Christopher Hall splits his time between Powys and Wolverhampton. Writing along the tracks. We first caught him in the basement of the Wolverhampton Lit Fest where many greats get their start. Chris is a product of Wolverhampton University's acclaimed Creative Writing program. He describes this Sunday Morning Poem, Junk Drawer, as more a stream of ephemera, more ekphrastic of sorts, than a stream of consciousness. He mostly writes dungeons and dragons adventures, and dark fantasy short stories. He sometimes accidentally writes poetry too. Chris lives with the best humans ever, and a fairly decent cat. "Don't worry that you didn't do it sooner," He says, "Do it now."
JUNK DRAWER
A pen lid; no matching pen.
A packet of elastic bands.
A box of staples.
A pencil.
Fragments of seashells.
A cork; stained red at the base.
A triple A battery; alive or dead? Unknown.
A pack of pencils.
A charging wire for a Nokia 3310.
A pack of fluoxetine; only partially used.
Two weeks off work following suicidal ideation caused by fluoxetine.
One large packet of irony that an antidepressant can make you suicidal.
A spring; missing for 30 years from a game of Mouse Trap. Lost on Christmas day.
A group of 5 pencils, bound in an elastic band.
A zip lock bag with six screws inside.
Rawl plugs.
Another packet of pencils (unopened).
An admission to my wife that I might have a “pencil problem”.
A 13-amp fuse, blown.
A conversation with my mum about attending college.
A refusal because I “…would flunk it, like everything else”.
One outburst at this refusal.
A Casio fx-82MS calculator from the year 2000, full working order.
One frontal cortex, full working order. Has never worked properly.
Matches
A lightbulb.
Two pebbles.
More Rawl plugs.
A roll of Sellotape.
One of several drawing pins.
A trip to the doctors for a tetanus jab, because I stepped on a pin and my mum can’t remember if I had mine or not.
A roll of black and gold ribbon.
A pair of scissors.
Another pair of scissors.
Half a pack of party poppers.
38 years of living with a brain you think is working, convinced that there was just something wrong with you.
A notebook with three pages written and doodled on.
A syringe for dispensing Calpol.
A pack of tealights.
A Chinese takeaway menu for a town I haven’t lived in for five years.
A cardboard envelope containing a sonagram image of my son.
A flair-up of my fear of death, realising that I have about 40 years left, and it doesn’t seem to be long enough to spend with my kids.
A token from a boardgame; there’s always one.
A complete inability to stick to the lifestyle changes required to extend my life and improve my fitness.
A lifetime’s worth of guilt at the realisation of this.
Another pair of scissors.
A University acceptance letter.
One unfulfilled potential.
1001 half-written story ideas.
A pack of paperclips.
© 2024 Christopher Hall
Essentials
Main image Powys from a Window, and, Cat at Home by Kayleigh Hall
Find Christopher Hall on Instagram here
The previous Sunday Morning Poem is here→
