We see the artist is lost in fragments. She sits on bare floorboards, surrounded by shards of broken mirror, cut up poetry and painted [interrupted] images of mandalas. Only the back of her head is visible while she chooses her face. The pieces, of course, could be put together in any number of configurations and… Continue reading Kaleidoscope
Category: Automatic Ficion
Parallel #4: Widdershins
A giant spider with a girl’s head sidles up the embankment We know about her Kicking up the dust Making sculptures from time Keep the ghosts of memory close Surround yourself with images Representations of security Jaded Going backwards now Fragments and then fullness Return from the swarm of bats Widdershins Sounds so sinister But… Continue reading Parallel #4: Widdershins
Interlude/Bear/Thaw
Serrated teeth in the brain. Tissue melting, oozing like wax, reforming into monstrous masses of indeterminate shape. Painful stalactites that join forces to torment me into complete and final submission. The wind growls as it rolls in through the fog. I flinch, though I can imagine no greater cross than I already bear. It’s the… Continue reading Interlude/Bear/Thaw
Parallel #1: Endless
Ending on the word ‘addiction’ because there was never a choice. Beginning on the word ‘ending’ because it’s all a circle. I have constructed various possible worlds right here in my head, and no one will ever see. Curious to think that infinity lives in us collectively in this way, with new, endless fantasies being… Continue reading Parallel #1: Endless
Interlude/Desert
I spotted you soaring high above me, your black wings wide like in that stolen poem from years ago. You were looking for an exit in the sky; we’d surely tried everywhere we could reach on foot. Days, maybe weeks, wandering through the desert of the real. Every layer of meaning, sign and recognition stripped,… Continue reading Interlude/Desert
Interlude/Forest
A gunshot rings out through the trees. Run, little one. Run as fast as anyone with dust for bones can possibly run. It hurts like no time has passed, I know. The ricochet never ended, never even reached the other side. Find the waterfall where the shadows crouch and the birds sing. It appears somewhere… Continue reading Interlude/Forest
Interlude/Limbo
I am somewhere beyond journaling. I am in the thicket, legs twisted, organs rotting. Alive yet, but covered in flies. Perhaps through their regurgitation they protect me from a greater doom that lurks beyond. Scatter me in many pieces of transformed flesh and bone so that I cannot be found easily, so that I become… Continue reading Interlude/Limbo
![Journal Sequence #14: Beautiful Hailstones [I am you]](https://crdudley.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/20220128_190124.jpg?w=640)
Journal Sequence #14: Beautiful Hailstones [I am you]
The first rule of autofiction is that no one admits they’re writing autofiction. They’ll refer to ‘my narrator’ and ‘the plot’ as though they were something other than parts of the author themselves. They are, of course, parts that are not generally accepted explorations. A narrator can indulge in solipsism but a person cannot. The… Continue reading Journal Sequence #14: Beautiful Hailstones [I am you]
![Sequence #13: The Sound of Distant Drums [Limerence]](https://crdudley.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/pine-leaves-gc485878f3_640.jpg?w=640)
Sequence #13: The Sound of Distant Drums [Limerence]
CW: Self-harm, Suicide After an age, the return of Animus B in a dream. He’d taken up snowboarding. I saw him first from way up high as though in an aerial photograph taken through a frozen lens. Cracking but beautiful. Lips. He was alone, maybe for hundreds of miles. He preferred it like that, it… Continue reading Sequence #13: The Sound of Distant Drums [Limerence]
![Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]](https://crdudley.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/20220101_112705.jpg?w=640)
Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]
Suddenly, through the cracks in the asphalt, paving and brickwork: water. It’s raining upwards; the city is crying. Drowning me and everyone like me in its tears. My hair, my clothes, my skin: soaked. My eyelashes beaded with droplets. You can only write when you allow the world outside to slow down, because as it… Continue reading Journal Sequence #11: Remission [Appending]
C.R. Dudley 