Tag Archives: Travel

TROTTERSVILLE #1

Dear Readers, despite our decision to make 2024 the Year of Poetry on unbolt.me, it’s still essential to break the rules occasionally—especially when we’re feeling particularly naughty. Of course, we also hope to make 2024 the Year of the Graphic Novel—our fingers are firmly crossed on that one.

Anyway, how does this all relate to the silly little piggy strip you see below? It doesn’t! It’s all just stuff that we’re doing because we enjoy being creative. A poem here. A graphic novel there. A piggy strip or two. These things keep us on our toes, and will hopefully keep you engaged too, Dear Readers. We want to entertain you!

The strip below is another great opportunity for Tati to sharpen her translator claws—or, rather, dig her translator muzzle into some sweet word mud—whichever tortured metaphor works for you. We hope this little nothingness can entertain you and make you happy. And perhaps it can show you how differently language can work from one culture to another in the medium of comics. Should you find yourselves loving this effort then please consider supporting us on Patreon or Ko-fi—that would make us very happy too!

  • Today’s Outlook
  • Передбача на сьогодні

 

by TONY SINGLE & TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2024

anywhere but here

i wandered the impossible earth
locked myself in uncharted rooms
i never knew where i ought to be
lost my thoughts to the memories of old trees
somewhere surely winter must end
somewhere surely there’s a little less rain

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2020

100 WORD SKITTLE // Lurking the Dream (Follow-up to Leaving the Dream)

The day was cold.

I hugged the walls, trying to hide in dark corners, but a bitchy wind found me everywhere I went, and gnawed at my neck and cheeks with its merciless teeth. I had no respite.

I was huddled in the pokey gap between a tattoo parlour and pool hall when I heard what sounded like a squeaky toy. There was a frail, drawn-out release of air. Like it had been sat on. Like it had invented misery.

I checked. No. I hadn’t squashed anything, but there was a tiny ball of fur there.

…with two pointy triangles.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

100 WORD SKITTLE // Leaving the Dream (Follow-up to Living the Dream)

It came to life in an expensive arty-farty Moleskine—maybe I fancied myself as the next Hemingway. I even bought a posh Parker pen. Only the best tools, right? But as time went on and times got desperate, the Moleskine got swapped out for paper from bins and skips, and the Parker for biros I’d stolen from cheap snack-bars and post offices.

But I didn’t give up. I continued to scribble beneath dim streetlights, in dingy alleyways, and as close to the neon glow of storefronts as their owners would allow. Come hell or high water, I’d complete this book.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

100 WORD SKITTLE // Living the Dream

My dream. I ended up leaving my hometown for this.

Melbourne was too expensive. I’d lost my job and the rent was killing, so I upped stakes. I moved to deepest, darkest Peru where I burned through the remainder of my savings in under a year. Even though it was as cheap as chips to live there, I eventually found myself eking out a living on the streets.

I guess I didn’t think things through enough. Now I didn’t even have the money for a one-way ticket back to Australia.

Still, I had my dream. I would write a book.

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018