Artistic Melodrama in A Minor by Jen Hughes

(published 9th April 2018)

The room is dark,

Like a very dark room.

Like that really bitter dark chocolate

Nobody eats

The projector shines a holy light at the wall

A long wooden floor separates me

From the screen.

I sit on a bench of wood

Alone.

 

 

We can only see

Trainered feet guiding a small kangaroo around the floor

Of someone’s oversized garden shed

A swan asleep

A shrub awake

The camera shows that they feel

The plight

 

 

Of this man reading aloud

Heartache poetry written by a woman

Probably his auntie or sister

Crying out for his fifth one and only this week

He is deep in melancholy

Monologue.

 

 

“Oh Lenore, god-like lover

Why did you run off with my mother?

This seat is broken, like my heart

You have utterly

Forsaken me”

 

 

I look across the long wooden floor

That separates me from the screen

I look around me and I am alone

I will always be alone

Nobody comes to this art gallery

During the week

So my heart gets the better of me

And I cartwheel across the floor

Several times.

 

 

WHEEEEEEEE, WHEEEEEEEEE

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Jen Hughes

Jen Hughes is a writer from Ayrshire, Scotland. She has been furiously scribbling ideas and writing elaborate stories from as early as age seven. When it comes to blogging, she hopes to make up for her lack of experience with enthusiasm (which seems to be how she approaches most jobs, funnily enough). It’s a learning journey and, in the spirit of the blogger, she’ll be documenting as much as it as possible in her monthly entries. In her fiction and poetry, she has been published in a wide variety of online journals and magazines such as The Pulp Metal Magazine, Idle Ink, McStorytellers and Ogilvie Press; as well as having read out at various open mike and spoken word events in her area. Her up-to-date portfolio of short stories, flash fictions and poems can be found on her website www.dearoctopuswriting.wordpress.com. Jen is currently studying English Literature and Flm & TV Studies in Glasgow.