Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
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Nick Pearce
breakfast at mucko’s
I remember Ray’s face, that summer
morning on the island, all of us
seedy I think from new year’s the
night before, everyone on auto groove
and pale cloud over the mainland
miles away, ages ago now, the oily
diner hidden away in the shadows
behind him as he strolled a man
complete, belly first, skinny smile
fat like the sun, satisfied, replete
down the path towards the road as
we drove slowly past, pulled down
windows, stopped and called out where
you been? and he replies chin shining
breakfast at mucko’s, with a face full
of a thousand stories and all the time
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© Copyright remains with the individual author
Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
______________________________________________________________________________
in the world to tell them… and if you were
to see him outside mucko’s today, one of
the stories he might just tell you could be
about me, and the dip in the sea I took, with
my kids, later that new year and told back
to him on our deck at surfdale one warm
evening, after he’d said something to
me, something chilling, something very
unlike breakfast at mucko’s, that
story… that particular day, a dull hot after
noon I and my three, none older than nine,
had gone down to the beach, pulled
out the inflatable and paddled out into
the deep, they sat inside as I swam
behind, tapping them along to the mussel
rocks right out in the bay, smooth
on the water, breezing, me dreaming
in the cool of what feast we might find and
then, in liquid slow motion, my mind turned
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© Copyright remains with the individual author
Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
______________________________________________________________________________
to scenes from Jaws and visions of sharks
in the shadows beneath me, finding
me, unfleshing me in front of the kids in
a single moment of horror, gore on
the water, white meat bled out and
three stunned, ruined young souls a
drift in that red-black plastic balloon
of a boat waiting for someone to
see them, bring them in, too shocked
even to cry… smart move I think, that kind of
mind-game, laughing to myself, at myself, as I reach
the rocks and get out, find nothing to excite me
in the end, nothing to bring back for evening
supper and feeling tired from the swim, wind
getting up, finally coax the boat back
to shore as clouds begin to darken the
sky and the water around us… and so it
was later with night coming on, me and
Ray by the bar-be-que, him chewing on
one of my special rare steaks, crimson
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© Copyright remains with the individual author
Mayhem - Issue One - March 2014
ISSN 2382-0322
______________________________________________________________________________
on his teeth, and me with the cool skinned
memory of that swim in my mind he says, between
mouthfuls… see a couple of guys caught a
shark this afternoon, next bay round… yeah
a big one… twelve foot mako a‘parently.
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© Copyright remains with the individual author