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SOUNDS OF A FULL MOON © Elizabeth g. Arthur Koel bird, endless cooees piercing the night. Whistling bird, its excitement crescendo allegretto. Foolish rooster, out of sync with the dawn. Squabbling plovers, they own the river bank. My footsteps amplify like tumbling rocks. The shadecloth wire, a metallic zip whistle. The follow spot, an orchestration of silence. In the booth at the back... steaming, hot... my pen flies across the page... and in between, I sip... |
Le Café Latte I like a long one - on a saucer with a long handled spoon. I like a long one - wrapped tightly with my hands on a winter's morning. I like a long one - dark and strong, froth foaming across my lips. I like a long one - here with you, side by side, cosy and secret... Copyright Elizabeth g. Arthur 
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MIRROR, MIRROR...
copyright Elizabeth g. Arthur 2017
My head's blown up and I'm tortured at the waist. Hips like tractor tyres and legs like those long balloons carnival buskers squeak into dogs and giraffes. I'm skinny and tall – as though I'm standing on stilts. I ripple and sway. I'm everywhere. I jump, I twirl. I go on to infinity. All of me dances with chorus line precision.
I pull my mouth wide, poke out my tongue and frighten myself as a hollow faced creature stares back. I marble and fade. I scream and run towards a fat me. Turn and see my legs have shrunk. I laugh until I have hiccups. I'm in the mirror maze at Luna Park. Ten years old and invincible.
Metal plates crash and clang behind me. A symphony of fitness.
I mix heaped and over heaped spoonfuls – salad server size – of protein powder with milk, juice, food. Drink it. Eat it. Blend as many shades of green as the spectrum offers. Close my eyes as I gulp it down. Transforming, transcending.
One pill. Two pills. Lost-count-of -the-number-pills. I'm flying. I float. I run and my feet don't touch the ground.
Fifty kilos. Sixty kilos. Seventy kilos.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, I love you.
I'm wired. The weights are cold. Ropes swing like vines in the jungle. Wheels spin like propellers in flight. The music is loud. I can't hear the beat. I may incinerate. The mirrors are moving. I wish they'd stop. I can't walk straight.
Stale sweat. Sweat drenched nylon. I can't breathe. My feet are glued to the floor – a floor of mosaic glass. I look up. Hundreds of me on the ceiling.
Swimming pool chlorine stings my eyes. Echoes bounce around me. Steam clouds float past. Chit chat from the showers is broadcast for public ears. Black lines rise from the bottom of the pool, slither over the edge like thick pieces of licorice and the water recedes – fast, as the sea does before a tsunami.
Where is the door? I try to speak. Nothing happens. I try to run and can't. Like in a nightmare.
The mirrors on the wall are slowing down and look like the carousel I remember from the beach; gleaming all around its centre, tinkly music playing and me riding a purple horse.
A glass wave is looming towards me. Banging, crashing, groaning, pounding. Someone's yelling. It's me. I'm shattering and can't get away from myself.
Heavy voices, like a vinyl record slowed down, all around me. Spoons ding like cow bells.
The waitress puts my tea down as though she's trying to make time stand still. I lift my head and see dark flecks in her eyes. She smiles a never ending smile. Perfect teeth.
My hands are pins and needles, can't lift the cup. My legs hurt, feel like they've lifted half a tonne. Can I stand up? Find my way out.
The waitress moonwalks to the door. Opens it. Waves me goodbye.
Red lights. A silent gap in the traffic. I'm on the footpath dazzled by the midday light. Screen addicted pedestrians weave around me. A train rattles into the station across the road. I buy a ticket.
The monotonous security of metal rolling over the rails. Clickity clack, clickity clack, taking me home. Suburbs of apartments blur. A clover leaf motorway in the distance...
I clutch my ticket – one way – and feel a childish excitement. I want to dance up and down the carriage. There's so much space again. So much green. Trees. Cows. So much clarity again.
The doors slide apart and I breathe in the recent shower of rain.
The daylight is fading. I can hear laughter from the garden. Jane's laughter. She sounds drunk.
I follow the path closer towards the house as Jane's seductive brogue pulls the crowd around her inside.
Shadows jostle over the lawn as people move towards the oak table, fill their plates, top up their glasses, then return to their chosen seats. Do they realise I'm outside? I smile. I laugh. I run around the driveway, the sensor light catching me when I dash past the front verandah. I cartwheel across the damp grass. One, two, three perfect arcs. I'm dizzy and can't find my bag. I don't care. The moon is rising. Yellow, big, beautiful. I have never felt so free.
A temperamental wind races across the dam. Ripples wash against a pile of rocks. The old dinghy thumps the jetty pylon.
Leaves tumble about my feet like runners to the finishing line. I gather a handful, bury my face in their eucalyptus and then scatter them as the moonlight guides me along the worn boards to the rusty ladder. I take off my shoes, tuck a sock in each one. Put the shoes neatly to the side. I take off my jacket, fold it – as though it is brand new - and lay it next to my shoes. Discard my shirt and jeans over the edge. I take off my underwear and trail it along the jetty as though I'm a mannequin in a Victoria's Secret parade. I'm deliriously happy.
The silver grey water takes my breath away as I dip my toes in, slither my legs down the rungs. Tip my head and look into the moon's face.
The wind drops.
I lower my eyes and follow the last ripples across the glassy surface. To the middle, where we could never touch the bottom as kids. Where the moon is looking back at itself.
Releasing my grip, I propel myself over the water. I'm flying. I seem to fly forever. And then the cold hits me. I gasp. Forget to breathe.
My legs kick out and I swim to the lunar circle. Swim around it. Swim into it. Lie back in its luminescence.
Bliss. Peace. A long cloud passes over the moon above me. Down, down, I fall through the fading light...
AUTUMN AFTERNOON
copyright Elizabeth g. Arthur
Sleepy blue haze drifts,
no breeze to play with.
The air is quiet
as, rubber gloved in primrose yellow
I pause, leave the popping suds
in the sink.
And gaze.
Mirrored and smudged,
camphors plunge deep into the river.
They mock the current,
push it further downstream
to where it resuscitates,
gurgles and ripples,
the dead casuarina dictating its course.
I peel off my gloves,
they ping, unsettle the kitchen.
The blue haze is horizontal,
it blends with the mountain
and in the distance
across the autumn afternoon
a mudlark calls.
TILL WE DEPART
© Elizabeth g. Arthur
The young woman with bougainvillea red hair licked her silver encrusted finger, and giggled as she turned away from the passengers jostling each other beneath the DEPARTURES board.
She shrugged her shoulders, in a this-is-delicious-try-some way, towards the young man seated opposite her. He glanced up, and as he crossed his feet awkwardly, his yellow fluoro socks dazzled the underside of the table. His thin face blushed to match the woman’s hair – then he continued reading his book.
The young woman moved her chair around the table like a die being rolled to the next player. She inclined her head towards the tabletop's decorative seaside scene. The young man lowered his book. He spluttered, trying to loosen a ragged piece of phlegm.
“Excuse me, but what do you want?”
The young woman looked up sideways into his mouth. She held a piece of cake icing delicately between her fingers.
“Try it,” she whispered, as the cacophony of 'please make your way through security to gate lounge thirty six', and the rattling of cups and saucers and early morning coughs boomed around the food court. “Don't worry, it hasn't got any evil marzipan on it. You don't like marzipan either, do you?”
The young man tried to speak. His book slid off the table.
“Ssh,” the young woman said, and delicately pushed the thick, satiny, white confection into his mouth.
“A wedding cake,” she stated as she peeled foil and plastic wrapping away. “Imagine...one of those ten storey sky scraper cakes with a miniature bride and groom supervising the reception.”
“Um...I'm...”
The young woman's fingers crept around the distant corner of the cake and retrieved two icing rosettes.
“One for you and one for me.”
The overpowering sweetness of the rosette tingled along the young man's teeth as he bit into it. Its sugary petals melted over the roof of his mouth. He smiled. He pulled at his shirt collar.
“Have you been to a wedding...”
“Ssh,” the young woman said. “The cake is dark, rich and moist…” She broke off a piece and placed it in the centre of the table. She opened her mouth, rolled her tongue along her bottom lip and leaned towards him.
“Eat,” she urged.
A wave of pull-along bags and noisy passengers rippled past the seaside-scene table.
“Are you going to...”
“Ssh,” the young woman said. She took the young man's hands in her own and gazed into his eyes.
“I must go. My flight's about to leave,” he croaked. Small beads of perspiration shone on his forehead.
The young woman turned the cake slowly, like a doll pirouetting in a music box, and pointed to a rosette clinging to the edge, as though it had thought twice about falling off.
“Go on, you have it. You really enjoyed the other one. Didn't you?” She grinned nefariously, wrapping the cake until it was an anonymous, shiny, sealed slab. She stood up and turned to leave.
“Excuse me, your cake, you forgot your cake,” the young man said hoarsely. His hands were trembling.
The young woman put a finger to her lips, and shrugged.
“Ssh, it's not my cake,” she whispered, and hurried away.
The young man broke off one rosette petal after the other as his plane raced along the runway.
Award Winning Short Story Till We Depart is published in the 2016 1,000 Words Or Less Flash Fiction Collection 2
Amazon.com
Award winning poem
MOSSES, AIR, WATER...
© Elizabeth g. Arthur
Wet, bedraggled,
Like a street urchin's locks,
Then finely combed
To unfold like a northern lights curtain,
It hides bark faces from my prying eyes.
Tight,
Like someone's great grandma's perm,
Clinging to rock, crimped and frilled.
It tempts my gloved fingers
To trace its tiny cups.
Wrinkled, weighted,
Like a beaten man's beard
Filled with days of debris,
Its history told within the crevices,
It repels my glistening face.
Cliffs bleeding water
Weep at my feet,
Infuse my worthless shoes,
Seep through my toes
And pool under my step.
The air thins,
My breath is staccato,
A damp wall hovers beneath me,
It exhales and settles
Like a billowing quilt.
I'm cold but warm,
My pulse races, my heart bangs
And the rain beats against my back.
I pull at my hat, wet wool smell...
And return to another world.