A massive thank you to editor, Manuela Timofte, for publishing my latest poem, The Girl. As always, I hope you enjoy it, and please do take a little time to look around the site. There are some wonderful pieces to read.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life.
Thank you for reading
Richard
A big thank you to editor, Mirjana, for yet another wonderful issue of Suburban Witchcraft. Issue 9 is packed full of an amazing array of art, poetry and prose. I feel privileged to have my work, Desperation Equals Damnation, included in this fabulous magazine.
Please do take a look: HERE – Suburban Witchcraft Issue 9
Richard
Author: Richard M. Ankers
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life.
Thank you for reading
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
A big thank you to editor, Manuela Timofte, for publishing my latest short prose, Separated at Birth. Please take a look at the other wonderful poetry and prose on the site. Gobblers by Masticadores never disappoints. Here
Enjoy
Richard – https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Twins set apart by time and tide, yet close enough to touch. This is our meeting as if from thin air. This is the face on a screen. Here, we linger, the two of us, interacting with a world that neither understands us nor wishes to. We say the right things, act as others, but remain remote. As hermits in a world made social, where everyone and everything is a supposed friend, we become just this.
We feel each other. Our words mean more when felt, not just spoken to appease. Those with poor memories see through such things, for lies are abhorrent to the cerebrally challenged, whereas truths are undoubtedly solid. Even when the pain strikes us both, we remain true to this. When it grows worse, we never falter. When one hurts, so does the other. If one resists weeping, the other blinks back the tears. As if affixed by a very long string, one tug is felt no matter the distance. Two tugs makes the other one topple; I don’t like to see her fall.
This is us, just eyes in a glass face, and voices powered by electronics. It ought not to work, but it does. It ought not to mean so much, but it couldn’t mean more. Twins, some might call us, separated at birth. She touches the screen and I touch it back. I know the pain in her head is as bad as mine, but a pain shared is a pain halved, mother says. Apparently, hers says the same.
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider a small donation
to help further my writing life.
Thank you for reading
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Entering to a bell as though welcome,
overt smiles greet these scowls.
–
With so many luxuries to enthral the senses,
we choose the simplest and sit.
–
Classical music graces unseen speakers
hidden from view, not mind.
–
This is ambience by design, perfunctory;
we close our eyes to elsewhere.
–
Curlicues of steam make mysteries
of a developing morning,
–
that huffs and puffs beyond a
forcefully fogged window;
–
we chill to our forefathers as the bean,
prized and perfected, percolates.
–
Leather seats make false luxury
for this temporary king of the hour.
–
Brief lives pass in ever-cooling sips
and whorls of ochre gloop.
–
Time to go. Time to leave. The misting
cityscape is just another dream
–
I have no wish to wake to, and
definitely no wish to wake from.
–
The End
Thank you for reading
If you enjoyed the piece please consider a small donation on ko-fi
Richard
Authors Note:
I’ve now been writing for a long time, and it gets harder to manage each year. So, in an unusually technological step, ‘for me, anyway’, I’ve opened a ko-fi donation page. Every little helps to fuel the dream. I shall try my best to post some really good short stories and the like as a thank you.
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
Here is a short fiction about time and its passing.
Pain and anger. Neither holds sway. Every tick both antagonises and coagulates in equal measures.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I dissipate in perfectly well-measured moments. Not a one longer than the next, nor the last. Like the clacking Newton’s Cradle with its five silver balls, the one positioned exactly central on my wooden desk beneath the workshop window, they regulate my demise. I hope I aren’t the ball in the middle. I prefer the outside and a quicker escape.
Demise? A bit dramatic, I hope.
I know all these facts. There is nothing else to know, only this: Who regulates said demise? That’s what I want to know. Need to know. Have to know! I cast my mind back, but it comes back clueless.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The first few days are an adjustment. The rest of the week is an experience. Week two gathers the information listed above. Week three adds momentum. This isn’t because of things changing — they never change — just to my resolve hardening. If I’m going down, I’m taking my tormentor down with me. Big talk for a man who’s never thrown a punch in his life.
I count everything from the bird calls in the presumed morning to the chirping cicadas in the expected night. The minutes of each day become an exact science. Food and drink aren’t involved; I’ve had neither since my arrival. The spectral fog that fills the room as drips of moist mist intensify; it is the only thing that has changed. So, this is where I will have him, or them, whichever applies, and shall practise at least a degree of revenge.
The whitening light becomes my fixation, the semi-permanent darkness an ignored anomaly.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
I tire. This is the truth of it. I have let my guard down just once.
She appears like an oncoming vehicle in a car’s fogging headlights. A smudge. A shape. Darkness where lightness has roamed. This is her entry into my nightmare. Not a man at all!
“Who…?”
“You know my name,” she breezes.
I freeze. I do know it. I just kind of hope she doesn’t know mine.
“Come,” she says.
“Must I?”
“You did well. Better than most. What others fail to accept, you have adapted to in carefully observed increments.”
“I ticked into death.”
“Ticked towards Death,” she corrects.
“How…?”
“Best you don’t ask. Just know I’ll take care of you. That’s all that matters at the end.”
End! I aren’t in total agreement with this, but what choice do I have?
So, I take her proffered, skeletal hand and allow her to lead me away from the light in a total reverse of all the presumed theories. It hurts not one bit.
The ticking stops.
The other side requires no adjustments. I roam free. I glide. Time and space and family and life and death, all such real-world things are pointless here. No adjustments required. No tweaks at all.
For a clockmaker, it is quite the revelation.
End
As always, thank you for reading, and for your continued support.
Richard
https://ko-fi.com/richardmankers
I’m delighted to have been featured in the latest issue of Viridine Literary Magazine. The Savage Coast, a micro literary fiction, is now available as one of many great reads in Issue 2. Out now!
Here’s a peep at the cover:
I hope you enjoy the read.
Richard
A big thank you to editor, Manuela Timofte, for publishing my latest poem, Paradise Misplaced. I hope you enjoy the read.
Here: Paradise Misplaced
Please take a look at the other fantastic poems and prose on this wonderful site.
Thank you
Richard
A big thank you to editor, Manuela Timofte, for publishing my new micro-fiction, Life, in the latest issue of Gobblers by Masticadores.
Please take a few minutes to look at the other fantastic poems and prose on the site.
Available here: Life
As always, thank you for reading
Richard
Richard M. Ankers - Storybook 
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