THE POLITICIAN

The carnival was set to end in disaster

in a manner reminiscent of the season finale

of Stranger Things

and the beloved Jim Hopper

appearing to die in heroic self-sacrifice.

The town mayor, having recently been displaced

for his inability to lie,

was in the beer tent recording his predictions

which would form the basis

of his future best-selling novel.

The children had been excited to see

neon, cartoon faces, candyfloss, and hear

the enticing thud of repeated chord sequences

blast out over the recreation ground

casting a net across the town.

The mayor’s successor, in an interview with

the local Herald attributed

his victory to his love of the people,

he needed no other reward than their admiration

and his photograph circulated as widely as possible.

His flagrant display of social interest

culminated in his riding the Ferris wheel

with two disabled children,

having first bought them each candyfloss

with his own personal money.

Mary-Jane, a red-haired thirty-something, in

ripped jeans with pale skin reminiscent

of her Spiderman namesake,

subdued by and stuck to the arm

of a thick-set truck driver,

flashed the new mayor with eyes that said

I need a job please mister

so I can escape, and he asked her

underneath the claustrophobic heat,

to come to his office 

on Monday and be sure to wear a skirt

cut above the knee.

His self-satisfactory genius had been the source

of his smile, captured moments before

the Ferris wheel car

carrying the same disabled children

on their second turn and a young couple

from out of town, fell from its full height

and plummeted down,

killing, injuring, and terrifying many.

Upon enquiry, blame was placed

with an unchecked mechanical fault,

the new mayor fought to

“un” circulate his photograph taken

with the dead children;

when asked to comment on the tragedy

his words of condolence were

worthy of the T.S Eliot prize,

although his expense claim for that month

detailed two entries of ‘candyfloss’.

SOMETHING INTERSTELLAR 

I hammer loudly

on a toilet door,

like a kid eating sweets instead of their tea

or not looking when crossing the road.

There is a pile as high as the Shard

of people who are not me,

some of them have PhDs

and breasts that

stay up on their own,

some of them are nineteen.

The thing I think about

when I’ve been drinking gin or sniffing things –

how much I want to inhale your skin,

knowledge I cannot get from books.

The words are still

urgency I don’t understand,

anyone could guess

I’ll stay in my little space – 

hemmed in by white lines – 

and say, it’s enough,

as you become

​

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Rachael is a fiction writer and poet based in Lincolnshire, UK. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Lincoln, and has work published or forthcoming with Truffle, can we have our ball back?, Burning House Press, Streetcake Magazine, Hedgehog Poetry, The Centifictionist, Horla, Bratum Books, and Fly on the Wall Press. Her microfiction has been nominated for the anthology Best Microfiction 2020. Follow her on Twitter @rachaelg2601 or Instagram @rachaelcharlottewriter