{"id":370,"date":"2011-09-06T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=370"},"modified":"2011-09-06T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-09-06T11:00:00","slug":"some-short-prose-from-bobby-parker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/some-short-prose-from-bobby-parker\/","title":{"rendered":"Some short prose from Bobby Parker"},"content":{"rendered":"

Her Face Flickers<\/span>

Before I go into the waiting room for clinical psychology I go for a piss. My bladder has been a bit funny lately. I piss too much. Sometimes it's difficult to piss.<\/span>

As I wait for it to flow, I stare at the silver flush button on the wall above the toilet. It says Armitage Shanks. Armitage Shanks are a British bathroom company that can be traced back to 1850.<\/span>

I trace it back to the late eighties. There was a girl in my class called Debbie Shanks. When I went to the bathroom my mind made instant associations between the toilet and Debbie. I never mentioned this to anyone. No reason to. It's stupid.<\/span>

Even to this day, every time I go to a bathroom and see the words Armitage Shanks, I think about Debbie. And I feel stupid. I can barely remember what she looked like; her face flickers in the section of my memory labelled Early Childhood Before Shit Hit the Fan.<\/span>

But when I piss, I see those words Armitage Shanks and think about Debbie. I try to visualize her face, her flickering face kind of silver and blue. And it helps. It helps me piss. I'm not sure how to feel about that. The doctor has told me to avoid fluid after six at night. I\u2019d like to drink some wine with my wife but I can\u2019t. <\/span>



*Bobby Parker<\/span> was born in 1982. He lives in Kidderminster, England. His most recent collection is Ghost Town Music<\/span> available now from knivesforksandspoonspress<\/a>. He is currently working on the book from which Her Face Flickers has been taken.  <\/span>
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Her Face FlickersBefore I go into the waiting room for clinical psychology I go for a piss. My bladder has been a bit funny lately. I piss too much. Sometimes it's difficult to piss.As I wait for it to flow, I stare at the silver flush button on the wall above the toilet. It says […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}