Ellipsis Zine

It’s just past midnight and the kitchen’s half-lit by a weak strip-light that flickers and hums above the cooker. It makes the open-plan sitting room/kitchen look like a scene from…

It starts with birdsong, as it should on a brightsprung day and here come the newlyweds now, John and Dolly, dragging Scarecrow onto the field. ‘Hold him, will you?’ says…

Bertha, that’s her name, Bertha the cow, that’s the name you would give to her; that or Bessie, or Bella, or Babs, one of those B names, the jolly good…

I first notice its absence when you try to sing me a story. Your voice without song is a strange invader, its startled syllables breaching our nest without rhyme or…

Increasingly unravelled by so much of the infernal day-to-day, Henry had gradually come to wonder if the sensible thing might not be to list those irritants in some sort of…

The night my Grandpa Horace died, he came to me in a dream. “Horace,” he said, because I’m his namesake, “Horace, don’t you go letting them make some big fuss…

The cafe hummed a note of non-rhythmic jingle. I sat with a glass of sparkling water reading Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night; deep in reading, I took a sip occasionally.…

Birthing ‘Elspeth,’ Granny says, ‘it’s time for lunch.’ ‘Shh!’ I say, ‘Mummy Doll is having a little lie down.’ Granny pokes her head into the conservatory and whispers, ‘Five more…

He keeps Dog on a chain outside.  It’s heavy, to build up the neck muscles.  He throws it discounted slimy meat every couple of days, and pokes it with a…

Quarantined overnight in an old pickle jar, the growth is sick yellow, shrivelled like a waxy clove of garlic. I hurry to dress: waterproof over-trousers, jacket with the butterfly-patch covering…

Millie watches daylight sit between her fingers. We’re lying on the sofa in our front room. She’s five but smaller than most five year olds, I’d fit more of her…

I’ve taken to wearing sunglasses indoors, at least when you’re around. It’s childish, yeah, but not in the way you might think. I’m not trying to stand out or embrace…