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.
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.
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.
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.