An excerpt from Leaves Fall Off to Create Drama by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

Read three excerpts from Leaves Fall Off to Create Drama by Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle (April 2026), a collection of prose poems which explore the relationship between thinking patterns and ill health. Leaves Fall Off to Create Drama is published alongside a new edition of Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle’s acclaimed 2014 debut, Autobiography of a Marguerite.

Excerpt: p.2

A baby is left out in the open, for instance on a suburban park bench. Which is the same as the man writing an essay next to a closet of empty clothes or a closet empty of clothes. Nothing rises or conflicts, there’s simply a set of questions set to music. They will always show what is required. Though with a different setting it would be unrecognisable. A beautiful, hurt mouth. Close to midnight. At the same time, one cannot feel another person’s pain, but only infer it from their behaviour and their reports of it. The background was in the backyard but I’ve always struggled with beginnings. The man I was talking to was small and far away. Coincidence is stitched into goals. A few frames later, wheels fall off to create drama. A rendering of things which open with discrepancy and close with similarity. What’s wrong with this picture.

Excerpt: p.13

To pass the time, to give it structure, she says, ‘Why does this always happen to me?’ A group of chairs structured around a bruise, even plus even is even, odd plus odd is even. Even though we do not mean to, we continue to feed the fish in the bruised pond. The outcome is predictable. I pick up the model chair with my model hand. Odd plus odd. Why don’t you, yes but. That’s the way it is, or that’s the way I am. What do you say after you say hello. My misfortunes are better than yours.

Excerpt: p.38

Once, through a tree-lined glance, symptoms were mistaken for cause. She is tired and tires. Absorb shock while keeping the wheel in close contact with the ground. A moment needs to be applied, but when I am, then I will. Yet action should happen first. The house had more eyes than windows. One misses relevant information if it is not phrased exactly the way one expects. The leaves were a reference to childhood. It’s beginning to get dark. I had left out something important, which I now realised I ought to have mentioned at the beginning. Wheels fall off to create drama. I coughed up a tree. Things like that were just details between me and him. Bearings are used to help reduce fiction at the interface. I had stopped reading novels. The answer depends on the assumptions.