Tag Archives: Steven Lemprière

STEVEN LEMPRIÈRE: Rough and Tumble

Artistic, Submissions, Top Stories, , , ,

Wexford summers. Cousins. Some removed, others should be.

A bruising stick-and-ball game settles scores.

Red Lemonade, 99s, ice-cream wafers, crisps and slap-up feeds.

Ravenous teams jostle, devouring gritty ham or salmon paste sandwiches. Each liberally seasoned with sharp, salty silica.

At day’s end, sunburnt cousins dream, war-painted with Calamine lotion.

Steven is still picking sand granules from between his teeth years after the long hot summers of childhood holidays spent visiting family in Ireland.

STEVEN LEMPRIÈRE: Léon the Lion

Submissions, Touching, , ,

Léon. My grandfather. King of the Jungle.

Pure fantasy, but his name, when expressed in his accented French drawl, seeded a child’s imagination; a belief further emboldened by me being his little tiger.

Now, stooped over a coffin, caressing his manicured mane, what wouldn’t I give for one last roar?

Inspired by his grandfather, Steven stalks vowels and consonants, rustles them into words, and when rounded up, takes pride in his lines.

STEVEN LEMPRIÈRE: Palindrome

Amusing, Submissions, Touching, , ,

Like a moth drawn towards a flame, I furtively skirt two expressions of perfection. The first, a beguiling creature; the second, a word.

Captivated at the zenith of beauty, by someone who possess perfect symmetry, both in their physical form as well as from a nomenclatural perspective.

Her name?

Hannah.

A short-listed writer at the Cúirt International Literary Festival in Ireland, and with stories published by Fifty Word Stories and Flash Fiction Magazine, Steven often reflects on symmetry, especially in the mornings when shaving.

STEVEN LEMPRIÈRE: Cometh the Hour

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

A house now unencumbered by timepieces, but still, their chimes remain, haunting its hollow margins. My father, the timekeeper, has departed for somewhere where the past, present and future are as one.

Choices are now mine, so with mornings free from alarm, I roll over and go back to sleep.

Steven Lemprière, having once been punched by a time clock, would not be horology’s greatest fan and feels too many of his waking hours are spent in the fruitless pursuit of trying to find the time. Having gone cuckoo, he has decided to clock off and focus on a blank sheet of A4 where time is at his beck and call.

STEVEN LEMPRIÈRE: The Dog Whisperer

Amusing, Submissions, , ,

My dog is deaf, and I whisper when I want to communicate with him. I find lowering the timbre of my voice accentuates the movement of my mouth. My dog is smart; he can lip read.

My cat, on the other hand, is blind. He is a work in progress.

In real life, Steven’s dog feigns deafness, and his cat is merely short-sighted, but both are willing to play along in aid of dramatic effect.