Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 27 i Popshot Magazine

It was first noticed as a dark smudge by hikers in the early 1990s, deep inside the glacier, only visible in the summers. A grey stone, eight feet tall but thin; like a gravestone. It wasn’t till the 2010s, when the glacier was really starting to go, and the stone was mere feet away, that people noticed the carvings. Flood stones are huge monolithic blocks that rest on riverbeds, only visible at times of great drought. Giving warnings and messages through the dark and murk of history, centuries past. Though as the ice melted back, inch by inch, the shapes and lines etched deeply into the stone were not German or French or any European words. But they were many; languages lost to the scour of time, words not spoken…

Elephant settled on the couch and took a sip of water. The doctor, already seated, focussed unseeing eyes in his direction and waited for him to start. Elephant had concluded that the doctor didn’t do pleasantries; not out of impoliteness, but out of an overzealous watchfulness of time. So, Elephant stopped asking how he was and launched right into the session. “I left my herd and came here because I was tired of everyone telling me what I could and could not do. No one can see here, so I can do what I want, right? Wrong. Your city is no different. People decide, very quickly, who they think you are, and just like that you are trapped in their impression of you for the rest of your life.” “Tea?”…

Despite the bitter chill that enveloped it, the train was warm and Caitlin was fast asleep. The black train rattled upwards through snow, under crags and out of the light. The shock of the dark woke Caitlin and she struggled to get her bearings. She reached for her glasses and looked out onto the mountain. In front, the jagged peak cast a long shadow, rendering the snow grey – a mottled hinterland between the living and the hereafter. Caitlin raised a lined, trembling hand to the window as the train dipped over the peak and a vision of starlight rushed in, so sharp and so cold her breath frosted the glass.…

All her grandmother’s things still lived in the house,the girl didn’t have much of her own. She slepton the lumpen horse-hair mattress in the mouldof her grandmother’s body, in the narrow oak bedin which she imagined her father had been born. Each night as she switched off the bedside lightshe saw her grandmother’s plastic pill dispenserwith the little hatches for the days of the week:Tuesday and Wednesday were closed. She keptdreaming she was cutting her way through a bedof hydrangeas. Each morning she walked alongthe cul de sac (net curtains, staring cats), throughthe village, past the petrol station and boarded-up pub.She loved the shooting-star cars, slosh of wet tyresthe singing level-crossing, loved coming hometo the waiting house, the garden looped in bindweed. Each afternoon she heard the letterbox rattle as…

At the rear of our new house we waited for moonrise. While the sun neared the horizon, we sketched the elderly neighbour. He was edging himself up a wooden extension ladder, a portable oxygen tank strapped to his back. He was in denim overalls, worn white on the buttocks. With each step, his shoulders rose. It took him a long time to reach the top. His arm stretched to the steel bars crisscrossing the attic porthole. He fiddled with a key in the lock, faltering, finally able to swing open the metal lattice. Then he peered inside the darkened window. We called to our neighbour, asked him to turn around so we could capture a true likeness of his face. He lifted his foot off the rung; his torso twisted…

Dave carries his girlfriend in the left-hand breast pocket of his shirt, thinking – for he is a thoughtful man – that she’ll find the steady rhythm of his heart comforting. In the early days, she used to pummel him with her dainty fists, little bursts of energy banging out messages he couldn’t decipher. Instead, he pretended it was her heartbeat; blindly seeking his own comfort. As the days grow shorter and colder, they live in silence. His heartbeat is muffled by knitted layers. She sleeps most of the day, fists clenched, but still; hugging her knees to her body for warmth.…

To me, she was always all wrinkles,As frail as eggshell and embellished with lace.My lasting image is of her beaming faceWhen she opened the doorBut the more I age the less I can ignoreAnother scene projecting in my headOf her sitting still in a hospital bedAnd the first time her smile ever struck meAs forced and stuck. She reached out for my hand like a child and froze,Staring vacantly past me as I nervously smiled.Her mouth began to gapeAs if waiting for something deep to escapeSo her tongue could prise it from her stomach.“I’m scared Ashley, I don’t want to die,What will happen to me?”And I could see that with all her humilityShe could not allow herself the comfort of eternal graceBut just a simple spaceAwaiting her.Tearful, she waited for…

She watched him gather tufts from fencesalong the field, as he’d watched her finger woolin the village yarn shop, her gaze low and dark, smallbrown hands lingering over skeins still freshfrom early shearing. That night he switched off allthe lights and kept squat candles burning on the hearth, their flicker pointing beams and cracks in ancient brickwork.His thickweave cushions, driftwood hangings and pegloom rugs brought the flock indoors, while by the fireraw fleece sacks breathed their sweetness acrossthe room towards the porch. Single storeyed, the cottageeased itself to darkness as he doused his mug goodnight and padded to the bed, cablesocks three quarters highon tanned and knotted calves, tired legs. The ball twinedabove the kitchen stove where a skillet used to drop,anchored by aran ply to a thumbed black squab.Candlelight…

Deet was the best of all and Andy loved Deet too much. Mum rolled her eyes when she was heard Andy tell her about Deet. Why wasn’t he playing with the children up the lane instead? Deet played all the best games and Deet told the best stories. Andy went down to the stream where it was deep and fast by the bridge. He knew Deet would show up because Deet always showed up when things were fun, and it would be fun. Andy picked heavy stones to show Deet. He made a pile on the bridge. There was a glassy part in the water where it looked still but it wasn’t and you could tell by the way that it rippled a bit like a soap bubble. Andy lay…

On the sheep-cropped grass of Cardigan Bay,two ticking crickets snapped behind my headwhile below the slow, swollen briny wavessucked and plopped upon the pewter shoreand time seemed to stand and stand. Two days before I’d stood in dizzy thoughtat Pentre Ifan’s stone and solid gate,fifty-five hundred winters worn,then stepping through the bluestone dolmen doorsensed with pricking wonder life unseen;emerged with hawthorns bobbing red and golding green.…

If you eat a watermelon, a baby will grow in your belly. That’s what mama always told me. I avoided eating watermelon until that one really hot day at the summer carnival. Bobby Jenkins and I went skinny dipping in Sander’s Pond and afterwards we sat half-naked by the water’s edge and ate slices of watermelon until our fingers were red and we were both wearing less than we arrived in. I remembered my mama’s warning when it was too late. I swallowed one slimy black seed. I felt it land with a plop in my stomach. I asked Bobby to try and suck it out of me and he tried but we both knew it was all over. By the time I went back to school, my stomach was…

I asked him, once,as between my fingerseach riotous strand sprang up,‘What would happen ifyou straightened it?’And laughing, he saidit would go on fire. I hope he never does.For when the world dizzies mewith its anarchy,and I burn myselffumbling for order,his beard between my fingerswild and weirdas any of my spinning thoughtsmakes a straightener seem a straitjacketand turns the whirling of the worldinto a waltz.…

Some call me Altamaha-ha, after the brackish river I haunt. Others call me Mama Tunde, imagining me as some sea-dwelling surrogate mother to call to when their earthly mama falls short. Some call me the Queen of Salt, for they have heard that I’m only drawn to the surface when tears hit my waters. I’ve been called a mermaid, a naiad, a sea witch, a hag, a siren. If someone were to ask, though no one does, I prefer to be called Yetunde. My river separates Fort Frederica from the Swamp King’s island, where a wealthy duke came and built a huge plantation with many fields and many slaves. But the duke and his family couldn’t stand the heat, the smell, or the mosquitos. The duke’s daughters fell ill, his…

What nobody knows about Josephine is that she loved music from cartoons. She thought her friends would think she was childish, so she only listened to them when she drove alone. Once, when her sister found a Disney Princess CD in her glove compartment, she lied and said she had bought it as a gift, looking away. Nobody knows that Josephine was seriously thinking of hanging her major. Her parents bragged, online and offline, about how proud they were that their daughter had chosen to go into the medical field while so many Millennials were making “worthless career choices.” They called her a great daughter, a great sister, a great example. Meanwhile, Josephine carefully kept the tablet she had purchased with her own money hidden, hoping her parents would never…

Trimester One – Month Two The news breaks over lunch. They’re eating last night’s pizza.She peels all the jalapeño off her slice before taking a bite. He stares at his own slice cautiously. “Thought you liked spicy?” “I do. But I don’t think the baby does.” He bites the tip of his own slice, chews thoroughly, swallows. “Who?” “The baby.” She says around another bite. “What baby?” “Our baby.” She says before folding the rest of her slice and finishing it. He sets his pizza down. “I don’t follow.” She picks it up and tears off the crust. “I think I’m pregnant.” Even though she isn’t sure, he finds now to be an appropriate time to start worrying. Looking around the room, the sofa they eat on, the microwave they…