Impertinent insects All it takes is one bright day when premature spring warms the roof and I hear buzzing, see a dark flitting at the edge of sight, a flicker of flying filth, dark dot clusters spotting surfaces. That itchy zoom-past and you know peace is impossible. Nature’s design has a place for everything, I […]
International Women’s Day – 100 words
Worm Moon – 100 words
Worm moon There they are under warming soil and roots, wriggling and writhing their way up to turn pointy faces or bums (you can’t tell which) to the eponymous moon. But they’re wrong. Lunar worms are lavae of American beetles spotted waking from frost by the Naudowessie people each March. Their North Dakotan neighbours call […]
Man shops – 100 words
Man shops A man makes his living from pretending to be someone else Lots of someone elses Impossible to tell if he’s any good because all the someone elses are alike A type, perhaps He’s popular, though Probably swagger, cheekbone angles, an insouciance sewn onto a leather waistcoat Not many men could carry that off […]
Aye IA – 100 words
Aye AI It’s the latest addition to the frightening list soon, they say, we wordsmiths will be unnecessary machines will vomit everything they need to get our messages across. Across where? Who knows? Giant buckets of dictionaries, heated, agitated until, with a burp of punctuation, a sentence escapes. A grammatically correct construction: born to be […]