Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices
    Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices
    Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices
    Ebook57 pages22 minutes

    Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices

    By Nick Eisen

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    For lovers of the comic and disturbing this selection of short pieces peers at a strange world, echoing with questions, that lies beyond the veil of everyday normality and plays host to a motley company of characters: a psychotic Santa, a good boy with an odd idea of "good", a Cinderella with a vicious streak, among others – and, probably, the secret police...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilliam Cornelius Harris publishing
    Release dateFeb 3, 2017
    ISBN9781911232087
    Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices

    Related to Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Seven Poems

      May 1, 2022

      Seven Poems
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      I’ve always been an easy crier (let it come, not ashamed, never held it back in joy or grief, and wherever … subway, teaching, grocery store, (oh the desolate grocery store during the height of Covid) but now, the welling up: that’s daily now. —Lia P

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2025

      Everybody came to my first wedding.Smelly Neil from primary schoolplayed ‘Splat the Rat’ with the skinhead girlwho sold me fake ecstasy. The bodybuildersfrom dad’s porn films told jokes about potatoesto monochrome ancestors who’d perishedin the Great

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      May 1, 2022

      If I call myself unlovable, I am, practically; if I say itenough times: unlovable. Then, like practical magic, I’m hollow as old garlic; I’m distance-skinned.I’m a long, mean package, a terror-dyke, a nag, a squinting, slut-spun hag—it’s easy, really

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Longer on Moon

      Sep 22, 2022

      Longer on Moon
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Body Language

      Aug 14, 2019

      Body Language
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sigrid Nunez

      Sep 15, 2017

      During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khme

      23 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      People Are Strange

      Oct 13, 2019

      People Are Strange
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      — After the New York Times newsfeed from the week of May 6–11, 2018 This week in which faculty members at the University of Floridashove black graduates offstage for dancing in honor of what is regularly denied them; in which Nordstrom Rackapologizes

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Back Then, When All The Stages Were Bare

      Oct 7, 2024

      Back then, noses had been made illegal. Nor were mouths permitted. Everyone wore a mask. Looking out of a window at those people keeping their distances it was very clear their faces had been censured. As if these were only partial humans that walked

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      Five Poems
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Skunk City

      Nov 25, 2022

      Skunk City
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From Cantares Mexicanos

      Dec 1, 2023

      Last night I dreamt that I was employed as a suicide prevention specialist in ancient Mesoamerica. We had no phones then so no hotline to call or anything like that. I held these gatherings going place to place for people to tell me their stories and

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2019

      What you called a cloud was not a cloud. I am in hell here. Hell is a partywhere I don’t sing, and don’t dance, and someone turns to me and says, “Youare a very pretty girl. Don’t ever forget that.” I spend all night tramping up and down the staircas

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ben Okri

      Apr 25, 2022

      Ben Okri
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri

      May 12, 2022

      "I come to fiction to suspend my disbelief. The book is a drug. I'm trying to take this drug. Get melted off this drug." The post Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri appeared first on The Millions.

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Death

      Mar 1, 2020

      Kids already asleep, the grownups sit out on the deck,a few empty cans, an open bottle of wine on the table, I’m sure, and stacked paper plates with half-eaten buns and dirty napkins.From my backyard next door, I can hear them, the living, chatting.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dear Frankie

      Aug 1, 2021

      Dear Frankie
      19 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Frank Bits

      Apr 4, 2021

      As any paleskin can attest, the sun is an enemy. A big, hot, fiery enemy that sometimes wears sunglasses in pictures drawn by kids. Wearing a hat is the best way to flip the bird at the solar bully (aside from actually, you know, flipping the bird),

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Refusal To Mourn The Deaths, By Gunfire, Of Three Men In Brooklyn

      Jan 1, 2019

      And at times, didn’t the whole countrytry to break his skin?—Tim Seibles You strike your one good match to watch its bloomand jook, a swan song just before a nightwind comes to snuff it. That’s the kind of dayit’s been. Your Black & Mild, now, useles

      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices - Nick Eisen

      Probably the Secret Police and Other Slices

      Probably the Secret Police

      and Other Slices

      Nick Eisen

      Published by William Cornelius Harris Publishing

      In collaboration

      with

      London Poetry Books

      Supporting Mental Health in Performing Arts

      ISBN 978-1-911232-08-7

      Copyright © Nick Eisen 2016

      All rights reserved

      c/o Open Door, 224 Jamaica Road, London SE16

      www.williamcorneliusharrispublishing.com

      London Poetry Books

      To my family, friends and companions

      Thank you

      Note: In this book I quote from Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and from William Shakespeare. Another piece (White) was inspired by a newspaper article from the 1980s. I also refer to Cinderella, The Godfather, and to the songs Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Ghost Riders in the Sky and, from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, Fifteen Men on the Dead Man’s Chest. Questions or enquiries about this or other matters can be addressed to me c/o the publishers.

      Millions of People

      Millions of people

      going to work

      into the tunnel

      on the train

      under the city

      into the station

      day after day

      again and again

      minute by minute

      counting the seconds

      just get a move-on

      late again

      crowded in carriages

      standing room only

      shoulder to shoulder

      pushing and shoving

      hating and loving

      avoiding each other

      missing a lover

      trying to find

      some personal space

      looking at papers

      looking at ads

      face to face

      breathing each other

      don’t look at me

      earplugs in

      listen to music

      don’t talk to me

      hunter and hunted

      wandering hands

      leave me alone

      you dirty scum...

      Day after day

      millions of people

      going to work

      into the tunnel

      on the train

      second by second

      again and again...

      Here and there

      one or two

      noticing someone

      minute by minute

      under the city

      every so often

      day after day

      catching an eye

      just for a moment

      don’t say a word

      turning away

      absolute strangers

      closer than bedfellows

      closer than family

      closer than partners

      closer than enemies

      minute by minute

      day after day

      under the city

      again and again

      millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      and millions and millions

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1