Below is a video recording of Máire reading her flash fiction at the Launch Party of Story Cities – A City Guide for the Imagination which was held on Thursday 20th June, at 7 pm with readings in Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Stockwell Street London.
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Story Cities, edited by Rosamund Davies, Cherry Potts and Kam Rehal, is published by Arachne Press. It explores ways in which stories respond to, reflect and re-imagine the city.
New flash fictions (no more than 500 words) in multiple genres that address the city. A guide book to the fictional city, all cities, any city: its markets, squares, cafes, hotels, parks, stations and ports; the main streets, side streets, back alleys, dead ends and the crossroads. Never identified, the city has a voice of its own.
WALKING BACK TO THE FUTURE
​Máire Malone
The photographer clicks a snapshot of a daughter linking arms with her father, as they cross the three-arch bridge with its sandstone balustrades and ornate lampstands. Their cheeks bulge with barley sugar sweets as they make their way to catch a train to the sea, north of the city.
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They pass memorials to politicians and martyrs and a building pock marked with bullets. They hear echoes of a poet reading a proclamation of independence. The smell of gunfire lingers. The legacy of seven men was freedom.
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They crane their necks to see the famous clock and the column where a statue stands : a navy officer who was wounded in combat.
In the same year the statue is blown up, a garden in the shape of a sunken cruciform water-feature is created to remember the Vision.
The father will not see the high, stainless-steel, pin-like monument of light – but the daughter will.