The Short Story Challenge

edit biographydelete Biography Short stories - they're my latest challenge. I've written them in the past, with reasonable success (Radio 4, Bridport, Stand magazine and so on) but now I'm trying to go deeper, or shall I say, take more risks. It's a form of problem solving. Each time I sit with a writing pad it's scary. It's like when I used to dip the oil tank (this was before I got a remote senser) . . . up the steps, unscrew the lid, stick in a cane. Is there anything left in there? Does it come out wet? If it does, what a relief. That's what it's like. And then getting someone to read them is scary too. My wife Rosemarie is my best critic. I usually end up taking on most of her comments. But sitting there while she reads is hell. What if she thinks it's rubbish? (She doesn't usually.) It's different from me commenting on her pots. You can react to a pot in a few seconds. It takes longer to explain what I like (or much less often, dislike) about it, but there isn't that wait. A pot extends in space, a story in time.

Poem in hendecasyllabics

Danse Macabre

The hens were quickstepping this way and that

behind the steel mesh, today like every day,

crying, ‘Let us out, for God’s sake let us out!’

I sighed. ‘But I saw, yesterday
down the drive where you love to roam and forage
Brother Fox pass, grinning in his russet coat.’

‘We long to be free pour faire nos jeux,’ they raged,
‘and should the ball of existence bounce to the red
and should the one round in the chamber engage

and should our danse macabre prove a foxtrot
so be it.’ But I left them caged.

There are too many of us among the dead.

[Comments please!]