, rest this hand, lift this leg. 
To chase it out of one limb just moves it, 
across the map of my body. 

It doesn’t listen to the pills.
Signals sent to block it in my brain. 
It weaves its way round them,
conniving and wheedling itself into my synapses.

 

  • by Kitty Frilling

Author website: www.kittyfrilling.co.uk

United Kingdom

‘The Night Shift’, by Libby R.

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 study of The Tibetan Book of The Dead. It was a lie, but a lie that helped.

  • by Libby R.

Author website: The Diary I Didn’t Write

U.K.

‘The Cost of Falling Ill’, by Linda Cosgriff

Work as hard as you can
for as long as you can

Then you’re ill
can’t work
can’t walk
can’t bear talk
or remember how no pain felt
can count on the hand you can’t lift
your friends
and family

can’t work
or provide
can’t afford pride
or holidays
you manage Christmas, on plastic
can’t walk your children to school
it’s uphill

you’re ill
can’t work
can’t live
can’t provide –
the part that was you
the man that was you
the pride in you
died

Try not to care 
that the love of your life 
is no longer your wife 
but your carer

Work as hard as you can
for as long as you can

  • by Linda Cosgriff

Author website

United Kingdom

‘A Double Etheree on Living with M.E.’, by Linda Cosgriff

A
man is
ill. Whispered
recollections
of what he once was
are all that sustain him. 
He has no hope. His aching
visions of what should have been kill
comfort. What could have been is a lie. 
He has no hope. He has no future. He
has only now. Life took revenge for a
life too well lived. He was a man out
of time. Now, there is nothing but
time. Resilient, he bears
it. He will not die. He
will suffer, always. 
He will not die. 
He does not,
cannot,
live.

 

  • by Linda Cosgriff

Author website

United Kingdom

« Older posts Newer posts »