[ Digital Edition Available On Request | Print Edition SOLD OUT ] In issue 39 of Neon everything goes wrong. Parties become nightmares, bridges collapse into bays, a house fire consumes possessions, cars freeze over and life plans dissolve into nothingness. But if that all sounds a bit depressing it’s worth mentioning that there are…
Month: October 2014
After the Parade
Glass crunched under my mum’s car tyres as her Corsa crawled up the road, which had been clean when we drove down it a few hours earlier, before the parades passed through. As the wheels rotated I felt each chip of glass dig into the hard rubber, tearing at the air inside. The tyres fought…
Quicksand
I was on my way to the butcher’s when I stepped in quicksand. I hadn’t really thought about quicksand in years. Maybe Indiana Jones or one of those Humphrey Bogart movies where he’s a boatsman, and he wears a hat. I imagined the sand’s texture to resemble grape jelly. It’s actually more like the inside…
The Big One
On the fourth floor of the humanities buildingin the redwood and eucalyptus forestof my university, the ground rolls uplike a steadily building Pacific wave –one of those pounding Ocean Beach in earshot of this classroom. Levelor blinds slash like daggers across the windows.Those of us raised here dive for deskstoo small for book bags.Twelve on…
Failure Day
The One Percent’s more gung-ho bitchesbitch that their taxes go towardsthis holiday. None do. It’s private,mid-spring when the crops burn. Pink slips tend to appear around that date;roaches swarm, and jellyfish. Spouses leave, and the one left waits for talk-show hosts’ routines about the day.At their desks, despite stern memos,the employed for a moment contemplatewithout…