Spain

I was eighteen and the band I sang in played Barcelona. The promoter of the show pointed to a street and told us that, if we walked down it, best-case scenario we were robbed and worst-case scenario we were killed.

The promoter told us to smoke our weed inside because, if we were caught outside, the police would cut off our hands.

At the end of a long dirt road in the middle of rural Spain, there was an abandoned factory. The promoter heaved open the old iron door.

We slept on the hard concrete floor in our sleeping bags.

Tourist

I’m in London, on Westminster Bridge.

This is where I fantasised about being taken like a tourist twenty years ago, before being taken to the drag night at the bar where you worked. I only knew about these things from photos of you I saw online.

You knew I didn’t belong here before I even knew who I was.

You’re gone now.

Tent by SALEM plays over and over in my head, and I remember that Westminster inspired John Martin to paint hell, so I stop crying, put my Wayfarers back on, and begin walking back to the train station.

❊

Quitter

When the bands I sang in were inactive, I recorded covers. The throat is a muscle that, if not used enough, hurts when you have to sing again. I decided to record a version of Soul-net by DIIV.

When I began to sing the first line, I started to cry. My crying worsened with each line. I croaked the words, tears running down my face. I grabbed the microphone from the stand and smashed it into my desk again and again, breaking my keyboard.

As the instrumental song droned in the background, I decided that I would never sing again.  





Oliver Land’s work has appeared in Hobart Pulp, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Expat Press, Apocalypse Confidential, Spectra Poets, and Burial Magazine. He is the author of the novella-in-flash Dissolve and the poetry collection White Light Fades. He serves as the editor of Plague Circus Press.

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