Category: Creative Writing

Sticky post
Columns, Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Writing

The Life Chronicles: Charge and Control

Build it. Break it. Build it, break it.

I exercise control in the small mannerisms I have adopted over the years. The minor, domestic cogs of my life, turning in perfect succession. Succinct, and ritually executed. These are the private domains of my psyche, the charts and the crosses, the changing of bed linen and the calculated hoovering of square spaces. Each chart is built of boxes, and each room possesses borders. The hoover head stops at skirting boards. Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Charge and Control

RAZZ MagLeave a comment
Sticky post
christmas, Columns, Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Writing

The Life Chronicles: Bar Flies

It is late December in a pub in Dublin. Poised behind the bar, a barmaid watches her customers buzz between velvet bar stools, and neglected coats. There is a plastic clock on the wall behind her, as she waits posted in front of the array of liquors, spirits and bottles of wine. The bottles are lazily draped in pound-store tinsel. Pine needles rest upon the floor with a certain authority; the endless cycle of hoovering is no match for the green pins. The air outside turns cheeks pink and skin chapped. The bar has become a haven for restless sets of boots, and men’s frozen fingertips. A sign reads, ‘Our mulled cider is a must’. Drawing in a deep breath, she marks the beginning of her shift upon the shiny surface of the clock. Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Bar Flies

RAZZ MagLeave a comment
Sticky post
Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Writing

‘Poisoned’

Two days after the Queen died, they sent for me. I was sixteen. Barely more than a child. Father and Mother could do nothing. News of my supposed beauty had reached the capitol, so they came, they saw me, and they took me. Dressed in a great fur coat and a long, velvet dress trimmed with white ermine, I was bundled into a carriage and never saw home again. Mother and Father’s faces grew distant, like clouds, until they were as indistinct as clouds, and then they were gone. Continue reading ‘Poisoned’

RAZZ MagLeave a comment
Columns, Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Writing

The Life Chronicles: Blinkers

Angie was slow my mother used to say. She told me she was ‘out of it’, and needed Adderall to help her focus. I was the younger daughter, by five years, so this gave me an internal feeling of superiority. I used to get called bright in comparison. I was naturally focused, but Angie didn’t seem to envy me, so she resisted the prescriptions my mother pushed for. Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Blinkers

RAZZ MagLeave a comment
Columns, Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Writing

The Life Chronicles: Old Love

When you are seventeen, love is mutually assured destruction. These novelty pangs of brilliance and devotion which bubble and surface like lava; irresistible, deadly and hot to the touch. Who will detonate your shiny new feelings first? The ebbing confusion of backhanded compliments and rebellion. It is only a matter of time before one of you brings a match to this fuse. Continue reading The Life Chronicles: Old Love

RAZZ MagLeave a comment
Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Interview, Local, What's Happening, Writing

Riptide Launch

The chic thrum of music melted into the night air as I arrived outside The Custom House next to the dark and shining quay for the Riptide launch party. I slipped through the peeling blue doors and up the staircase, to find myself in a throng of writers and people working for the journal. There was a congenial atmosphere as people milled about with glasses of wine, mingling against the constant murmur of voices sounding next to the loud, yet relaxing tunes which came from the musicians in the room before me. Continue reading Riptide Launch

RAZZ MagLeave a comment
Creative Writing, Editorial Team, Writing

“A Better Place”

As I stand at the edge of this rooftop, looking down on the place I once considered home, I begin to feel the irreversibility of what I am about to do. There are no second chances where I’m going. It is nearly time now; I am on my last cigarette. Inhale, exhale – like it is my oxygen supply. My lungs burn with each drag and the dizziness in my head is overwhelming, but I can’t bring myself to care. The things we worry about while we are alive just don’t seem as important when you know you are about to die. Smoking Kills. But so does everything: isn’t that the point? Continue reading “A Better Place”

RAZZ MagLeave a comment