#notes oxford

[notesoxford]

Kat Dixon-Ward, “Newt”

Under the mute sways of lilies by the water drooler; green underbellies loom blotch-bleary, screen us from every breathing thing. 

We are that which is cold, skulking, anomalous. A twitch in the water, that which shivers. You have seen us often, Gawper (under the baubles of fishes the bubbles they burp), we are that which prickles

while you’re doling out pellets. A finger, a foot. Black, quick, half-fabricated. We are that which skitters, tremors, sickens.

You cannot net us out, Narcissus. We twine, we sliver, we peek.

Soon we shall take over. Noughts? We’ll gobble the fish while you sleep.

——

Submitted to Notes on “Safe”

[notesoxford]

Charles Pidgeon, “Is the Meat Safe from the Goanna?”

My mother explained it to me: why we call it the safe even though cups and plates, not jewels and passports, are stored in it. We call it the safe because this is on the island, and on the island there was no electricity – there still is no electricity apart from solar – which meant that the safe was actually an old meat-safe.

Can you imagine it? Storing food – meat – in a wooden cupboard.  Mum showed me how it was on stilts, and stand alone, so that nothing touched it and it didn’t lean against anything so that pests couldn’t get it.

This is in Australia. I’ve seen a wallaby eaten by a snake about ten metres from where this standalone meat-safe is located. I don’t think that the fragile mesh screen would keep out a snake. But I don’t think snakes are partial to cured meats. I don’t even think it would keep out a particularly tenacious goanna.

Goannas look like lizards but are actually not lizards. They’re Australia’s answer to dragons and they know it. I’ve attached a picture of a tenacious goanna as a reference.

But it’s not meant to keep out goannas. Mum laughs. It’s only meant to keep the flies off it.

I glance with new appreciation at rusty, tin-scented gas fridge.

I think it’s much safer storing plates and bowls rather than meat in the safe.

——

Submitted to Notes on “Safe”

[notesoxford]

Tom Stell, “The Tomb”

           It is recorded that the emperor, when he died, was laid in a tomb with a thousand concubines and a thousand men-at-arms. There, a map was made in the inner chamber: the kingdom with sculpted mountains and seas of mercury, kept flowing by an unidentified machine. They put the emperor in a casket in the centre.

           When the craftsmen had finished they heard a deep rumbling. One of them must have been the first to look up and see the shaft of light narrowing, the shadows of the stone doors meeting the shadow of the underground. Perhaps some dropped their torches and ran, but none of them made it to the surface. A thousand Daedaluses starved there, for all their cunning unable to get out.

           The emperor was in his coffin in that other China within. The river Ocean curved around him. Think of it! He lay there with his concubines piled up like toy soldiers, and his army ranged in neat rows, and looked out, and found his world too spacious.

——

Submitted to Notes on “Safe”