Agoloso Presents - Atondido Stories Agoloso Presents - Mama Mada | Page 283

Mama Mada Traces by Be n Park e r Allotments. Shattered chimney stacks. A black bag tangled like a crow in the leafless tree. As you walk beyond the last of the deserted red-brick factory buildings the city rusts around you. The river thins to a stream that could be forded by a fallen branch. This is a place of past tenses, an archaeology of skeletal bikes, single gloves and bleached cans of beer the supermarkets no longer stock. Spent matches hint at flame on flesh. The rituals of childhood. Something small and broken in the grass. Mirrored by Eleano r Ho o k er She visited again last night, no pike this time. She was singing too. Her song is the sound of a heavy body Dragging itself, deadly, up the stairs. Her malady not too dissimilar to that thud-thump heartbeat In my ears. She brought mirrors into my mind and in my mind she filled the mirrors with crows, huge-beaked, hungry crows. That fed. And though I couldn’t move, I kept my eyes open, I wasn’t frightened; I knew sooner or later I’d wake, And she would have to leave with her mirrors and her crows, Leaving my pulse behind. 278