"Out of the half-dark Josephine stepped up beside him. Buzzing with the electricity of love, he queried her over his pulse rate: could it be accurate with her fingers on his wrist?"
‘The matchmaker’ is a love story with a difference. Fiction, fantasy, identity and fixation weave together elegantly in this new tale from UK writer John Saul. READ 'THE MATCHMAKER'.
The cows drift over when there’s a shower, it’s like they’re tethered together by invisible ropes. Once one makes the move they all tug along, squelching in and out of each other’s muddy hoof prints, breathing misty air over each other’s flanks. Flock memory, Niamh calls it.
Photo by Marcino via Pixabay.com
'Vestigial', by Irish writer Aideen Henry, is a story of innocence and experience, looking at the lives of teenagers as they fumble towards connection, growth, lust and love. A selection by guest editor Madeleine D'Arcy. READ 'VESTIGIAL'.
“ As Aisling drives, Noah struggles to match the abandoned streets that now stream past his window with the city he has experienced the past few days – gone is the feeble crawl of traffic, the strangling smell of diesel, the stutter through roundabouts where knuckles harried closed car windows, and hands offered roasted corn on a stick, fresh mangoes, pineapple, and, one time, a kitten.”
Photo by Miville Tremblay, via Flickr.
The August 2017 Long Story, Short offering, 'Lamu', is by Irish writer and Sean Dunne Young Writer winner Noel O'Regan. Join hopeful but uncertain Noah on a road trip with a former flame through Kenya, as they skirt the boundaries of reconnection and dissolution. READ 'LAMU'.
“Jude removes the filmy plastic and hanger. She holds the new dress against her bare skin and kicks a leg out in front of her. Positions the dress against it to get a feel of how it might hang. It doesn’t work like she expects it to. The arc of her dimpled thigh is exposed: raw sausage.”
February 2017 brings us Rhoda Greaves's unique short story, 'Makeup Tips for the Mature Woman'. Against a backdrop of editorial advice for aging gracefully, this story's heroine grapples with grief, aging and identity with human awkwardness and vulnerable dignity, leading her to an unpredictable and transcendent encounter with youth. READ 'MAKEUP TIPS FOR THE MATURE WOMAN'.
"This week, I have at last found some work—chauffeuring dignitaries to and from a gathering of Nobel-prize winners at the old university in Heidelberg. This particular Laureate resembles a handsome pope. He looks seventy and he looks virile, the kind of man who would attempt intercourse with a tree from a high-speed train."
Photo © Raul Lieberwirth.
Take a hallucinatory chauffeured tour of Heidelberg to dive bars, academic luncheons, and the homes of unmentionable historical figures in Andrew Meehan's 'Laureate'. The protagonist has a voice you won't soon forget. Read the June 2016 edition of Long Story, Short Journal: Laureate. Photo by German photographer Raul Lieberwirth.
Photo © Alan McCord
"From her window she watched the street. There were people in good coats – with no pilling, no unflattering bulk – walking with clear purpose, cyclists gliding by. It was late afternoon, night was falling, and the alien, blue-rinsed light settled on her like a kind of despair. She had a sense of being adrift on a vast, indifferent ocean. Whether she ate her dinner or not, went to sleep or stayed awake all night, or even stopped existing, who was to know?"
Long Story, Short Journal's June 2015 edition is 'Tiny Dancer' : an examination of the solitude required for artistry, detailed in a portrait of a young dancer who is living away from home for the first time. Author Lisa Lang is the recipient of The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for her début novel Utopian Man. CLICK HERE TO READ 'TINY DANCER'.
It was one of those gut-feelings, a finger that prodded Steve in the side telling him to remember the night before or face its accusing wag; as though everything that happened was solely his fault. Yet Steve wondered how much of it was, it had all started so long ago.
In 'Hand Me Downs' a man reconstructing what happened the night before leads him down a path extending further and further back, to meet the origin of 'where things went wrong'. Kelly Creighton's story is both gritty and emotionally apt, and continues the LSS tradition of tales of love lost--just in time for Valentine's Day. Click here to read 'Hand Me Downs'.
© Murat Bilecen
Luke’s father lies in a hospital bed in a private room. Luke stands at the foot of the bed, holding a bunch of oriental lilies he bought at Cork airport. Their scent is muted in the antiseptic hospital air. His brother Terence and Terence’s wife Una sit at the old man’s bedside in a silence broken by the click of the morphine pump, then a clatter of crockery and muffled voices from the corridor outside. The old man seems dead already, until suddenly his blue eyes flicker open. ‘If you’ve come to get something out of me, forget it,’ he manages to say.
'A Good Funeral' tells the story of a bittersweet homecoming for Luke, an Irishman who left his small town at a young age to live in London. When he returns, he takes stock of how much, and how little, has changed--and learns the unknown influence he had on another young man who lived in the same town. A new offering from Hennessy Award winner Madeleine D'Arcy, with all of her characteristic humour, warmth and emotional wisdom. CLICK HERE TO READ 'A GOOD FUNERAL'.
© Jenna Weaver
'The Shawl' is a dirge of the ties that bind our relationships; the clutch and release in the power struggle to keep hold of the ones we love. This new work is by Brian Kirk, a writer who is as accomplished in poetry as he is in the short story. His image of 'the shawl' will stay with readers, long after they've finished reading. CLICK HERE TO READ 'THE SHAWL'.
Photo © Chris Weeks
December's story is by emerging writer and Trinity College Dublin graduate Naoimh O'Connor. Taking place along the docks of Detroit, The Starter is a tale of transition, loss, growth and the art of baking sourdough bread.
