across the street

My story “The Beautiful Horizon” in The Purpose of Reality: Solar has been shortlisted for the 2022 Aurealis Awards in the Fantasy Short Story Category. Info about The Purpose of Reality collections below.

They’ve built a block of apartments
across the street, all the way along.

My neighbors over there had to vacate,
but I heard a little wailing
beneath the motors’ roar
when the night machines
ground their houses to gravel.

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the book

An inconspicuous library
in a forgotten country town.

The librarian won’t let you borrow it,
but you may read it in the library,
hold it in your calloused hands,
even riffle its soft pages
gently with your fingertips,
like so many have before you.

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where is the sun?

A car the color of the sunset disappears
around a corner, the sky recalls a long-ago
metropolis, and films of rain are shining
on the concrete and the bitumen,
the bushes and the trees.

I think about what I’ve done and
what I will, and wonder where’s the sun?
Am I any closer to it?

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The Purpose of Reality K

reasonable mistakes

The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry collections from Meerkat Press, with pretty fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.

“You know Rodney, you’re just
a hanger-on, a waste of
space, time, and air.”

She never got my name right,
but I knew where she was
coming from. I was her ghost
companion, a Dapto tourist
information brochure
for an interstellar traveler—
unnecessary and pointless
in every way.

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The Purpose of Reality L

beyond the glass

The Purpose of Reality illustrated short story and poetry volumes from Meerkat Press, with fair reviews from Publishers Weekly and the like, now available on Amazon and at other outlets, click for details including reviews.

Beyond the glass, the water birds
are gliding on the rails of rain,
and, for a moment,
their distant pattering melody
recalls a semblance
of another chance
at hopefulness—even with
the knowing that it’s far too late
for all of that.

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the quiet hours

The rain was running late, still pattering
on the muddy puddles of the city sky,
and the street was smeared with cloud
star-ridden with mercury lamps—
a world as dreary as long-lost
infatuation, as a friend’s anger,
as empty jealousy.

Like a moth attracted
to the flickers of fluorescent lights,
I chose a frayed café where
my dairy-whitened instant coffee
with artificial sweetener
—all its chemical delights—
put me in the writing mood.

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Blade Walker’s plan

Previously on Blade Walker: the earth is inhabited by extraterrestrials, who are minding the planet after humans failed in their duty of care. Blade Walker (human) and Alícia (alien) are having coffee at one of the Café Économique franchises. The first episode is here.

It was all the usual at the Café:
an earthenware urn of tired umbrellas,
sprouting branches and plastic flowers,
tattered pigeons hoping for a snack;
at the other tables, Saurons sipping bluegas,
the odd Solarian, naturally luminous,
and sentient crustacea on a break
from breaking crockery.

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