Salt and Mangoes
Lana had blue eyes. Light blue, the type that looked like water in the sun. This is what James liked about her, he remembered now.
He had opened the flyscreen to her standing there, like a cardboard cut out, looking him over.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Miss me much?’
She drew breath through her teeth and smiled.
She had changed. Her face was taut and angular, the features oversized; lashes thick, eyes wide set, lips greasy, hair too blonde and straight. And she wore a dress─ she never wore a dress─ black stretch cotton, straight past the knees and clenched in at the waist. Bought from one of those cheap imitation shops, James thought.

I watch her movements. I was greatly tempted to move closer and risk being seen. The girl, in her red hood and bodice, dancing around suggestively in among the wild flowers. She didn’t know I was there, but all the creatures in the forest were watching. I could tell she wanted to be seen. That’s why she wore that bright costume. I saw her earlier; flirting with that wolf, showing him everything she had hidden in her basket.

The ritualist felt more tears in his clothes as held tight to the lizard’s tail and tried to hold its body still with his elbow as it twisted. “Why go through this dumb parade with a lizard?” –a stranger online had said- “What is it about getting hold of an illegal nuisance for the purpose of swapping it for a lethal nuisance that seems like such a good idea?”. The ritualist carefully squelched that thought, walked slowly backwards around the circle and began to chant:

City Of Angels

Amy Ma

Daah dah, dada da daah da...

A hero’s theme. I can't help but let it fill my head when I look down from up here. Getting harder to fly above this city, the way it keeps growing. Maybe the air's thinner up here. Neon melts into a flashy fuzz up ahead. Maybe it's the smog.

It’s probably best to be honest from the outset. I picked up this CD because I thought my mum would like it and I could pass it on to her after I reviewed it. Not my usual listening criteria...

The house crouched twisted under the January sun. Around it the grass, bamboo, hydrangeas and fishbone fern sprouted almost audibly and filled the steaming air with the rich, bitter fragrance of their eager growth. There was no straight piece of wood in the house. Every step bowed and every floor sloped. Cracks webbed the blue-green tiles of the shaded front porch and the greeny-white paint on the window frames. The facing boards showed egg-sized white and grey mottles of blistered paint and weathered wood. Adrienne wrenched at the hot bronze key stuck in the brown lock and pushed at the front door. Her thumbnail split on the lock as black dust smeared the neat white cotton over her shoulder. She jerked back on the key three times and twisted round as it came out with an uneven "zip". She swiped at her grimy shoulder with sweaty metallic hand and clinked through the bunch of keys until she found one that crunched into the deadlock, below the first one, and wrenched it clockwise, anticlockwise, and in and out until she felt something inside the pitted brown cylinder move. Adrienne shoved the door again grunting not so loudly that she could not hear the top lock click shut again.

Leaning precariously out the hotel window Charlotte drank in the heavy, sticky air chock full of dust and the odour of coconut tanning lotion. Below her window several boys played soccer in the street, their skin golden from fooling around beneath the hot summer sun. Beyond them the white sands of Ipanema stretched out before her, where under the lush green palm trees the rich and the poor mingled. The beach was swarming with people of all colours, shapes and ages sizzling as they cooked like raw meat in a furnace.

Leaving home for University.

As the car slowly backs out of the driveway and casts down the familiar street where I have grown up, I let memories from my childhood flicker through my mind.
I see children riding bikes and rollerblading out in the street during the long, hot sticky summer evenings.
I smell the next door neighbours barbeque sizzling. I feel the pain the time I broke my arm out on the sidewalk. I remember lying on the hard, pebbly concrete waiting for the ambulance to arrive and take me to the hospital.

Ouch! The sun’s in my eyes. Where am I?

Sleeping bag, trees, the musty smell of a fire in a drum mingled with
pot smoke…. Oh yeah, I remember now… and so does my stomach.

Uncertainty

She smells like cigarettes and salt-and-vinegar chips. The oddest combination Shannon has ever encountered.

A beautiful little brunette angel sits next to the woman. It seems odd to describe a young boy as brunette, but that’s what he is.