Litro #96 Gangs Teaser

LITRO IS PUBLISHED BY OCEAN MEDIA BOOKS Ltd

www.oceanmediauk.com

Ò In the dark the jaguar carries his silken beauty, his great heavy tail and flaming eyes, to the killing grounds and the night is alive with the screams of death.Ó

Watu by Sara Maitland page 7

High Summer World of Light by Gillian Ayres, part of the Royal Academy of ArtsÕ Summer Exhibition 2010

STORIES TRANSPORT YOU

Stories from: Sara Maitland, Yorgos Trillidis Michael Spring, Tessa North Cherry Potts, David Mildon Alan McCormick, Paul Lyalls

litro cover.indd 1 10.06.2010 0:07:09

Cover Artwork by Photographer

Zima Kaoku Ô Landscapes with

CorpsesÕ courtesy of Hatje Cantz

litro cover.indd 2 10.06.2010 0:07:11

Welcome to issue 96 of From the editorNobody wants to be alone: everybody wants to belong. Sociability is part of what makes humans such a successful species, but it’s when groups become gangs that the fun stops and the trouble starts …

You’ll find plenty of gangs in the following pages: some you’ll want to join, some you’d run a mile from – and maybe even some to which you already belong. In this month’s issue of Litro we’re going to intrigue, move and unnerve you with tales of chain gangs, street gangs and old-fashioned gangsters. From the mob instincts of the lads on the lash in Yorgos Trillidis’s Sunday, to the swashbuckling adventures of a pirate crew in Michael Spring’s brilliantly surreal Narky Jack, we’ve got gangs in all their glamour and glory.

Sara Maitland’s atmospheric jungle-set Watu explores the power and vulnerability of being an outsider in a tribal society, whereas David Mildon’s Red gives us a glimpse of tribes closer to home, when football fans clash. Meanwhile, Tessa North brings us the Deep South, and a prisoner desperate to shed his chains, while Melissa Katsoulis’s true account of a daring literary hoax shows just how far one middle-class white girl went to feel part of the gang.

But that’s not all – not by a long shot. We’ve also got a brand-new, prize-winning translation of a Verlaine poem about a gang of harlequins and pierrots, a mobster hoist by his own car-yard, and a shoot-out in a cinema.

So, it’s up to you. Do you wanna be in our gang? Just turn the page.

Katy DarbyEditor

litro is brought to you byeditor in chief and Publisher – eric akotoeditor – katy darbycontributing editor – soPhie leWisonline editor – laura huxleyevents editor – alex Jamesdesign/Production – anastasia sichkarenko

litro has been distributed for free near to london underground stations and in galleries, shoPs, etc. since aPril 2006. it is Printed on 100% recycled PaPer. Please either keeP your coPy, Pass it on for someone else to enJoy, or recycle it – We like to think of it as a small free book.

Cover Art: Gillian Ayres High Summer World of Light, 2009, oil on canvas, 198.5 x 275cm © Gillian Ayres, Courtesy Alan Cristea Gallery

Welcome to issue 96 of LiTRO

litro 96.indd 1 15.06.2010 0:55:38

2

ContentsWatuSara Maitland............................................5

Poem: ColombinaVerlaine, translated by John R.G. Turner..11

SundayYorgos Trillidis........................................12

Narky Jack Michael Spring .......................................14

Cross over the river, rest under the trees Tessa North ............................................18

Out of Darkness Cherry Potts ...........................................26

RedDavid Mildon .........................................28

Mister Biggies Swims and Eats with the Fishes Alan McCormick ...................................33

Margaret B. Jones: Gang Fake Melissa Katsoulis....................................36

LitRO listings by Alex James.............42

litro 96.indd 2 15.06.2010 0:55:38

2

litro 96.indd 3 15.06.2010 0:55:40

4 5

litro 96.indd 4 15.06.2010 0:55:41

4 5

StORiES

Watusara maitland

here is death in the pot for the living’s food.’

Watu is in the jungle.

Watu is in the jungle, alone.

It is strange in the jungle.

Despite the humming of life, the music of energy, power, growth, greed, the jungle is fragile. There is no depth or rich-ness to the soil. Each dead leaf is stripped of its goodness by new growth so quickly that nothing sinks down into the earth.

Because it is fragile, it is competitive and cruel. The strangler vine entwines itself around the huge ficus trees and squeezes them to death in its desire to reach up through the canopy to the sun. Then insects devour the dead wood and the vine is left, a vertical spiral with an empty core. Down on the floor young trees grow to about the height of one of us and then they wait; they wait with infinite patience; they wait for years. They wait for a larger tree near them to die and make a hole in the green roof. Then the small trees make a wild dash upwards, growing twice their own height in the time it takes the moon to come back to the full, fast, faster than the other trees around them, for there is only space for one in the sun. The jungle is stirring with energy, with life and power; if we can get it, if we can win.

In the jungle it is hot and sweaty. In the jungle there are insects, so many biting feeding insects. They cling closer than a lover by night and by day. They need our blood to live on. In the jungle there is a deathly intimacy of need and desire. In the dark the jaguar carries his silken beauty, his great heavy tail and flaming eyes, to the killing grounds and the night is alive with the screams of death.

In the jungle it is beautiful and deadly.

Watu is in the jungle. Alone.

‘t

litro 96.indd 5 15.06.2010 0:55:41

6 7

Watu is always alone in the jungle – and now is an especially perilous moment. This morning we moved on. Every so often we move on – we dismantle the village, load up the dug-outs and move on. We paddle upriver chanting the rhythm, or drift downstream languorous, telling stories, enjoying the changes, except there are no changes. Always there is the yellow river and beside the yellow river are the green trees and above the yellow river is the blue sky and there is nothing else. It goes on and on and there is no distance, no depth, no inside nor outside; there is only the jungle and it is beautiful and deadly. We need points of discrimination; we need to draw boundaries, set up markers, create clear definitions; we make them and we drive them home with the rhythms of the stories, and the beating of the drums. And we draw them on our bodies in the Rituals of the Skin.

When we move on, we come, after a day or a week, to a sandbar or a beach that makes a small clear space between the river and the trees. We have been here before but now it is new. We stop and resettle. We take the fire from the fire pot and hearth it; we feed it tenderly and then victoriously. We gather around it for the Ritual of Welcome and we tell the children the stories so that they may be safe. Pat, pat, patter like raindrops on the drums to mark the rhythm of the story, and the Teller works through the tales. The children raise their hands to their cheeks and feel the edges of the yellow circles, the sign of the Turtle Father, pricked in at birth so He will know His own. We are His People.

But Watu cannot come in the boats, because there is no place, no place for Watu. We do not know if Watu is drummer, or paddler, or baggage. We do not know if Watu is teller or tale. We do not know if Watu should be in the women’s boat or the men’s boat. We do not know, not for certain, if Watu is animal or spirit or one of the People. So Watu has to follow as best as may be. Always, before, before this time, Watu has arrived in the end. A few days, a week, once nearly a whole moon later, Watu will creep out of the jungle, and sit at the very margin of the village, at the very edge of the jungle, in the place between. We are glad when Watu comes, but it is a dark gladness. We are frightened, we are endangered and we are guilty. Watu is the shadow.

In the jungle, under the canopy, there is always shadow, a strange darkness even at midday. The spirits like the darkness,

litro 96.indd 6 15.06.2010 0:55:41

10 11

pOEtRy

ierrot who on cricket’s

legs legs it through thickets—

one leap—

Cassander (old hoodie),

Leander the goody-

shoes creep,

and Harlequin (Domin-

o’s eyes have an omin-

ous look:

the outfit’s so natty

it’s positive that he

’s a crook)

are all thumping guitars an’

pretending they’re Tarzan,

beguiled

in a pile-drive entreaty

of Little Miss Pretty,

this child

whose eyes are a message

denying her undressage

with such

a defense of her fair butt

as says “You may stare, but

don’t touch!”

Ye planets whose motion

can scupper an ocean

of ships!!

She grants them a shocking

wee glimpse of her stocking,

and skips

away to My previous

could tell you I’m devious

as cats.

And the rosebud in hair-do

inciting her ne’er-do-

well prats.

Translation by John R.G. Turner

ColombinaPaul verlaine

John R. G. Turner is an Emeritus Professor in the University of Leeds, where he practises evolutionary biology and ecology. He won the John Dryden Prize in 2009 for translations of Verlaine, and has twice been “commended” in the Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry Translation. Some of his translations and poems have appeared in Comparative Critical Studies, Litro, Poetry and Audience, and Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, and on www.brindin.com and www.stephen-spender.org.

p

litro 96.indd 11 15.06.2010 0:55:44

12 13

Sundayyorgos trillidis

t’s three o’clock in the morning and I have just left the club on Prince of Wales. I am crossing the street heading

to the nearest kebab house. I am not drunk though I have drunk. I enter. Three sweaty, dark-skinned men are watching closely a sizeable piece of lamb rolling on a steel plate. I place my order, pay in advance and head out for a quick cigarette. I take a stand just outside.

I stare at the people who have just exited the nightclubs. It’s closing time, yet the street seems less busy than usual. Maybe because it’s August and the students have gone back to their homes; maybe because most of the locals are getting a tan somewhere in the Mediterranean. I take long drags and can’t wait to replace the butt with some meat. Then I see them on the other side of the road, ready to cross the street.

It’s a group of five. They wear stretched t-shirts, baggy jeans and white sneakers. They look particularly drunk – but again, who doesn’t? They are coming towards me. It’s a popular fast-food joint, I say to myself, no need to worry. They are talking loudly and they spit out the vowels and the consonants with casual violence.

I look the other way. What I see is the future coming swiftly towards me, aiming at me. The future enters through my nostrils, rides the appropriate neurons and gets carried all the way to my brain.

They are going to come near me. One of them will ask me something I will not be in a position to grasp. I will shake my head. Another one will feel obliged to rephrase it. Although I will understand, more or less, what they want from me, I will refuse politely. Then the one who was the first to talk will start cursing. I will repeat as clearly as possible that it’s my last one. Then a third one will try to get it out of my fingers. I will let him. They will start laughing and cursing me with words I will not fully comprehend. After that I will say something stupid, something like ‘you must think it’s quite a brave thing to do, five picking on one’, or something equally stupid – the

i

litro 96.indd 12 15.06.2010 0:55:44

12 13

precise phrasing has not yet been formulated.

It’s then that they will assault me. They will not stop kicking and punching even after I hit the ground. At some point one of the two guys who’d remained silent will pull out a knife. None of the bystanders will interfere, though I will hear someone calling for the police.

In the ambulance I will see a blue light and a void will suck me in. The doctor at the hospital will simply announce the time. The following day the coroner will perform the autopsy. Among other things he will discover some lumps in my lungs. Although he is sure of what he has found he will give a sample for biopsy. The results will be ready in three days.

Meanwhile, a police officer will make an international call. It will be rather short because he hasn’t taken into consideration the fact that my mother does not speak English. Later on that day, a member both of the thriving Hellenic community and of the Norfolk Police Force will redial the same telephone number.

When the results are out the doctor will not see his jaw dropping. It was an aggressive form of cancer that would have had me dead in six to nine months. He will then debate whether he should inform my family about his findings. He will discuss the issue with some colleagues of his and with his wife. Words like ‘ethics’ and ‘purpose’ and ‘irrelevant’ will be heard in the several exchanges. After a sleepless night he will decide not to reveal anything although he will not be in a position to explain why, exactly.

Back home my mother will spend the rest of her life on a rocking chair going back and forth all the time, a habit that will not be disrupted even when the phone will ring and a voice on the other end of the line will inform her, in broken Greek, that all five men have been identified and two of them have already confessed.

Yorgos Trillidis was born in Cyprus in 1976. He studied Law in Athens, International Politics in Edinburgh and Creative Writing in Norwich. He was a writer in Residence at the International Writing Program in Iowa in 2008. He has authored two short collections in Greek. He lives in Nicosia.

litro 96.indd 13 15.06.2010 0:55:44

14 15

Narky Jackmichael sPring

he pirates are inconveniently situated for the harbour, and this spring, they have begun to let everyone know.

The situation, when the wind from the mountains sweeps the scent of pines over their cabins, gets worse day by day. The pirates are restless. They need the salt tang of the sea.

No one is sure what to do. Their swaggering is unnerving. The bars and supermarkets run out of rum.

They spit at the feet of the townsfolk, most of whom are upstanding individuals, apart, that is, from Tess, the beautiful, dark-haired prostitute who has a flat above the dry-cleaners with en-suite facilities.

The pirates, with their lack of sea-faring adventure, seem to have an unnatural quotient in terms of desire.

Tess’s business is booming and she thinks she might have to bring in help. There is talk of her taking over the lease of the dry-cleaning shop below. Ron, the owner of the dry-cleaners, is doing well too. The pirates, when visiting Tess, find it convenient to drop off their silken ruffs, nankeen trews and waistcoats heavy with embroidery to Ron. For payment of a substantial premium, Ron agrees to rush the cleaning through, ready to collect when they leave. Heaven forfend though, that he should scratch a silver button or pull a silken thread.

Tess is sporting more jewellery these days. She has very full breasts and the low-cut gypsy tops she wears reveal much. Pearls, the size of plovers’ eggs, nestle snugly in her décolletage. She has a jewel in her navel the size of a musket ball. It sparkles when she laughs, and the soft brown skin of her belly ripples like the surface of a tropical inlet when a silent zephyr rustles the beachside palms. There is a heavy gold chain with what looks like a regal crest around one of her shapely ankles. Her long dark hair hangs in unrestrained, glistening ringlets, cascading over her shoulders like a bolt of silk. It is a dark, flowing mass. It is like sin.

Someone suggests that she might be prosecuted. What for,

t

litro 96.indd 14 15.06.2010 0:55:44

16 17

Friends of litro

Friend of litro

become a

Friend of litro

become a

Friend Request Form

riends of Litro gain a new, exciting life-long companion each month without ever having to leave

their comfort zone. They are known to be hugely popular because they are always seen surrounded by up and coming as well as established writers. Finally, Friends of Litro share a most unique blessing: the pocket-sized Litro copy waiting in their bag has the power to transport them at any time so they never have to be anywhere they don’t like. This could be you for £17.99 (for 12 issues) or £33.99 (for 24 issues).

Wish to be added to our friend list? Just fill in (and return) a few details below and we’ll get in touch to take things further. Or enclose a cheque and you will become an automatic friend of Litro.

Name:Address:Telephone:e-mail:

Please send forms to: Litro Subscription, 7 Kensington Mall, Notting Hill W8 4EB, Make all cheques payable to Ocean Media Books LTD

F

litro 96.indd 17 15.06.2010 0:55:46

18 19

t

Cross over the river, rest under the trees* tessa north

he slender branches of the box elder shaded the thatchy grass outside the prison yard, but didn’t stretch as far as the fence. It was the only tree visible

from the prison, and Derrick Edwards, five years into his sentence for murder, could see it from his window only if he twisted his head at an awkward angle and squeezed his face up tight between the bars. Despite the discomfort, Derrick looked at the tree every day for as long as he could, thinking of Willamette Johnson. Derrick spent a lot of time in jail missing Willamette. A thin ache was always there, below the rest of his feelings. He heard her voice like a constant radio announcement in the back of his head. At night, under his single dirty sheet, he closed his eyes and imagined her looking at him, her lips on his, her eyelashes brushing his cheeks, her skin under his fingertips. She was the prettiest girl in the county, the smartest, the best shot. And she had promised to wait for him, as long as it took.

In five years, Willamette had not visited or written, even once. But at Derrick’s trial, on the day he was convicted, she had been so shocked that she fainted over the rail of the viewing gallery and broke her leg falling; this was enough proof of her love. Derrick’s only snapshot of her was propped on the tiny shelf above his bed. Her image winked from beneath the ancient Johnson oak. Derrick had taken the picture the day they swore their eternal love for each other, the day she married John Dewitt. Though John D.’s death was the reason he was in jail in the first place, Derrick found it hard to get too angry at him. Willamette had been promised to John D. from a young age, but when he was called up she began making eyes at Derrick; by the time

*These were the last words of Stonewall Jackson, killed by friendly fire in Virginia, 1863: ‘Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.’

litro 96.indd 18 15.06.2010 0:55:46

22 23

reaching his hands out to her, as far as was allowed. She remained straight and still.

‘Willa, I’ve missed you.’

‘Derrick, honey.’ Her voice was feathery. ‘Why’d you have to go keep escapin’?’

‘Willa, I miss you.’

‘I miss you too, honey,’ she said sharply. ‘But you just can’t go on tryin’ to get out. You gotta stay here, sit tight here. Don’t you see? The more you try’n get out, the more they’re gonna keep you in here, and the meaner and angrier they’re gonna get, and the meaner and angrier you’re gonna get.’

‘I’d never be mean and angry with you.’

Willamette took a breath and looked away. Then, squeezing her lips together, she turned back.

‘I know you wouldn’t, honey.’ Her face brightened. ‘You wanna see another picture of Jo? She’s getting real big now.’ She reached into her shiny leather purse, and took out a small photograph. ‘First day of school,’ she said proudly. She slid the photograph along the table, and Derrick picked it up. The little girl looked slightly older than in the picture Willamette had sent – her eyes were even darker, her expression more serious. She was still plenty pretty though, like a soft black pansy. He stared at the picture for a long time, and before he knew it, the bell rang for the end of visiting hours. Willamette sat still opposite him the whole time, barely moving. She started at the bell. One of the guards on duty shouted, ‘Time’s up!’ Willamette reached for the picture, and Derrick let her pull it from his fingers.

‘Derrick, don’t forget what I said. It’s best for everyone, it really is.’

By October, two months since Willamette’s visit, the sky had returned to a stony blue overhead. Derrick sat on the bench staring at the box elder and its reddening leaves. When he wasn’t looking at the tree, his eyes were downcast. He kept his eyes fixed on the tree enough to go nearly cross-eyed.

litro 96.indd 23 15.06.2010 0:55:46

24 25

litro 96.indd 24 15.06.2010 0:55:48

24 25

The warden had recently instigated a new physical fitness regime of jogging around the yard. Usually when the starting whistle went, Derrick wouldn’t notice, and would have to be hauled up and into the line, but that day when the whistle shrilled, his back immediately stiffened and he jumped to his feet. He marched to where the line of men was assembling on the far side of the yard. When the second whistle sounded, Derrick began jogging, keeping a good pace, running on and on, past the point when some of the tired men had to be coerced back into the line by a guard’s stick.

At the corner of their twentieth turn, with a matter of yards to the fence, Derrick sprang out of the line. He pushed his legs as fast as they could go, his senses narrowing to almost nothing. All he could hear was his own painful breathing and the drift of muffled shouts behind him. All he could see was the patch of fence dead ahead, the box elder beyond. As he made a desperate leap for the fence, a gunshot cracked the air.

Derrick lay sprawled on the blood-wet grass, wanting to huddle his legs up against his body but unable to move. His ears were ringing. The guard stood over him, casting a cold shadow, chkking his tongue against his teeth.

‘Well, now,’ the guard said. ‘Now, now, now.’ He bobbed his stick against his thigh in a soft regular beat. ‘Now, boy, now. What y’all have to go and do that for?’

Derrick’s eyes fluttered. The guard sniffed. His face was a black circle silhouetted against the sun. Derrick couldn’t make out his expression.

‘Guessin’ you can’t get up.’ The guard turned over his shoulder and hollered, ‘Sam, come on over here and help drag this boy back in.’ He looked down at Derrick. ‘Can’t have you rottin’ out here in front of the warden’s window.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Derrick saw orange leaves fall to the ground outside the fence.

Tessa North has been writing fiction since she was very young and still can’t find anything else she’d rather do. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from UEA, and is currently working on a western novel.

litro 96.indd 25 15.06.2010 0:55:48

26 27

Out of Darknesscherry Potts

ut of darkness, a flash and then the retort. The twenty-foot high images behind me loom incoherently – I

can’t hear them, what they saying? My ears ring with the crash of the concussion. Everything slows, the guy beside me, who’d been mouthing off, on his feet, gun waved, arm extended, him, Gary – I heard his girl call him that, yes, Gary – he falls back, arms spread, his white t-shirt fluorescing in the light of Gotham City.

Blood:

Black in the half-light, splatters in an arc across the row in front, not me, thank God, not me: no bullet, no spilt brains.

The popcorn spills from the bucket in his left hand.

His girl screams, an ugly guttural noise like she might throw up. Not like the heroine on the screen.

Gary falls and time speeds up, the dead weight of fourteen stone crashes into the plush upright of the seats behind him, his skull bounces on the edge, silently; I stare open-mouthed, and automatically supply the bonk in my mind. The gun falls from his hand, skitters under the seats.

I look at Jeannie, who is thinking about screaming, she hasn’t decided whether that’s appropriate yet, but she is certainly thinking about it, her mouth experiments with an ‘O’ shape … too prissy; then a gaping letter box – no, a recycling station. I expect a deep noise from that gaping square of darkness, but she is as high pitched as a kettle.

I begin to laugh, an equally high-pitched giggle.

No, no, I say to myself, this ain’t no thing to laugh at …

The fool in the projection box hasn’t shut off the movie, but the lights go up.

Gary is lying across my lap. The giggles turn to gasps.

This ain’t funny man, this ain’t entertainment, knowwhatImean?

O

litro 96.indd 26 15.06.2010 0:55:48

26 27

But I keep laughing; like the Joker – that’s it – there he is, on the screen, laughing himself sick.

Oh God I’m going to throw up.

Hey Gary, I say, inside my head, desperate not to barf, was it worth it man, to get a $4 bucket of popcorn you ain’t never gonna to eat?

How’ll I ever watch Batman without this … smell … in my nostrils – this burnt smell, and this raw meat smell, and the weight of your broken skull across my knees?

What you have to spoil my night for, huh? You think Jeannie gonna give out now? I don’t think so man, you dumb-ass … if you gonna pack heat, be ready to use it, knowwhatImean? Jeez, that guy – one mean shot … I was in the queue behind you, Gary, I heard him tell you – he wasn’t even carrying, not then, left his piece in his car – peaceable, man. Not like you, mouthing off, waving your weapon like it was a pissing contest.

Now I got your brains on my jeans. Jeez, man, don’t you think about consequences before you open your goddam mouth? I don’t think so. You ruined my night out – there’ll be cops now, askin’ what I saw, what I heard … small is what I saw, what I heard … small man talkin’ too big. Man, I heard brainless … ah man, brainless … I gotta stop this laughing, my face is starting to hurt … this is your fault, Gary, you gotta shut your mouth, you dumb-ass … corpse, you.

Cherry Potts is the author of two published collections of short stories, “Mosaic of Air” and “Tales Told Before Cockcrow: fairy tales for adults”, and a very short story was recently included in the Leaf Books collection “From the Left.” She has recently finished a Vast Lesbian Fantasy Epic which is doing the rounds of publishers but she also works as a life coach, business mentor and trainer, mainly with charities and their clients, and with writers. She lives in South East London with her life partner and two very spoilt cats, and sings with local community choirs for fun.

litro 96.indd 27 15.06.2010 0:55:48

28 29

Reddavid mildon

ay 29th ‘85.

The phone is ringing. Footsteps on the stairs. Mum whispering. Silence. Footsteps on the stairs. My bedroom door opening and Mum’s on top of me, tears on her face and in her curls and on me. Holding me too tight.

When I catch my breath, I ask “What was the score?” She pulls back, looks at me, looks at Kenny Dalglish above my bed, the scarves and the rosettes, all red.

“Dad’s safe. The rest doesn’t matter.”

*

February 17th ‘87.

It’s cold by the Cutty Sark, the wind finding ways through my duffel-coat. Mum is fiddling with the camera, trying to get a photo. She likes to do this. My Dad always asks why she can’t just remember things. As he’s not here yet, I make the familiar observation in his place.

“Because I want a photo.”

“It’s cold.”

“And? Look, just stand still and try to smile for once.”

“Why should I? It’s …”

And suddenly I’m rising through the air, a hand under each armpit. My legs draped over my father’s shoulders.

“Are you gonna stop making your mam’s life a misery and smile? Eh, monkey boy?”

Of course, now I’m beaming.

“Give us the pamphlets Paul.”

Reluctantly my father hands her the red and yellow leaflets emblazoned with “DEIRDRE WOOD FOR MP”. As Mum turns to put them in her bag, he slaps a sticker with the same message on my lapel, giving me a confidential smile.

M

litro 96.indd 28 15.06.2010 0:55:48

32 33

W

Mister Biggies Swims and Eats with the Fishesalan mccormick

hy wasn’t the hand in the cloud enough to stop the car from diving into the canal? Perhaps it just wasn’t

seen; people are in such a rush these days. The car dived head first, its chassis submerging in the goo of a midsummer swell, swirling and sucking it down.

Now ducks bob by, a coot flippers on the windscreen wipers and a couple of geese try the horn. Fish, luminous pollution scalies, nip in and out of the open windows and lie teasingly on the seats, smiling as if they’re on ice-display at the fishmonger’s.

From the boot, the back-end of the car not yet submerged, comes a furious tapping. Inside, a local snarlface scrapmerchant by the name of Big Biggies has woken up to find he has been claustrophobed in a Cortina tomb wrap by a pickie local gang known as the NosePick Boys.

‘Those pesky nosepickers have picked on the wrong guy!’ exclaims Big Biggies.

Just then he senses the car slip further down, and smells pongwater seeping into the boot.

‘What the feck am I going to do?’ he shouts.

Then there is a scraping and compression against the sides of the car. He feels the car being jerked up at high speed from the canal and his head bangs against the rim of a spare tyre.

When he comes to, he can hear the sound of shouting machinery and shrieking metal. He senses the car being held like a conker at the end of a giant string; underneath lying only destruction and bigtime squashing.

‘I’m in me fecking scrappers. Oi, John, let me out!’ yells Big Biggies.

But John can’t hear, and the coffin-cask-Cortina drops and is Image courtesy of Louie Stowell

litro 96.indd 33 15.06.2010 0:55:49

34 35

mangled, shaped and dwarfised into a slim sardine-style can.

When John jumps out of the control cabin on his crane he sees the squashed car-can and thinks he’ll have it for his tea. He is surprised when he unravels the key on the can lid to find it’s full of Biggies.

‘I was wondering where you got to,’ he says to his miniature flatpack boss.

Despite a tiny hand waving him away, John opens his mouth and consumes the contents of the can in one mouthful. For he has secretly been in league with the NosePick Boys, and feels this might be the best way to dispose of any unwanted evidence.

Alan McCormick’s fiction has received an Arts Council Writers’ Award and has appeared widely in print and online. His short fiction is regularly performed with the Liars’ League and Decongested.

(Image courtesy of Jonny Voss.) Jonny Voss is an illustrator working in Lon-don who studied at Brighton Univer-sity and the RCA – see www.jonnyvoss.com. Examples of Alan and Jonny’s collaborative illustrated writing can be found on their site www.scumsters.co.uk and at www.3ammagazine.com and www.deaddrunkdublin.com

litro 96.indd 34 15.06.2010 0:55:52

34 35 35

litro 96.indd 35 15.06.2010 0:55:54

36 37

Margaret B. Jones: Gang Fakemelissa katsoulis

f the LA gang memoir Love and Consequences had been for real, it would have been a very significant

book indeed. For the first time, a mainstream publisher would be enabling a female gun-runner and drug dealer for the notorious Bloods to tell her story. At times, Margaret B. Jones’s memoir of growing up a hustler was almost too painful to read: it told of how she, a half Native-American, half-white child from a very poor family had been removed from her parents as a five-year-old when she had turned up to school bleeding from sexual wounds. Then, under the auspices of her overworked foster mother ‘Big Mom’ in South Central LA, she had fallen into the gang culture, seeing it as a way to gain money and respect in a fractured and abusive community. In interviews prior to the release of her book, Jones told – in an African-American lilt, and peppering her speech with words like ‘homies’ – that ‘the first thing I did when I started making drug money was buy myself a burial plot’. She also spoke movingly of her fosterbrothers Terrell and Taye who had also fallen into the thug life.

As soon as review copies were distributed, America’s literary press began heaping praise on the brave young writer who was risking serious retributions by exposing the intricacies of gang life. The Oprah Winfrey machine got behind the book too, praising it in O Magazine as ‘a startlingly tender memoir’; the New York Times called it ‘humane and deeply affecting’ and Entertainment Weekly recommended it as a ‘powerful story of resilience’. This was exactly the response the book’s publishers, Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin, had anticipated, and it seemed that the first print run of 19,000 copies had not been so ambitious after all.

Jones’s editor, Sarah McGrath, had been working on the

i

litro 96.indd 36 15.06.2010 0:55:54

36 37

Margaret B. Jones: Gang Fakemelissa katsoulis

f the LA gang memoir Love and Consequences had been for real, it would have been a very significant

book indeed. For the first time, a mainstream publisher would be enabling a female gun-runner and drug dealer for the notorious Bloods to tell her story. At times, Margaret B. Jones’s memoir of growing up a hustler was almost too painful to read: it told of how she, a half Native-American, half-white child from a very poor family had been removed from her parents as a five-year-old when she had turned up to school bleeding from sexual wounds. Then, under the auspices of her overworked foster mother ‘Big Mom’ in South Central LA, she had fallen into the gang culture, seeing it as a way to gain money and respect in a fractured and abusive community. In interviews prior to the release of her book, Jones told – in an African-American lilt, and peppering her speech with words like ‘homies’ – that ‘the first thing I did when I started making drug money was buy myself a burial plot’. She also spoke movingly of her fosterbrothers Terrell and Taye who had also fallen into the thug life.

As soon as review copies were distributed, America’s literary press began heaping praise on the brave young writer who was risking serious retributions by exposing the intricacies of gang life. The Oprah Winfrey machine got behind the book too, praising it in O Magazine as ‘a startlingly tender memoir’; the New York Times called it ‘humane and deeply affecting’ and Entertainment Weekly recommended it as a ‘powerful story of resilience’. This was exactly the response the book’s publishers, Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin, had anticipated, and it seemed that the first print run of 19,000 copies had not been so ambitious after all.

Jones’s editor, Sarah McGrath, had been working on the

i

litro 96.indd 36 15.06.2010 0:55:54

4338 39 39

litro 96.indd 39 15.06.2010 0:55:56

40 41

litro 96.indd 40 15.06.2010 0:55:56

4438 39

litro 96.indd 39 15.06.2010 0:55:56

40 41

litro 96.indd 40 15.06.2010 0:55:56

4540 41

litro 96.indd 41 15.06.2010 0:55:58

42 43

LitRO LiStiNGS JuNEFrights, festivals, flamenco and fiction pack the punches during June´s events, bringing inspiration in the loom of austerity, edited by Alex James.

1st – 6th June, 2010, King´s Head theatre, The European Arts Company invites you on a trip down the smoggy, gaslit alleyways of Victorian London to hear ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde’. Set in a tavern in 1888, a versatile ensemble cast will re-enact this classic tale using only the things you would find in a pub. See: www.kingsheadtheatre.org/

7th June, the Orange prize For Fiction, Southbank Centre, The Southbank Centre will host a series of events in June celebrating the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction. Prize co-founder, Kate Mosse, will host an evening of discussion with previous judges on the prize’s impact and vision for the future on the 7th June. The following day will see the return of the incredibly popular Orange Prize Shortlist Readings at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. For more information visit www.orangeprize.co.uk

11th - 13th June, toast, Clapham Common. All things Antipodean, from barbies to books … Inspired by the culture of Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, the Toast festival takes place from Friday 11th June to Sunday 13th June, with each day celebrating a different culture. It is the largest celebration of the Southern hemisphere within the UK. www.efestivals.co.uk/festivals/toast/2010

12th - 13th June, Open Squares Weekend. Peer behind the walls of London’s private community gar-dens and squares. Ranging from the historically memo-rable to the small and quirky, from the contemporary and eco-friendly to renowned roof gardens, cemeteries and working allotments. See: www.opensquares.org

13th June, Coin Street Festival, South Bank Events take place in and around Bernie Spain Gar-dens, adjacent to the Oxo Tower Wharf. All events are free. Celebrating the start of International Refugee Week, the festival features music, dance, spoken word, food, drink and craft from cultures around the world. www.coinstreet.org/coinstreet_festival.aspx

litro 96.indd 42 15.06.2010 0:56:17

Cover Artwork by Photographer

Zima Kaoku Ô Landscapes with

CorpsesÕ courtesy of Hatje Cantz

litro cover.indd 2 10.06.2010 0:07:11

LITRO IS PUBLISHED BY OCEAN MEDIA BOOKS Ltd

www.oceanmediauk.com

Ò In the dark the jaguar carries his silken beauty, his great heavy tail and flaming eyes, to the killing grounds and the night is alive with the screams of death.Ó

Watu by Sara Maitland page 7

High Summer World of Light by Gillian Ayres, part of the Royal Academy of ArtsÕ Summer Exhibition 2010

STORIES TRANSPORT YOU

Stories from: Sara Maitland, Yorgos Trillidis Michael Spring, Tessa North Cherry Potts, David Mildon Alan McCormick, Paul Lyalls

litro cover.indd 1 10.06.2010 0:07:09

Litro #96 Gangs Teaser

Documents

Transcript of Litro #96 Gangs Teaser