Issue 23 – Winter 2013 – Ian Seed

Ian Seed

 

Bad Faith

I was in the war like everyone else. But was I? The other soldiers kept testing my commitment with new tricks. One night a woman with scarred skin came to my bed. She pressed herself against me and asked if I found her beautiful. I whispered that I did. She had two children, she told me, did I still find her beautiful?

In the morning, the other soldiers wanted to know if I would marry her. When I said that I would, one of them laughed and pointed to the ring I was already wearing. They threw hundreds of pebbles at my face. The pebbles grew brightly-coloured wings and flew around me. I could have spent a lifetime watching them, but there was a war on.

 

 

Ian Seed is editor of www.shadowtrain.com. His most recent publications are Sleeping with the Ice Cream Vendor (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2012), Threadbare Fables (Like This Press, 2012), Shifting Registers (Shearsman, 2011), Amore mio (Flax ebooks, 2011) and a translation from the Italian poetry of Ivano Fermini, the straw which comes apart (Oystercatcher Press, 2010).

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