Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i Popshot Magazine

i’ve begun craving absinthe shotslicked bare from bars topsmore and more because i’m justso fucking boredof children’s parties smiling from our fold up chairsus adults sit like crusts of breadmake conversation suitablefor parents we don’t know yet yes, my child is that oneyes, we’re very blessed the more orange squash i pourthe more pissed i long to get little jamie says he hates orangeit’s summer fruitsor nothing else little jamie can fuck off,i think. i lie:say there’s just orange left i help to hand the food outcrisps and pigs fill paper platesparents hover, panicked - trying desperately to sell some grapes jake’s dad adds three carrot sticksjake looks at his dad like cuntsomeone tells me that the waiting listfor cubs is almost one year long and i nodand i panicunsure…

The zoo is lit by blue flashes. Birds squawk, monkeys scamper and howl, not used to crowds this late in the evening. My breath forms vapour clouds. The police wear padded fluorescent jackets, stamp their feet, and rub their hands. Their radios chatter and hiss. There’s been an escape. My jaguar has gone. “No damage to the lock,” a policewoman says. “Sure you locked up properly?” “I’ve been a zookeeper for twelve years. I know how to lock a gate,” I say. My jaguar’s name is Sombra, Portuguese for shadow, rescued as an abandoned cub in the Amazon. Through his oil-slick black coat, you can see the same patchwork markings of his non-black relatives. His fur is thick and greasy. Sombra no longer cleans himself with the intensity of his…

The man’s elbow digs into my ribcage, but I don’t move. I need his tourist dollars. We’re pressed together on the narrow bed in a mess of frowzy sheets, and his sagging flesh is clammy against my tanned skin. I turn to him with my paint-on smile and think of the good things. The yellow dress my sister is making for me, the matching shoes I’ll buy later, and the certainty that one day I’ll escape this city, this island; one day I won’t be in Havana. In America I’ll have all the dresses I want, and a Cuban man who’ll be kind to me. And now the man is pressing down on me again, his sweat dripping onto my face, leaning in close to kiss me. “Extra for kissing,”…

Despite the late hour, the phone was answered on the first ring. “Warden Ackley, this is your new Deputy Shane Parker. We have an escapee. One prisoner is missing.” “Did you follow procedure? Tell me what you have done.” “Sounded the alarm, alerted State Police, put the jail into lockdown.” “Good man,” replied Warden Ackley reassuringly. “I’ll contact Sergeant Tremaine and set a four am briefing for him and his shakedown team. You’ve done well.” “Thank you, sir,” said a relieved Shane Parker, noticing his hand shake as he hung up the phone, and thinking to himself, I’ve only been Deputy Warden for three days. This was the last thing I ever wanted to happen on my watch. Warden Ackley was looking forward to retirement. The amount of administrative paperwork…

During their first year together, when love was still uncomplicated, Chloe and Miguel took a holiday in the mountains. That time was, Chloe said later, their age of innocence. They stayed in a chalet-cottage and walked through flower-strewn meadows nestled among forested hills. They picnicked beside streams, and Miguel painted every day. He worked on wood and metal as well as canvas. On the hills he collected sheets of thin bark and enchantingly twisted tree roots, often painting on-site, finding messages in smooth flowing whorls of wood. Sometimes Miguel sketched Chloe dreaming on the cottage deck in the evening twilight or gazing at the mountains. She was so beautiful, he used to say, with her golden flowing hair seeming to stream off on soft breezes towards the peaks and the…

The family had lived for some time beyond the edges of civilisation. Their home was positioned within a clearing of woodland, some miles from the nearest village. They were four—mother, father, daughter, son—and existed together there in quiet contentment. However, it was now the winter season, a period that brought with it specific hardships. Their small field grew resistant to putting up crops, the goats milked slowly, and evening arrived in late afternoon. One cold night, they were eating their final meal of the day, when the mother expressed astonishment. “God almighty!” she screamed. “Look—the window!” The three others turned in their chairs to understand the source of her fear. Behind the window, clouding the cramped pane with breath from its nostrils, was a monster. The father roared, pushed back…

I feel your hand in mine as we walk the path back from the night into the light. Your warmth dripping into my hand like ink onto paper, the flowers around us turning from black to red as if bleeding back into living. The further we walk from Hades the more I can taste the air on my lips. It has a fruity taste, reminiscent of a juicy pomegranate. I feel the fruit reaching out for me, licking my lips I want to take just a bite, but your hand in mine will not let me go astray and so we continue forward, you leading me away. The further we walk the less it feels like a graveyard with birds chirping in the distance instead of the sounds of howls…

In memory of the victims of the 14 July terror attack in Nice Give this fury a colour:maybe the hot stain of fireworks,crust on bulletholes in glass. Why others and not us –was it the rosaries we were yet to bless? Since we’re alive we put on suncream:McDonald’s is out of milkshake,just punishment for greed but the summer is hotand massacres pass like storms. Take the girl on the tram in the morning,her plaits fizzled out like a fling:she had never seen such dandelions, cannot count to eighty-four. We will not shatter her starry eyeswith tales of other lights so brightmown down beside the sea. A truckherringboningmincingdeadheadingmen not dead – but the summer is hot.A mile from the prom,we buy postcardsto remember.…

I only properly noticed Olga on the night of our last fandango. Up to then she had been mousy and unobtrusive, with faltering footwork and unconvincing arms. A back-row dancer – while I, directly under Ramon’s eye, would glow and cavort like a fiery gypsy, brimming with duende. Until the night it all fell apart. It started as a normal Wednesday evening. I hurried from the office at five-thirty, ignoring the derision of my colleagues. “Off to your flamenco class then, Estelle? Or is it salsa you do?” Ignorant, patronising – I never deigned to correct them. My spirit as strong as my determination to make it to Stoke Newington in time for the class. I was the first to arrive. Or so I thought. “Hola,” I trilled, pushing aside…

My bath is a chariot,A watery vehicle,Tonight, I dive deep,Into the sea inside. The hot water makes me dream,The darkness provides the perfect screen,Immersed in salty quiet,I hear my own heartbeat, like mer-drums.When I breathe, it is the breath of the tides,When I hold my breath, it is the stillness and secrecy of a rock pool. Colours explode against the black,Sparkles and trails draw a map,I hear moons and suns, planets and stars,Echoing through the water like swimming pool music. I journey to the bed of myself,Where mysterious sea creatures live, and beautiful coral scratches my arms and legs. I am burnt by living water, at the centre of it all. I see the soul of the world,A sea flower blooming in the eye-socket of a skull. I emerge with…

I was looking forward to writing a love story because I wanted to live one. But I got exactly what I deserved that night on the cruise ship. So, I am writing about my little brother. My mother often used to sigh out loud and say (to no one in particular) that the most difficult times to be a parent are during the Terrible Twos and the Terrible Teens. She also used to say (to me, in particular) that, in my brother’s case, the only distinction between them was that you could actually reason with him when he was two. There was a time when she would tell this joke, or some variation of it, and I would snort a laugh, and she would sigh and laugh: this was before…

The dust storm this Martian summer blotted out the sun for nine Earth-weeks – much longer than we have previously experienced during our decade here. Our solar panels have been smothered by the dust, and the battery back-up that keeps our systems going is nearly exhausted. Now that the storm has died down three of us don our spacesuits and go out into the night sky’s dim light to clear the dust from the panels. Bright dots against the star-speckled blackness, Earth and the moon are perfectly aligned with the sun that’s already below the Martian horizon. Before we went out, we had been observing through our station’s telescope the dramatic sight that has delighted us at intervals during the time we’ve been here, always reminding us of the scene…

After the firemen finished, and her blackened roomcooled, she returned in daylightto find what was left. Vinyl records melted,but the cloth toy lion was only maimed,smelling of petrol and slightly charred. No smoke without fire,was the talk in all the houses. She went back alone to sleep with her fear,having decided to be innocent,stretched out in a clean bed saved from the pyre -until the folded, hand-delivered notefrom someone who spelt Fenian bitchsslowly, tongue out, missing an e,scoring deeply into thin lined paper.Next time we burn your house you will be in it. At night in the new place, it was onlydrunken singers, swaying home, that bangedat her heart and woke her. Still and all,it took three years of clearing spacebefore the nightmares could move in,under the quilt she brought…

Barcelona again: the same five-star hotelshaped like a ship’s sailbecause: money spentmeant effort made. Back then, she had padded aroundtheir suite in newly-wed underwear shecouldn’t afford; they had looked at some stars;took champagne naps; wrote their namesin a heart in the sand. This time, over tapas he asks her:why she always ate so fucking slowly?she spears the last pimientowithout permission wondering —who will ever want me now? She tries to redirect him, asking:how nice is the lemon soap in the bathroom?but he announces he is tiredand will go to bed. She stays in the bar,drinks three passion fruit margaritas, fast,and staggers throughthe corridors totheir room intothe bathroom justin time to vomit a goldenpool punctuated byblack passion fruit seeds. After a day on electric scooters whichhe rides with an angry, admirable…

the last word I said before they raised youto the lights was “stay” then with a touch I bridged the spaceI said “welcome to the world” a world I have barely paved with random steps scraps of paperand cockles dug out from unsuspecting shores alone with a bud nipped at the root of methe only cry I longed for was yours the firstonce you were ousted from your kingdom my parent material nested in the quiet of a white room about to sleepto the sound of your heart a reverse of roles so to speakthe sudden lights and my feral fear roared “get him out alive!” the years that come and gohave left me with a beginningmy body now a tree battered by a hasty dawn but happy that we…

8 – Daniel Shand lives and works in Edinburgh where he teaches at Napier University. His debut novel Fallow won the Betty Trask prize in 2016. 12 – Jonathan Greenhause was the winner of Aesthetica Magazine’s 2018 Creative Writing Award in Poetry and his work has been widely published, including in Columbia Poetry Review. 14 – Hollie McNish is a poet, author and spoken word artist from Cambridge. She has published five books of poetry including, Nobody Told Me, which won the Ted Hughes Award in 2016. 16 – Imie Kent-Muller is a bookseller in her twenties who draws on her love of, and previous study of, the classics to write poetry and flash fiction. 18 – Mantz Yorke is from Manchester and his poems have appeared in a number…