Joel Biroco reading from World of Dust
The recordings are also embedded at the appropriate places in the web-book. The page numbers given link to the web-book but refer to the PDF. The MP3s to download are higher quality than those used for streaming and tagged for use in your own player. (There are also a few readings from Demonic in Thought.)
The stormporch roof
[pp 1–3] When I went to London to go to university I took myself away from my first eighteen years in Wolverhampton like a small mammal gnawing its leg off in a steel trap … [Download MP3]
Demolition
[pp 3–8] There was a time when I sat on the edge of my bed and thought of the future, what it would bring, how my drive in the present would unfold into a fulfilment of desires … [Download MP3]
Clodhopper
[pp 8–12] I spent a lot of time as a boy standing at the top of the stairs listening to dad slagging me off to mum in the living room. Sometimes I would creep down … [Download MP3]
Komodo dragon
[pp 12–17] Childhood is one long hallucination. People are known to each other by bloodline, but apart from that there appears to be little discernible reason they are … [Download MP3]
Forgotten old house
[pp 17–19] Behind him, a growing unease, he began to alight upon exact sounds, an old nursery rhyme, splashing about in water, the sound of feet on gravel … [Download MP3]
The die is cast
[pp 19–21] There is a plain-coloured madness that gnaws away at the edge, that I want to know. Like a young fish in a tank some days it seems I have explored … [Download MP3]
Civilisation
[pp 21–24] Crawling up and down flies hidden inside the lampshade. Outside on the pavement is where real life goes on, still so much to be learnt on those flagstones … [Download MP3]
Despairing afternoons
[pp 24–26] Spitting with snow. Cold and windy. Sunday afternoon, feeling in nowhere land, looking out the window with longing for nothing. Taking time out of my day to sit … [Download MP3]
Flotsam and jetsam
[pp 26–29] Probably we never love as deeply as when we know or sense it is all over. If only we could persuade ourselves to take a chance. You were everything. And then you were … [Download MP3]
Flower bud
[pp 29–33] When she greeted him in his thoughts she usually managed to penetrate his gloom and slowly opened him like a tiny bud warmed by the sun, as if he was meant to be opened that way … [Download MP3]
Set the place ablaze, O Sun
[pp 33–36] On the other side of the road, tight ass cheeks, looked like she was wearing a thong. Her hair was silky and halting, he’d like to thread flowers in it, jet black and shining … [Download MP3]
The above recording is a slightly different earlier version than the one published.
Visceral roses
[pp 82–89] The visceral roses that grow spikes out are lost in a fog I am pleased to call my thinking. Thoughts float upon the surface of my mind like that unpleasant foam that scums up on dirty canals … [Download MP3]
Rookery Trading
[pp 105–108] There was a little shop I used to love visiting as a kid called Rookery Trading, it was the only shop in the street not boarded up or pulled down, it held out against the bulldozers … [Download MP3]
Monkeypuzzle
[pp 122–123] I passed it on the bus one day with mum, this amazing tree. Wow mum what’s that tree? That’s a monkeypuzzle tree, she said. Immediately I saw the whole tree was made of … [Download MP3]
The bridge
[pp 128–130] There is an old superstition that if you bid farewell to someone standing on a bridge you will never see that person again. I remember we looked down at the water and I dropped … [Download MP3]
Newspaper legs
[pp 133–134] One day I laughed at dad when he was tying newspapers to the legs of his trousers. It was lunchtime, he was just about to go to work. It was pouring down of rain … [Download MP3]
The killing jar
[pp 137–138] Let out the flies. A distant dog barking that bark of faraway days. It reminds me of scabby-kneed walks along the pavement rat-a-tat-tatting a stick along the railings a fat man … [Download MP3]
The lost ball
[pp 145–147] A ball lost in the long grass several summers, green algae grown over it. So useless now no-one wants it even if they find it. A good place to sit and hide, therefore … [Download MP3]
Fag in the ashtray
[pp 151–152] So much can happen in the time it takes for a cigarette to burn down resting in an ashtray. He could have just been having an argument with his lover out in the kitchen … [Download MP3]
Hole in the ice
[pp 157–161] ‘You’d talk the hind legs off a donkey, you would,’ I said to her. She was jabbering away nineteen to the dozen. I wasn’t listening. You know I’ve spent my life out here on … [Download MP3]