A Gathering of Dead Stories Begins…

Posted on August 20, 2019 by Bella Basura

A short while ago, during a particularly dark patch, I watched The Great Hack documentary and Charlie Brooker’s Bandersnatch in rapid succession.

It didn’t much help my mood. And I’ve really gone off social media and computer games a bit since then.

Which is how come I have been reading a lot, and re-reading many of own my failed stories which are filed away in cardboard boxes under my bed. And so that’s how come I am gathering them here, under the title Slush Pile Bonanza

The next piece was written earlier this year. I abandoned it because it felt way too dark, and I couldn’t find a laugh in there.

Scene Beyond The Rape Yard by Bella Basura 2019

Beyond the Rape Yard

Every night she was tortured by the sounds.
She lay awake, at best half-asleep, hearing the far-off grunts and snarls, the yelps and screams.
Screams, she heard, she was sure…MORE..

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Slush Pile Bonanza

Posted on August 18, 2019 by Bella Basura

This is the first installment of a collection of my previously unpublished stories, gunk from my personal Slush Pile…

This first story is from 4 or 5 years ago.

What Time?
Collage by Bella Basura. Spain 1994.

Time Warp In The ‘dam

“Sooooo” She drew the word out with undisguised relish “What are we going to do with our last night in Amsterdam, eh?” She laughed, poked him in the ribs and stretched our languorously across the counterpane, sprawled like a self-satisfied cat. “Our last night as twisted British rock-star and unofficial girlfriend, cut adrift in the city of sin?”…MORE..

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Submissions for Edgewords Renewal Anthology

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Bella Basura

The deadline for Edgewords Renewal Anthology draws closer, next week in fact, so please do get your finger out and send us your wonderful SHORT fictions and poems. There is a word limit of 300 words or 30 lines – details are on the Edge Cafe website – here.

The new anthology is edited by Munizha Ahmad-Cooke, Lisa Evans and Jean Dark. We have had several very wonderful submissions already, and the 19th September deadline is now looming. We are still waiting for you to send us YOUR contribution.

We recently recorded Munizha’s beautiful piece -Ripe – which appeared in the first Edgewords Anthology, you can listen to our reading of it here. It was recorded a few week ago at Lisa’s, in the home studio she shares with her partner Colin. So many thanks to Colin for making the recording, we had such a lovely afternoon!

Follow this link to send your submissions to us – Edgewords Renewal Anthology

The Edgeworders. by Victor Manuel-Ibanez for Oblique Arts. 2017.

The first Edgewords Anthology was published last year, and came about through a series of Creative Writing workshops during September and October 2017. We were lucky to have the support of Oblique Arts, The Edge Cafe and Cambridge City Council who made the project possible.

Here is a photograph of the writing group by Victor. I think we look like a rock band! In fact, we are pausing during a workshop, at The Mayan Pyramid near Snakey Path on a writing expedition to Cherry Hinton Hall.

Edgewords Renewal Anthology Submission Form

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New Bella Basura posting

Posted on February 15, 2018 by Bella Basura

Maxine and Bella Merged – Bella Basura 2018

TOGETHER

Once long ago we were connected, all together, gathering in a circle, outward facing, covering each others backs. We were solid and safe in three hundred and sixty directions. We were whole wholesome together connected. But I don’t remember, do you remember?

And yet again eyes connect across canyons of misunderstandings. That must have been some other time.

We were our own human barricade, strong in limb, Amazonians, muscled women of plunder, not war, just necessity. Swooping in the dark, together, finger-wings tip-to-tip, touching. The storm comes around again flashing jolt and thunder-crack. Eyes meet and connect in metallic shadows, forked in lightening. But I don’t remember, do you remember?

I search your face for explanations, but your eyes don’t speak to me. Your facial expression caught in the frozen photographic moment, is remarkably composed, held peaceful and distant in placid compassion. Your eyes are numb they do not speak to me. Aloof in life, that’s me.

And yet again eyes connect across canyons of misunderstandings. That must have been some other time.

It must have been some other time, another place, it doesn’t look the same, it’s so different. Only your silent eyes are the same. I catch a glance into them and everything shifts, somehow slightly bigger. Your empty eyes are the constant axis through which consciousnesses turn through gyrations of immensity and I know we were connected, once long ago. But I don’t remember, do you remember?

The Short Answer Chapbook for sale here

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Sweet Surrender

Posted on February 10, 2018 by Bella Basura

Today I wanted to check I knew the difference between “Satsang” and “Darshan”, so I headed to my faithful old dictionary to look it up. My solid reliable “old skool” paper dictionary – three inches thick, bound in tatty blue faux leather, machine-blocked in brass-coloured foil, thumb-indexed A to Z, and fossilised stopped dead in its tracks when it was published in 1988.
When I write that out it sounds absurd, a counter-intuitive act of self-sabotage. Why didn’t I just go “google-satsang-meaning”? Easy as pie.
In my defence, it was early morning and I don’t use any electronic communication devices until mid-day because I am writing.
So I thumbed my way through my big old tome, with it’s foxed corners and cranky colophon. After several minutes I came fruitlessly to “Satsuma”. I slammed the book shut.
“google-satsang-meaning” I barked.

Bella Basura 2018

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Dream Theme 2

Posted on August 8, 2017 by Bella Basura

The second in a new blog series about dreams…

My Dream About Stevie Smith

I sat on the sofa, a blistering headful of ideas burning a hole in my skull, I am filling up and overflowing. I raise my arms up towards the east and I call out the name of my only patron saint,
my role model, my cultural mother, my meme mum.

In My Ethereal Stevie Smith Shoes
Bella Basura 2017

“Stevie Smith” I slowly begin to sound.
“Stevie Smith” Louder.
“Stevie Smith, I do call on you in my time of need”
And Stevie descended and we pushed our opened hands out to each other, pushed hard palms against each other and she poured her deep intrinsic poet-energy in through the pads of my fingers. A warmth growing through me.
A voice, my own voice, calls me
and whispers close to my ear “Wake up!”

The Short Answer Chapbook for sale here

New chapbook in the pipeline

Posted on July 23, 2017 by Bella Basura

Beginning to think about a new chapbook of flash fiction to self-publish.
I am aiming for a february release,
and here is a preview…

Probably Inappropriately

By Dave Challis March 2017

When you done your tantric kundalini kali-spell on me I was lost enveloped in psychic love-haze, I was drawn, rising, filling, swelling emotions that confused me and had in the past lead to casually fucking someone.
Probably Inappropriately.

Warning bells went off somewhere in the distance and I felt us reflex, in unison, pull back, but stayed long hours, hung in giddy uneasy equilibrium, in circular psychedelic emanations, trident penetrates the sky.

Still. Still. Still.
Waiting, while unseen proto-cosmic arousals reverberate the air,
threatening to immanently unfold sudden into cataclysmic karmic collisions climaxing.
Still. Still. Still.

So we lay down on the bed, fully-clothed in the dull downpour afternoon. Clasped in yogic breathing intensely staring deep into soul-eyes we sank down dipped below the surface entwined long time waiting will you call.
Probably Inappropriately.

Bella Basura 2017

The Short Answer Chapbook for sale here

New flash fiction from Bella Basura

Posted on June 22, 2017 by Bella Basura

¡Que Bellisima!

From behind the huge ice-cream-laden pink-plastic sundae glass a child’s voice wailed out
“Strawberries! Strawberries! I don’t like strawberries”. Pandemonium rising up from an irritating bratty pre-schooler in the budget cafeteria on the ferry back to England.

I hadn’t heard an English voice for months, and now, due to uncertain weather conditions passengers having been banned from the decks, I was hearing my native tongue ring out around me, obscenely.

The sullen wet-dog stinking day-trip masses circumnavigated the duty-free and bars, aimlessly damp and the boy banged his heels endlessly, in infuriating non-syncopation. “I hate strawberries. I don’t want it. It’s smelly!”. The infantile squall was still passing over.

I ambled my memory back to Spain, still not believing I was actually leaving. I stared back deep into shimmering days of purposeful inactivity, punctuated through with isolated monochrome stop-frame images of intense moonlit things.

“I hate it. I hate it. I hate you!” strawberry-boy shouts, and I think it into Spanish, out of habit “Le odio Le odio Te odio Le odio Le odio Te odio” ringing in my mind, like a joyful Hispanic pat a cake game.

Links
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Jean Dark

The Short Answer Chapbook for sale here

Bella Basura Live in March

Posted on March 15, 2017 by Bella Basura

Two performances for Bella Basura coming up this month…

Scarecrow Corner Springtime Benefit Gig, Cambridge
At The Devonshire Arms, 19th March Scarecrow Corner S[ringtime Benefit Gig

Poetic Springs Bury St Edmunds

Poetic Springs, Bury St Edmunds
Anselm Community Centre, 23rd March

Limited copies of The Short Answer chapbook will be on sale at both events.

Dream Lover by Bella Basura

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Bella Basura

Dream Lover
by Bella Basura

In my dream we sit down on the bed in the hot thunderstorm afternoon, and we talk. We tumble headlong into conversations around tantric psycho-sexual experimentation, and intimacy, trust, adventure, and systematic exploration of kundalini energy and control of its transits through the etheric body. I liked that bit best. All that stuff about psychic electrification of each of my chakras in slow-motion pulsations of pure energy.

I wake into empty house twilight, sick taste in my mouth, my socks twisted and damp, hair sprawling unkempt.
In the kitchen I make a pot of tea and wait. Slipping in and out of the memory of the dream, story-telling it into existence, into a finely polished narrative, into a gleaming moral with a twist in the tail and happy ever-ending.

I try to hug you when you appear home, in the kitchen doorway. But you step back saying “Put me down, I’ve just come in from work”.
I step back, snubbed.
You storm upstairs.
I think fleetingly that your hair, tonight in particular,
smelled of stale sperm and too many rushed rancid coffees,
the taste of reality I dare not admit.

Bella Basura
Feb 2017

Links
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The Short Answer Chapbook for sale here

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don't dream it, be it

Tag Archives: Micro-fiction

A Gathering of Dead Stories Begins…

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Slush Pile Bonanza

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Submissions for Edgewords Renewal Anthology

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New Bella Basura posting

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Sweet Surrender

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Dream Theme 2

My Dream About Stevie Smith

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New chapbook in the pipeline

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New flash fiction from Bella Basura

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Bella Basura Live in March

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Dream Lover by Bella Basura

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