{"id":3900,"date":"2020-09-23T13:14:37","date_gmt":"2020-09-23T02:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=3900"},"modified":"2020-09-16T13:15:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T02:45:03","slug":"sneak-peek-red-sea-emma-ashmere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2020\/09\/sneak-peek-red-sea-emma-ashmere\/","title":{"rendered":"SNEAK PEEK: ‘Red Sea’ by Emma Ashmere"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Sneak<\/a><\/h1>\n

Emma Ashmere’s recently released collection of short stories,\u00a0Dreams They Forgot<\/em><\/a>, is an exploration of illusion, deception, and quiet acts of rebellion.<\/h1>\n

Undercut with longing and unbelonging, absurdity and tragedy, thwarted plans and fortuitous serendipity, each story offers glimpses into the dreams, limitations, gains and losses of fragmented families, loners and lovers, survivors and misfits, as they piece together a place for themselves in the imperfect mosaic of the natural and unnatural world.<\/p>\n

Read on for the short story ‘Red Sea’, an extract from\u00a0Dreams They Forgot<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0Red Sea<\/h1>\n

People say they\u2019ve seen the dead, but do they mean the hair, teeth and bones tucked into the earth? Or do they mean the curl of ash and petals tossed out to the sea?<\/p>\n

After the funeral, we walk out along Semaphore pier. Salt and wind whips at our eyes. \"Dreams<\/a>Waves thunder up through the soles of our shoes. My tartan skirt spirals up. I stop to pat it down but am pulled along by my father, who is telling me not to worry, that he loves the land and won\u2019t be going back out to sea.<\/p>\n

At the end of the pier, a man in a woollen hat is trying to lower a sheet of plastic over something, but the plastic keeps flapping and fighting the wind. As we come closer, I see the body of a stingray, rubbery and black. My father shouts to the man over the rattle of plastic and the stillness of death.<\/p>\n

We walk back to our house behind the yellow park. There isn\u2019t much garden in our garden, only a few bent-back trees, red gerberas and a spiny grey-green cactus clubbing the fence. One year my mother planted sweet peas each side of the front door but they died, brown and salt-tangled.<\/p>\n

We sit in the glassed-in front porch looking out at the sea as clouds poach in fading pinks and reds. Later, when the fishermen come in, my father stands beneath the quavering spires of the Norfolk Island pines or sits in the open door of somebody\u2019s van drinking beer.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/h1>\n

\"Red<\/a>\u2018Remember we\u2019re not worthy to gather up the crumbs beneath thy table,\u2019 says my mother, kneeling in her apron on the kitchen floor. She\u2019s been sweeping the same patch for at least an hour, making several piles of sand, crumbs, rubber bands and sticks. I ask her why. Why doesn\u2019t she make one big pile? She coughs and tells me it\u2019s easier to sweep the floor from several different angles. You don\u2019t feel so overwhelmed. I ask her how big our piles would be if we swept up every broken shell and frill of dust from every different country all around the world. Would our piles fill up the kitchen and bury the table? Would they pour out of the windows and spill back down to the sea? Would they stand as high as the white salt mountains I\u2019ve seen glistening and ghostly beside the dry pink lake? My mother keeps kneeling and coughing, dabbing the brush at the mess of our lives.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/h1>\n

I watch from my bedroom window as my father walks out to drink with the fishermen again. Later I hear him arguing.<\/p>\n

At breakfast, he reads the tide times in the newspaper. I\u00a0can\u2019t see his face so I study the red spots, cuts and sores on his hands. He puts down the paper and looks out the front door past the gate, past the patch of yellow grass and the empty fishermen\u2019s vans. Perhaps he\u2019s dreaming he\u2019s out on a trawler surrounded by the stink of diesel and screaming gulls, remembering how it felt to stay out there for weeks, rolling towards the edge of the world, or waking in the dark pinned to the deck by the pressure of space.<\/p>\n

\n

That night, he falls in through the lounge-room window and lies on the floor. A ruddy sunset fills the room. He sits up on one elbow and tells me how to measure the sun from the horizon with the width of a finger.<\/h1>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Each finger,\u2019 he says, \u2018means half an hour. Or fifteen minutes. Or is it twenty?\u2019 He laughs and lies back down.<\/p>\n

We sit on the beach. My sandcastle is being eaten by an edgy little tide. My father is instructing me to watch the horizon for the exact moment the sun goes down. If I\u2019m observant enough, I\u2019ll see the meteorological phenomenon called the Green Flag. I squint in the direction of the setting sun.<\/p>\n

\u2018Watch for a splash, the colour of petrol,\u2019 he says, waving his beer.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re lying on the scratch of front lawn. He\u2019s telling me how to draw an imaginary line from the head to the foot of the Southern Cross, using his cigarette as a guide.<\/p>\n

\u2018Times it by four,\u2019 he says. \u2018Then you\u2019ll get the south celestial pole.\u2019<\/p>\n

It\u2019s my mother\u2019s birthday. I stare at the stars trying to remember the exact colour of her eyes.<\/p>\n

All night I hear him roaring and drinking in somebody\u2019s van. It\u2019s still dark when I roll out of bed and lie on the floor, close my eyes and try to remember the exact shape and colour of my mother\u2019s hair. I hear my father lurching down the hall in the milky morning light. The walls move and breathe in time with my heart.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/h1>\n

\u2018The wilderness had shut them in,\u2019 says my mother. \u2018But the Red Sea parted just in time.\u2019 She stops for a moment to bend and cough. I watch her rounded back, the hand flung across her mouth. When she\u2019s finished coughing, she wipes her hand down her dress.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/h1>\n

I walk down to the pier. The man in the woollen hat is lining up his fishing rods and setting out his buckets. He fixes his bait to the end of a line, throws it out in one long, fine, silvery, arc. Behind him, one part sea, two parts sky.<\/p>\n

I throw three red gerberas into the wash.<\/p>\n

Remember, says my mother, the world is only as big as your head.<\/p>\n

\u2014<\/h1>\n

Emma Ashmere<\/strong>\u00a0was born in Adelaide, South Australia. Her short stories have been widely published including in the\u00a0Age<\/em>,\u00a0Griffith Review<\/em>,\u00a0Overland<\/em>,\u00a0Review of Australian Fiction<\/em>,\u00a0Sleepers Almanac<\/em>,\u00a0Etchings<\/em>,\u00a0Spineless Wonders<\/em>,\u00a0#8WordStory<\/em>,\u00a0NGVmagazine<\/em>, and the Commonwealth Writers literary magazine,\u00a0adda<\/em>. The short stories in her collection\u00a0Dreams They Forgot<\/em>\u00a0have been variously shortlisted for the 2019 Commonwealth Writers Short Story Award, 2019 Newcastle Short Story Award, 2018 Overland NUW Fair Australia Prize, and the 2001 Age Short Story Competition. Her critically acclaimed debut novel,\u00a0The Floating Garden<\/em>, was shortlisted for the Most Underrated Book Award 2016.<\/p>\n

Want to find out more about Emma and the way she writes? Check out her guest piece for Theresa Smith Writes here<\/a>.<\/h1>\n

Support Wakefield Press by buying our beautiful books!\u00a0\u00a0Visit our\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0or contact us on 08 8352 4455 for more information, or to purchase a book (or three!).\u00a0<\/strong>We can post your purchase to your doorstep!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emma Ashmere’s recently released collection of short stories,\u00a0Dreams They Forgot, is an exploration of illusion, deception, and quiet acts of rebellion. Undercut with longing and unbelonging, absurdity and tragedy, thwarted plans and fortuitous serendipity, each story offers glimpses into the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-for-fun"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-10U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3923,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3900\/revisions\/3923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}