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A Letter from The Editor

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Welcome, dear readers, to Spare Parts Literary. I am so very honoured to make your aquaintances as Spare Parts takes its shakey first steps into the world.

This magazine found its origins in a very negative feeling and I couldn't be more proud of the journey it has taken to become a beacon of creativity and expression

and most importantly inclusivity. No one is a spare part. We are all important

and necessary, and I am so thrilled to have this opportunity to offer a platform

for so many voices to be heard!

It is my hope that for those of you leafing through our pages, whether you have

followed our progression to this point or whether you are only now exploring Spare Parts Literary out of curiosity, there will be something that stirs, moves, somehow

resonates with you, and that this soul-cry of significance will rise up in you too.

And so it is with a heady mix of excitement and gratitude that I introduce,

"Volume 1".

  

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Oak Ayling

Oak Ayling (EIC)

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VOl 1.

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FREEDOM'S VOYAGE

by Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi

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Quote;

“The tongue is the biggest raft in the world”

floating away on a lake of stars.

The bridge to freedom is broken.

It will take a day as long as tomorrow to row men,

whose heart beats the sun across the sky,

digging a treasure from its map.

There is so much left to do.

 

You can tell sweetness from the stare into Sirius.

So the weak can wish on stars outside the Sheriff's chest.

Stars will choose to follow smiles that bow the moon,

the riches that invented daylight. So

Dawn can wake to press its blushing face to my window.

 

I'm not too much of a smooth talker.

I paved the way with coarse chatters so if you fall in the path,

you can feel how rough the tongue is,

how harsh the truth is and

how slow it wafts stars on this lake.

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Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi is a DVM student at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Pursuing his enthusiasm for poetry, He has his works published in Poet's choice, Echo mag, and a few more. He reads at the sea glass lit and edits for the incognito. He tweets from; @OladejoAFeranmi.

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ILLUSION OF REALITY

BY sHAURYA aRYA-kANOJIA

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    I consider myself a fairly courageous person. Not that I don’t have any fears, but I see these fears as opportunities. You know, a hurdle you’re meant to jump over and emerge on the other side a stronger person.

    But when a claustrophobic and nyctophobic like me finds himself stuck in an elevator, and the overhead light starts flickering, there is only so much courage you can muster. Your heart starts hammering, your breaths become shallower and rocky, and – this may sound exaggerated, but is every bit true – your mind starts… imagining.

    Imagination is a powerful tool, as many would affirm. Right now, though, I could live with my mind not going into overdrive.  The light overhead, which provided a dull yellow illumination to begin with, is flickering more rapidly. It’s going to die pretty soon. The sounds of the outside don’t reach me. A shuffle of someone’s feet, a catch of someone saying something… That would be the perfect respite. An assurance that I’m still part of the world outside the elevator doors that have me imprisoned, that I haven’t been transported into an alternate dimension where darkness is eternal.

    My science teacher in middle school, a woman who didn’t like her job and her pupils even less, once made a condescending remark about how “the fear of darkness is stupid.” Because, “scientifically, darkness is merely the absence of light.” We didn’t ask her what she meant, because the bell marking the end of the period was a minute from ringing, and we didn’t want her to stay any longer.

    But I find myself remembering her statement – "Darkness is merely the absence of light" ­– as I try to keep myself afloat in the sea of my phobia. My breaths are becoming shallower, my pulse quickening. I can hear my heartbeat, a relentless thud, thud, thud… And I wonder, if there is truly nothing to worry about darkness, as my teacher had casually remarked, why am I still afraid of it?

    From the deepest trenches of my consciousness, monsters appear. The vile, dreadful, obnoxious creatures that live only in your head, and hatch from their shells when the lights are switched off. They emerge slowly at first, as they learn to drag themselves and crawl. And, when they mature and turn into their disgusting selves, it’s difficult to put them out of the way. They cloud your ability to think, your judgement. Your thoughts turn sour, and you get frightened. Everything you read about in horror stories, as supernatural or perhaps ridiculous as they seem in the brightness of the daytime, begins to look real.

    The light overhead goes off completely. I want to believe I heard someone yelling outside the door, that there was a scraping of feet as people ran. But it could be my mind playing tricks, couldn’t it? I try to scream, but the voice doesn’t emerge. I give it another shot, and this time there’s a feeble sound. The third time is a charm, because, now, I can hear myself scream. I even hopelessly beat at the metal door, crying out to anyone who can hear me on the outside.

    Soon, my fists start hurting and my throat aching. I stop. The eerie silence of a few moments earlier (or maybe from another lifetime) encapsulates me once again. I put my ear to the door.

    Nothing.

    The monsters inside my head grow in size, their vileness like a visible force pressing upon me. I realise I’m panting. Has the oxygen been sucked out of the elevator? It’s getting tremendously painful to breathe, even more difficult to maintain my sanity. I can feel it slipping, rolling downhill; towards a bottom I can neither see nor want to know where it ends.

    Because I’m just too afraid.

    And, then, from somewhere in the shadows, two realisations crop up. Realisations that are, both, terrifying and oddly satisfying.

    The first realisation is that of a third fear I have perhaps always had but never thought to ponder on it: the fear of ending up alone. Of finding myself a lonesome, desolate man on my deathbed. That fear is worse than anything else, and getting out of it infinitely difficult. The despair stirs something deep within me, the power of the realisation too strong for me to confront. I think I even cry.

    The other comes along the heels of the doors finally starting to slide open. They don’t creak as they usually do, but slide open effortlessly. Maybe that should have impressed upon me that what I was seeing was an illusion, but my mind didn’t want to believe that truth. It showed me what I desired – of finally breaking free. Not only from the prison enclosing me, but also, on a more metaphorical level, from all my fears.

    As the doors open, I see a white marbled corridor on the other side. Around it is the open sky, a kind of captivating blue you don’t see in cities. I can hear birdsong, and a sweet aroma of jasmine fills the air. The corridor continues so far into the distance I can’t see where it finishes. Still, I know it ends in a happy place. Even though my brain questions this theory, I find my feet moving towards it. Maybe it’s all an illusion, or maybe it’s more than that.

    Of course, I tell myself, it is all in my head. But, in Dumbledore’s words when he addresses a doubtful Harry, “why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

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                                                       Shaurya Arya-Kanojia is the author of the novella, End of the Rope. He likes sports (cricket, mostly), eating out, and watching reruns of The Office and Everybody Loves Raymond.

His social media handles include @shauryaticks (Twitter) and @main.hoon.ek.sharara (Instagram), and more about him can be found at https://www.shauryaak.com/

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EXTRACT  FROM THE BOOK OF UNCOMMON PRAYER

(THE DAILY OFFICE)

By Bernard Pearson

 

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Have I died yet?

The morning burgles

Through the see saw window

While I lie, like it, half in light,

Half in shade.

Drawing myself trance- like

From the duvet.

My knees not even good

Enough to pray on.

The spring birds

Know better how

To praise thee

In the ecstasy of their

Search for love.

They do it  without a thought

And with no doubt,

Forgetting the winter

Just gone, when they

Died little ice relics beneath the trees.

And so I wash the world back

Into  my being, count

The worry beads rattle, rattle,  rattle,

Commence the business

Of another  day,   in this meadow,

This midden,  this quickening,

Unbidden visitation, for which each day

I give you thanks.

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                                                        BERNARD PEARSON: His work  appears in many publications, including; Aesthetica Magazine , The Edinburgh Review, Crossways, The Gentian, Nymphs The Poetry Village, Beneath The Fever, The Beach Hut Little stone In 2017 a selection of his poetry ‘In Free Fall’ was published by Leaf by Leaf  Press. In 2019  he won second prize in The Aurora Prize for Writing.

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VINE AND MESH

BY RUTHENIUM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ruthenium (she/they) is an artist and writer currently living in the state of uncertainty. They believe creativity is real-life magic, and are obsessed with texture, context, light, and the question “what if?...” Their art has been published in Rabble Review, Celestite Poetry, Vulnerary Magazine, and Warning Lines Literary, among other wonderful places. Their various presences, publications, and collections can be found at https://linktr.ee/Ruthenium

Twitter : @Ruthenium_Art     Instagram: @Ruthenium_Art

More Art From Ruthenium on Spare Parts Lit:

Chip Through To The Past

Break Into Another World

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I HAVE DAYS

BY RODD WHELPLEY

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Old as I am,

I should be over this.

 

Still, I have days

where I look for Jesus

deep in the eyes

of those around me.

 

Days where I feel

the phantom pressure

of the choirmaster’s hand 

on my young shoulder.

 

She finds me daydreaming

at the doe-eyed Christ

fixed in stained glass. He pauses

before a wooden entry.

 

She whispers, “He is knocking

on the door to your heart.”

 

I have seen pictures

of the human heart. Yes,

there is an aortic arch

and below it a chamber.

 

But the beating is within,

as if he is at home to sup

on valves beneath my atria,

as if he feasts on the arteries

of everyone.

 

As if we had offered –

Take this bread and eat.

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ALL THINGS EQUAL,

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                               gently let me go.

If it soothes you for a second to be wrong,

then imagine the world un-weighted

by a photon in my absence – or that now

the ocean waves crash harder, searching

for a lost lamb’s tear. 

                                   In a universe

of infinity lie the same amount of moments

behind this finished moment as there ever were

before. The tense is thereby always present.

Which says nothing

                                 of how I loved and love you.

And you love me – the gravity and rage, the frailty

of it. Our unrivaled instance, the same as any other

except, by grace, that it is ours.

                                                   Do you see our time

in the center of all time? Here’s again the doorway to it.

Please, gently, let me go.

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JAZZ BEATS IN THE BAÑ0

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piped through the sound system 

after breakfast coffee and mojitos.

Here in this boozed and sunny paradise

of all-inclusivity.

                             This engineered,

focus-grouped fantasy. Is this

what my father dreamed for me?

All that union overtime,

                                        with no boat

or classic car, or cabin by the river.

Just Christmas clubs and the college fund,

and, once, he said:

                                Get a job

where you sit down. Which, for him,

meant a shirt and tie and jacket –

a career fabricating the ideas

of torpedoes, not forty years

on the factory floor, measuring

their rotors.

                   The world has turned

so many years since then, hardly noticing

his absence. Somehow, the tools of war

get built, and Americans own the coastline

of the Yucatan,

                          for one week at a time,

sunning along manufactured beaches,

where natives practice English and deference.

And those Americans

                                    are me. The faces

of the servers are my father’s. I wonder

how they think about my complicated

happiness as I am soaping up my hands

and humming to Sade.

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Rodd Whelpley manages an electric efficiency program for 32 cities across Illinois and lives near Springfield. His poems have appeared in numerous journals. His chapbooks include Catch as Kitsch Can (2018), The Last Bridge is Home (2021) and Whoever Said Love (coming in 2022). His first full-length collection, Blood Moon, Backyard Mountain is forthcoming from Broadstone Books. Find him at www.RoddWhelpley.com or @RoddWhelpley on Twitter.

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AN AMERICAN MERMAID IN PARIS

bY jAMES C. hOLLAND

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When I walk through the streets, I look like everybody else. I mean, I don’t look like everyone else. I’m about one thousand times more attractive, even in Paris. But what I mean is, I don’t have the tail. The tail only appears when I’m in water. You’ve seen the movie “Splash”? It’s like that.

People make way as I sashay through the streets. It’s like Noah parting the Red Sea but instead of using God’s magic, I am using gorgeousness.

“Don’t be so arrogant,” says Flipperty Bob.

Flipperty Bob is my magical fish companion who has come with me from the depths of the ocean. We all sang a song before we left about what a fun adventure we were going to have. Now, he is hidden in my pocket. He doesn’t need water to survive because he is magic. If I let him, he would swoop about in the air as if it were water, but that would be suspicious, I think. No point hiding your tail if you have a magical fish swimming in the air around you.

“And don’t be stupid. It wasn’t Noah it was Moses,” says Flipperty Bob.

Where? I look around but all I can see are the most chic and elegant clothes in the world. I’m in a exquisite shop now. And it’s not called Moses.

“No, it was Moses who parted the Red Sea.”

I try on several dresses and buy them all. I am very rich. It’s all the mermaid money I brought with me. Of course, they don’t accept mermaid money in Paris. But what we use for money under the sea is pearls. I brought up a tonne of them and had them converted. I kept some as keepsakes. I let them roll around the bottom of the bath so they feel at home.

“It’s not your bath.”

It’s not my bath. It’s in an exclusive hotel. I have rented the entire floor. Just killing time until I meet a gorgeous prince, or Tom Hanks.

“Miss, open the door.”

Maybe that’s him now! I can’t go to the door like this though! I’m not decent! He’ll see my tail!

“Miss, you have to leave.”

The door bursts open. Two cops have knocked it down with a small metal battering ram. A gaunt hotelier standing behind them looks shocked, his hand in his pocket.

“You could have used my skeleton key,” he says.

My prince must be impatient to see me. That’s why he sent them.

“What do you think Flipperty Bob? Should we get out the bath? Or should we make the prince come to us?”

“Miss, you are trespassing. I am arresting you for breaking and entering, shoplifting and creating a public nuisance.”

“Well, Flipperty Bob, this seems like a rum way for a prince to behave; Sending such rude underlings.”

Flipptery Bob flies at them.

“Urgh! The smell! Miss, I’m arresting you for throwing a rotten fish at a police officer.”

A crowd has formed outside. I am carried through them. They part like the Red Sea.

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James C. Holland is based in the UK and recently concluded a series of alien invasion gardening columns for Bear Creek Gazette. He has also been published in Brighton: The Graphic Novel by QueenSpark books. He has performed at the Edinburgh Festival in "Choose Your Own Edventure," an interactive storytelling show and "Shoegazing," a stand-up show about shoes. He has long covid which is exhausting but has given him time to discover the joys of flash fiction.

Twitter:  @james_c_holland

Website: James C Holland 

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CHIP THROUGH TO THE PAST

BY RUTHENIUM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Ruthenium: https://linktr.ee/Ruthenium   Twitter : @Ruthenium_Art     Instagram: @Ruthenium_Art

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