sunkisland

Bee's End A dozy, dying bee lands on the arm of my blue shirt. I flick it away and it falls to the pale, warm slab at my feet. How long has it been, bee? Twenty days? Thirty? Perhaps not that. Eight hundred kilometers of flight for half a teaspoon of honey. Work, work, work, wearing you out. Now you're crawling alone with the last of your pointless pollen, waiting for the end. It's nearly over, but not yet. The ants have seen you. And here they come, those bastard ants.

Another flash fiction.

TWISTED FISH I have a brief hallucination of small crisp leaves lying like pieces of dried-up skin on riverine paving stones. Tourists move in shoals beneath the trees. I reach the place of plunder and brag: needle and memorial, statues of twisted fish. Westminster: I have come too far. A copper in shirtsleeves stands at the stern of a boat as it turns into the current. Such is the river: choppy and brown; it slops and smacks concrete, wood and brick, agitated about something.

A flash fiction.