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Jonathan Gibbs

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or the Painted Grape (Galley Beggar Press).



Articles Available Online


Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Sight’

Book Review

February 2018

Jonathan Gibbs

Book Review

February 2018

Jessie Greengrass’s debut story collection caught my eye with its delightfully extravagant title, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to...

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May 2016

Cinema on the Page

Jonathan Gibbs

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May 2016

Film is a bully. It wants to make its viewers feel, and it has the tools to do so....

WHISKY WITH MOTHER as the electric blue fades into the small hours and now, a long way from home, my hands are covered in excrement I didn’t know my own smell, the layer of smell that forms on the body as the hours without water go by My tongue gets distracted by eating grass Sucking on an animal’s hard udders, sucking on the fur, the teeth all dolled up, or imagining the death of your parents It’s all the same From the moment he entered my head, this saltwater hell Zealous hammering on my veins The trouble with my brain is I can’t hold it back, it rolls on and on through the spiky undergrowth like a bulldozer Where am I I don’t recognise these big houses I’ve never rounded this bend in the road Degenerate desire Damaging desire Demented desire I don’t know how to get back My mother will be blind drunk, sprawled on the sloping grass, her feet carved up by the blades The clouds are tree trunks at this time of night My hangover’s fierce and I collapse any old how to masturbate, my hair electrified, my skin hot, my eyelids stiff My hand works away then falls still as an insect, so that nothing is enough Me and him in a convertible Me and him on a muddy road Bodies shouldn’t have breasts after a certain age; when my breasts turn to thick heavy flesh I’ll have them removed Women should stop opening their sex, too I look for a word to replace the word I look for a word that shows my devotion The word that marks the spot, the distance, the exact centre of my delirium We should be like tiny snakes till the end, and be buried that way, in long holes like gutters I get up feeling anxious, my head thick with blood I walk round the house and open the windows The wind sweeps over the insect corpses trapped in the mosquito net He keeps jars back there full of rusty water and all kinds

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or...

The Story I'm Thinking Of

fiction

April 2013

Jonathan Gibbs

fiction

April 2013

There were seven of us sat around the table. Seven grown adults, sat around the table. It was late. We had eaten, and we had...

READ NEXT

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November 2014

The Last Redoubt

Scott Esposito

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November 2014

As they say of politics, I have found essay-writing to be the art of the possible. Certain work can...

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January 2012

The Common Sense Cosmos

Ned Beauman

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January 2012

Worthwhile philosophy is like building matchstick galleons. When Lewis says that all possible worlds are just as real as...

Art

May 2015

(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov

E-E

Art

May 2015

Madder than the World is a series by Russian artist (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, who came to prominence as a founding member of the...

 

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