Cafe Aphra: An Online Community for Writers

In this world we all have silver eyes hunched in an alley at night in a dark overcoat and a floppy hat bottle of cheap liquor next to me like a prayer candle that went out hours ago the beginning of a scene that has played itself out a thousand times before all we need to do is wait for the lights/ camera/action/enter stage left the guy with the blue shirt and the badge and his hand grabs my shoulder and my knife goes into his gut and I stand up and whisper in his ear “regards from my brother” and once I finish drawing the T on his body it’s only a short jaunt to the river to wash off and send the clothes on their way to the ocean

She left from the gathering around the grave, leaving behind the kindness that couldn't reach her. She ignored the concerned calls and drifted deeper among the heavy granite slabs. She had no direction beyond 'away'. She saw the stark red, harsh against the snow, before she saw the tiny corpse. A sparrow, plucked from the air by winter's call and shredded by a passing cat, perhaps. She looked, but didn’t register this other, lesser, death. Even so, she reached unsteadily down towards a fluffy, furled feather lying in the glistening snow. She touched it gently. It had so little substance that her skin could not believe there was anything there - but then her finger tips no longer knew how to notice touch. It was one of those unexpected changes that had come on her with age. The drying skin, turning to paper; the muffled hearing; the clouding eyes. They had laughed together at it. Carefully, clinging for support to a nearby stone, she knelt in the crisp moisture a...

Indeed, we're sad to say that  Cafe Aphra is closing its doors from the end of December 2018 , at least for a temporary period during Spring 2019 and possibly longer. This is so that the three of us who currently run the blog can have some time to concentrate on other life and writing projects that we have going on.  We will therefore not be accepting any more submissions from now on. We'd like to thank all our lovely contributors for sharing their wonderful work with us and for giving us and so many others so much reading pleasure over the years. It's been a fabulous experience! We hope that we've provided a safe and welcoming online environment for aspiring and established writers to air their work in public, sometimes for the first time. With all our thanks, yours as ever, Sara, Barbara and Charlotte - current baristas on duty ... and, of course, all the other Cafe Aphra baristas who have helped us keep this place open over the years! Chad, Yvonne, ...

As it settles The brilliant darkness Of your passing Masks each particle, Point sharp, end of a needle, Spliced in half, small. As if weightless Through time I hurtle, hearing Whispers, stammered breaths, That dreadful, collective Mournful slide into silence. As once removed, The whole world Comes at me through fog, Opaque forms shimmering, Fizzing, dissolving, retreating, As was often your way. And the dust Of that final touch, Marks the moment When all passed from dark to light, Caught on tips of fingers, lips, Crown, heart and proof of life. As if in six months, April Fool’s Day Trick of the mind, I can bring your Songs, stories, smiles Back from mere chalk and have them become Clay in my hands. by Paul Taylor-McCartney

Me and Joe were inseparable as boys. “You could be twins,” me Mum used to say smiling.   She’d pack us both brown bags filled with squashed sarnies and an apple each, before ushering us out for the day. Watch less, parent less, we’d explore for hours. In old quarries, up meadows and in the bombed out ruins.   Joe’s Mum never packed him a lunch. She struggled to feed the triplets let alone Joe, her eldest child. The triplets had been an “unwanted leaving present from the G. I’s,”   I’d heard Mum telling Mrs Jakes, the next door neighbour.   There was no holding Joe back. He climbed, ran, jumped the highest, fastest and furthest of us kids at St Edmunds. He’d have been head boy too or so said popular opinion, if it hadn’t been for his family ‘background.’   It was night-times when we had our greatest adventures. After midnight, while our families slept, we’d climb out of our bedroom windows and meet up by Beckett’s Pond. In summer we’d build a tree house ...

Outside the cornershop a dog had died.  The heat had accentuated the stench bleeding off the carcass. Some number of flies had made it their new water cooler. Discussing filth, presumably. Across the road, in between the impatient footsteps of city-ridden mental illness, I saw two pigeons. One slightly larger than the other, with a lighter hue of that bluish grey they possess. He looked well-fed; well, as much as a city pigeon could.  In Bournemouth, in the gardens of the house to some Victorian eccentric expatriates, styled with old stone, vines and exotic flowers to look like a narcissian stage, a certain pigeon had once paraded the lush koi pond, adorned by gentle fountain faucets and hydrated foliage. He was a royal-looking pigeon, their Prince on his travels, a young Siddhartha but with vanity and less commendable intentions.  The pigeon on the London road that day could have had this beauty; he was lucky to only have the few scars. Behind him was a smal...

The bulbs of the Empire, a proscenium preserved in aspic, flashed out the name of my first show. Some would say it was not ‘my’ show, that I was just the scriptwriter, but authors are tyrants and I knew it was all me, me. I walked round to stage door with a feeling that, although everyone down here on the city streets didn’t know I’d written the Empire’s newest musical, if they hadknown they’d have revered me very much, and this lent me the power of a dormant volcano. I entered stage door and – OH! – what a sight. At the desk sat a short hairy man who harrumphed and curtly asked me my name. He was a sprite. Standing near, three or four bored ushers who were clearly waiting for Cassandra Fleming-King or Walter Godolphin, to harass my beautiful actors with flattery. ‘Molly Mead,’ I said. The sprite scribbled it down. ‘You’re the writer, yes? You know you don’t need to come backstage, you can just take your seat for the…’ ‘I’d prefer to have a word with Cass and Walter first,’ I s...