www.wordbohemia.co.uk<\/a>)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Small Heaven<\/strong>
\n \u00a0<\/strong>
\nFirst, you ask the manager to open
\nthe store room. The company won’t provide
\na trolley to carry your supplies, but
\nsomeone nicked a wheely-basket from
\nthe Matalan next door and you can use
\nthat to carry two twenty-kilo bags
\nof kernels and raw sugar. If you’re strong,
\nyou can sling the three-gallon oil cannister
\nunder your armpit to save yourself a trip.
\nThe white-plastic bag of popping corn is stamped
\n‘America!\u2019 across the side in large
\nred, white, and blue letters. The brown paper
\nsugar-sack is discreetly marked ‘product
\nof Britain\u2019 in a small square on the bottom
\nleft corner. The oil is bought from the lowest
\nseller and every week the container
\nis different. The kettles look like a pair
\nof Kentucky stills, the ones your uncle
\nhid inside a tree stump. Those burnt corn, too,
\nbut the product was different. They’re mounted
\nhigh up on a metal platform, behind
\nthe retail counter. The popcorn you serve
\nis always a few days old, but the smell
\nof the fresh stuff never fails to boost sales
\nand people like to watch you work. Fill the drums
\nbeneath the kettles, switch on the rotor,
\nthe heat, and the pump. Add a scoop of corn
\nand a full cup of sugar, and write your name
\nand the date on thirty blue, ten-gallon
\nstorage bags while the oil heats up. Do not
\nforget to wear your goggles. Sometimes hot,
\ngreasy seeds shoot out from under the rims
\nof the kettles. The next seven hours are
\nfree and just a little magical, filled
\nas they are with rhythmic, hypnotizing
\nsound, a hot, white flurry, and the sweet smell
\nof the kind of fairs you never visited
\nwhen you lived at home. Spend the time scooping
\nshovelfuls of someone else’s happiness
\ninto bags you stack beside the ice-machine.
\nLet your eyes unfocus, just a little,
\nwhile you work. There are whole worlds, hidden here,
\nbehind your heavy eyelids, stories, just
\nwaiting, for you to come and explore.
\nYou’ll stop, an hour or so before quitting
\ntime. It takes about that long to clean up.
\n <\/p>\nBethany W Pope<\/strong> is an award-winning writer. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University\u2019s Creative Writing program, and her MA from the University of Wales Trinity St David. She has published several collections of poetry: A Radiance<\/em> (Cultured Llama, 2012) Crown of Thorns<\/em>,(Oneiros Books, 2013), The Gospel of Flies<\/em> (Writing Knights Press 2014), and Undisturbed Circles<\/em>(Lapwing, 2014). Her collection The Rag and Boneyard<\/em> was published last year by Indigo Dreams and her chapbook Among The White Roots<\/em> was released by Three Drops Press this autumn. Her first novel, Masque<\/em>, was published by Seren last June.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Acceptance<\/strong><\/p>\nI’m letting the spiders hold sway above my bed.
\nTheir fine webs foreshadowing the grey hairs
\nthat have already begun to age my dull skull.<\/p>\n
Past times, I would have cupped them or sucked
\nthem into a vacuum. No more. I\u2019m letting their
\neggs, hanging loose in spooled buds, hatch.<\/p>\n
They are my teachers, my eight-legged gurus,
\nmy no-self. I am becoming intimate with
\ntheir weaves, their watchfulness, their ways.<\/p>\n
Asleep, my ceiling glitters minutely with the
\nblack stars of their pinhead bodies. Awake,
\nI welcome these arachnid broods as friends.<\/p>\n
As fantasy, they spin me a suit of silken yarn, in
\nwhich I lucidly mummify while they gratefully
\ngorge on the slow minerals of my stopped blood.<\/p>\n
Now, as I slip into a deep, deep sleep where
\nthis woven tapestry unravels, stitch by stitch,
\nI return once again to a single, seamless thread.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Richard Biddle<\/strong> teaches Creative Writing at Chichester College. His poetry has been published online and in the journals Urthona, Brittle Star and Dream Catcher<\/em>. It has also appeared in several anthologies. In 2013, his poem \u2018Transparency\u2019 won The Big Blake Project\u2019s William Blake Poetry Prize. He tweets as @littledeaths68.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What Every Rusholme Housemaid Wants Sarah, get yourself to the boating lake. They take a turn each day. Granted an afternoon\u2019s relief from dust and grates, Cook wheeshes me out the basement door to Platt Fields where the lake is an ocean of rowing boat bob and a brass band is playing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15020,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15019\/revisions\/15020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}