The Reading: A Nightmare Noon: A letter arrives stating (but, please, no promises) I may be called on to read my work, then a putative date and place. 3pm siesta: Courtesy of Dream Air International all at once I’m there and ahead of schedule – Meaning, to be specific, at the bar nextdoor. Already wine flows freely. Still unsure when or whether my turn will come, I swill the stuff in obfuscating draughts which’d give even a Dylan Thomas pause... As soon as my speech begins to slur and it gets tricky keeping vertical I’m beckoned, noon’s possibility made firm: The audience have been waiting some time. They sit sober as judges; in their midst the smooth white hair of a major minor poet and editor who’s been rejecting my verse, off and on, for fifteen years or more. The scene shifting to dire slow motion: Stranded anywhere between um and er, I realise that, save some unfinished scraps, I’ve left all my manuscripts back home... Would people mind waiting till my partner – a plane-fare or so away – fetches them? The request ends up a last-ditch splutter. Meanwhile, in the mail, another letter: Same editor claiming my last submission is plagiarised from something of his own which, naturally, I have never read... At this point I wake up, stage turns bed; just in case dreams or nightmares come true, I switch on the light, fumble for a biro, start, between silences, to set this down... Martin Bennett | Mudlark No. 12 Contents | Song of the Flags