Desmond Dekker, his wife Margaret and niece Charlotte liked to get their tops off and crispen their skins down Lowestoft way. Big ships and little ships vied for attention on the horizon but Desmond liked to watch Margaret’s torpedo breasts pointing towards his niece’s surfboard back. Her young skin was firm yet supple and Desmond thought if he was a killer whale he might mistake his niece for a seal and eat her.
A seagull hovered above and Desmond Dekker imagined himself a miniature Israelite carried away to the Holy Land on the back of silken wings.
‘What you looking at?’ Margaret asked Desmond.
‘Your breasts, my darling,’ replied Desmond.
‘Good reply but what are you thinking about?’
‘Das Boot,’ replied Desmond, and the sun tipped a little on its axis and the sky went all of a sudden very dark.
About Alan McCormick Writing
Alan McCormick lives with his family in Wicklow. He’s a Trustee and former writer in residence for InterAct Stroke Support, a charity employing actors to read fiction and poetry to stroke patients.
His writing has won prizes and been widely performed and published, including recently in The Stinging Fly, Banshee, The Lonely Crowd, Southword, Sonder and Exacting Clam magazines, and previously in Salt’s Best British Short Stories, A Wild and Precious Life – A Recovery Anthology, Modern Nature Anthology – Responses to Derek Jarman’s Modern Nature, The Poetry Bus, The Sunday Express Magazine, The Bridport and Fish Prize Anthologies, Popshot, Litro and Confingo; and online at Epoque Press, Words for the Wild, 3:AM Magazine, Culture Matters, Dead Drunk Dublin, Mono, Fictive Dream, The Quietus and Found Polaroids.
His story ‘Firestarter’ came second in the 2022 Francis MacManus RTE Short Story Competition and ‘Boys on Film’ came second in The 2023 Plaza Prizes Sudden Fiction competition.
DOGSBODIES and SCUMSTERS , his collection of short stories with flash shorts inspired by Jonny Voss’s pictures, was published by Roast Books and long-listed for the Edge Hill Prize.
Alan and Jonny also collaborate on illustrated shorts known as Scumsters – see more at Deaddrunkdublin.com and Scumsters.blogspot
Alan McCormick Writing 