-
Sticky Post: Where Do I Start Reading?
I’ve just found your work and there’s a lot of it, where do I start? Welcome to my website! First off, my name is Johannes (Yo-Han-Ehz) T. Evans. I’m a gay, disabled, transgender man originally from Chepstow in the South of Wales, and I now live in Bradford in West Yorkshire, though for several years before now I lived in Galway, in the west of the Irish Republic. I’ve been writing for years, and you might actually already be familiar with my work – I’ve been on Tumblr under various URLs (before using my own name, JohannesTEvans, I was at…
-
Close Your Mouth & To The Blind Man
Two poems. Close Your Mouth (for G.) Close your mouth.Your teeth are showing, sharp as moonlight,And you will cut yourself on them. Close your mouth.Once again, the bar is closing,The lights turning off one by one,The coins rattling in their tray as Holly tocks them up.Your lips are parted as you finish up your drink and droplets,clinging to our lip like so much nectar catch the light beforeyour tongue draws them in. Close your mouth. Do you ever stop talking?Word after word drips from your mouth:You talk of mead halls and old songs,Traffics and tax fraud,Polished swords and nursery rhymes.Are you so…
-
The Collection
100-word fiction prompt: a collection. Photo by Kyle William on Pexel. Edmund Horvasse’s office was beautifully appointed, and ordinarily, under the fine evening sun streaming through the window, Velma might have appreciated the antiques that furnished his office, but not today. She stared instead at the glass case mounted on the wall over his desk. The demons were mounted like insects, golden pins through the centres of their chests, through the corners of their wings to keep them spread. Not one of them was larger than her palm, and their eyes, black and chitinous, stared lifelessly outward. They looked surprised, it…
-
Letters From Ganymede: Friday 14th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Previous Chapter Directory of Chapters Next Chapter Friday 14th July, 1876 Dear Mr Smith, What a house this is. I feel you shall become swiftly bored of me indeed if every letter I send you is one replete with my thanks, but I must, alas, thank you once more: I have spent this week exploring Mnemosyne’s Rest over and over, and still I feel I scarcely know her, for she seems to go on very nearly forever. You know, today,…
-
Letters from Ganymede: Tuesday 11th July, 1876
Gothic horror. Serial. Ganymede Cavendish, a recent graduate from the Royal Academy of Arts, catches the eye of an anonymous benefactor. Mr Smith will offer Mr Cavendish food and board, all the artistic supplies he might require, and space with which to work: they shall never meet, and Mr Cavendish will never know Mr Smith’s true name. The only recompense he desires is that Mr Cavendish create beautiful art, and that he write his sponsor a letter each week, keeping his benefactor apprised of his progress. Having always been lonely, but now feeling alone, Ganymede begins a slow descent into…
-
The Ballad of Lacie O’Malley
On the subject of spiders and sexual pleasure. © Johannes Evans 2019 This poem is very silly, but just a warning for sexual content and arachnophobia. Originally written 2017. Here I’ll tell you the tale of a woman named Lacie, Though now I shall warn you: the tale will be racy, Abandon hope, all ye who enter here, And who enter young Lacie With nothing to fear. In her youth she was healthy, broad-shouldered and tall, She played chess in the evenings, and the mornings, football, And then in her teens she added some more, Did her hobbies and homework, and even some chores. As a woman, my God,…
-
The Door
They forgot about the door, somehow. Photo by Enzo B, taken 2019. Source. Originally posted in a Tweet thread. They forgot about the door, somehow. When they moved into the house, it had been fascinating: a full-sized door between Dad’s room and Kelly’s, a door that would not open. For weeks, the girls rifled in the backs of drawers, peered under loose floorboards, dug in the yard. They searched high and low for wherever one might find a key in an old house, and they even found one, but it was for the old iron padlock in the shed, that wasn’t even…
-
The Coffin At Sea
A vessel picks up a coffin afloat at sea. Image credit to Jim Beaudoin 2008. Source. Originally posted in a Tweet thread. A vessel picks up a coffin afloat at sea. It’s heavy, and the captain orders that they open it to see if there are any identifying features, so they know to whom they should return it — no nails hold it shut, and it opens easily. The bed is dry, but empty. Unnerved but in many ways relieved, the sailors toss it back. That night, the alarm is raised when it appears on deck again, silently, with no trace of who had…
-
Short Story: Winter’s Secret
© Johannes Evans 2019 The tree boughs were covered over with snow, the blanket of it thick and heavy on the ground. Frost had made all the statues even prettier, and the frozen pond left the house’s children laughing as they slid across it. She was dusting in one of the attic rooms, doing her duty, but for a few moments she allowed herself to stand at the window and look. The snow was thick indeed — the poor children had to stagger in it to get to the door, but they didn’t mind. How they laughed, falling over one another! The rabbits…
-
Walking Home
© Johannes Evans 2019 She’d never thought anything could be more romantic than their dates together. On Valentine’s, they tended to go all out, tended to buy champagne and chocolate and flowers and such for each other. They were a sentimental couple: each of them bought gifts and flowers for the other regularly. It made for a cluttered household, but certainly a happy one. As the years had gone by, she found that it wasn’t the date that took precedence. Nor the getting ready. or the going to bed afterwards. No, the most romantic thing was after the date, when they…
-
The Clockmaker
© Johannes Evans 2019 The grind and creak of mismatched gears was palpable on the air. It wasn’t loud, not by any stretch of the word, and yet he heard it very clearly, felt it even. He could almost feel that unpleasant sound, as though it were such an awful utterance that it should reverberate through him, chilling his bones. He checked, first, his own pocketwatch. She was silver — he’d made her himself some night long ago. If there was some error in her clockwork, he’d quickly be able to replace any errant or loose pieces before the mechanisms were irreparably damaged.…
-
The Clearing
© Johannes Evans 2019 The brook babbled quietly, the water flowing with an almost musical tinkle of sound. It complimented the gentle rustle of leaves above, as well as the pretty song of the closest birds. It fed into a large pond, clear and clean. At its side there was little plant life, though on the small island in the centre — barely two metres in diameter — flowers bloomed in the ground and berry bushes were thick and leafy. The fruit there grew ripe, rich in colour, glossy where the light shone through: no bird dared touch them. There was colour on that island,…
-
Stormy Seas
Only when it was stormy would she appear. On bright days with clear skies, she was nowhere to be found nor seen, even when wind whipped over the ocean surface, ’til it was a roiling mess of white. But when the clouds grew dark and the sky went grey, she appeared as if she’d risen from the water. No man alive or dead had ever seen crew upon her decks, or at least, no crew of human breeding. Any ghosts had been grey and ghostly, with no appearance of living flesh. They were never seen in real action: they disappeared…
-
Transgender Diaries: Hormone Therapy Day #28
Documented my changes and progress having been on testosterone as a transgender man for 28 days today. Warnings in this for discussion of (positively discussed) weight gain, chest-centred dysphoria, and then some mentions of sex drive and bottom growth. A month ago, I wrote an article on Day #1 of my testosterone journey, where I detailed the difficulty in getting hold of the testosterone I was prescribed, and how beyond the moon I was to finally be on it. A disclaimer — your own responses to testosterone will pretty much always be decided by your own genetics and stuff like that, and…
-
The Lighthouse
Johannes Evans © 2019 Routine was the most important thing. He’d maintained the lighthouse for years upon years now, and had grown comfortable in his habits. It made things easier, simpler. The lighthouse was his life. Mornings were simple. Before breakfast he would check the lighthouse, turn off the bulb as the morning sun grew brighter. From there it was simple bit of cleaning up, dusting the room and tidying. They had a fancy set up in the engines below, a diesel set that powered the whole tower and had to be fed new oil everyday. Breakfast was a simple affair.…
-
The Shepherd
© Johannes Evans 2019 “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight.” It is late. It seems it has been late for a very long time — but then, is time stretched when one is lost? Are not all people lost, at one time or another? And when one is lost, does time pass slower, or has the warm summer sun truly been just below the horizon for hours upon hours, bathing the sky in its rosy hue? No. Not rosy. To be rosy is a pleasant thing, charming, calming — la vie en rose is to see all things as lovely. This dusk, this strange parody…
-
Transgender Diaries: Testosterone Day #1
I was going to start this article as more of just a vague tweet thread, but then I was like… No, no, I think it would be better if I kind of went into it in more of a blog/article format, because I have a lot of feelings about how my physical transition is going to be going, and I just want to sort of get my feelings on paper. I’ve been out as a transgender dude for about seven or eight years, since I was approximately fifteen, and even before then I was very much a boyish child, had…
-
A Beginner’s Approach to Natural History
A bee collecting pollen from an osteospermum. Makrygialos, Crete. © Johannes Evans 2019 One of the exciting things about becoming an amateur naturalist — a student of natural history, and a keen observer of animal and plant life around oneself — is that the world suddenly seems to become much larger. When you go for a walk, not knowing their names, all you see is birds. Sure, you recognise your standard pigeons and crows, but that’s about it. They might be different sizes and loiter in different places, they might have different feathers, but that’s all they are: birds. But once you learn their names?…
-
The Photographer
© Johannes Evans 2019 He had seen much, in his time. He had seen a million sunsets, a hundred thousand ancient oaks, pretty women uncountible, and so much more. And, of course, he had captured each on film. He liked boats. He always had: he loved the slight rock of one in the water, loved the glint of the sea, and the scent of the ocean. When he felt homesick — and those times were truly rare — it was that scent he longed for most of all. The smell of salt and sea hanging in the air. He loved the moon. He waited for…
-
The Grand Prize
A long-time thief steals his most ambitious trophy yet. Photo by Анна Рыжкова on Pexel. As the sun began to set, Tor dressed for the night’s work. Over the black fabric of his blouse, which was laced to the collar, the strings pulled tight and folded against his neck to keep them from catching on anything, he pulled his harness on, feeling the weight of the enchantment carved into each fortified leather panel settle on his shoulders. The leather was tightly fitted against the curve of each of his shoulders, fastened with a loop just above his elbow on each side. They…
-
The Tunnel
Written 29/09/2017. Photo credit Lee McGrath. In the Tintern valley,cut into the very side of thoserolling hills,there is a dark hole.Neatly bordered on its rounded edgeswith weathered grey bricks,the arch beckons,as if begging one to walk within. I stand on the half-rememberedghost of a railway track,my feet upon its broad plank,and I stare.The sun beams greyly down,the birds sing, the leaves dance;Behind me, across the river, is the old church,boarded up like an abandoned house. A breeze whistles,echoing down like a distant moan,or the memory of a train whistle. If I walked under the arch,took steps into the dark,the sounds ringing, the darkness…
-
Garlic
Written 28/09/2017. Go to the woods in late spring.Follow your noseand stand admist that great, green carpet.Take into your lungsand nose and mouththat cloud of cleansing comfort. Feel the garlic hazeso strong it might well sting your eyesand smilebecause it means you are alive. (Pick a half a dozen leaves.Take them home.Eat what is offered you.)
-
The Boat
Written 28/09/2017. If you walk past the bandstand,with its too-white paintand curling iron detail,an island on a manicured lawn,you might take the riverside path. Past the old inn,the pubs, the tapas bar,and the overfull car parkin miniature. It drops down to the very edgeof the water,lapping at the path’s sideat high tideand leaving the trodden dirtdamp, as mud. The traffic bridge towers over youas the clifftop mansions look down, and there is a great corpse. I never learned her name. She stands tall in filtered light,red and rusted,beached beneath the passing carslike some unfortunate fish,or better,a whale. A thousand times I’ve…
-
My Grandfather’s Greenhouse
Written 27/09/2017.For Terry C.R. Evans, 1937–2007. It is at times like theseI am reminded of my grandfather’s greenhouse. Stepping over the thresholdand feeling the warmth,Feeling the sun filter intothat cramped, glass room — if there was sun, that is.And if there was light(There almost never was.)It came through the remnants of vinestill atop the roof, The lingering evidence ofthe old man’s try at grapes.(We called it “growing raisins”.) And the smell!What a smell it was: The mulchy, heavy scentof heated compost,The ozone smell-taste of the heat iself,and supporting the rest,The florid, green powerof the leaves themselves,All growing together. Tomatoes and cucumbers grew up high,Clinging to…