Every eye in the forest has slipped into the gutter of the face. The world is changing hands: waking and falling swap rings. Morien’s body speaks to the thin high black he sleeps in. For many years this black has sat and spoken with badger stripes, caves, prehistoric cockatoos, but never a Morien. Black hands, […]

I’m starting to regret having signed up to these online pregnancy updates – one email every week since week eight telling us what stage of development the baby should be at; telling me what to eat, how to look ‘chic’ whilst pregnant, and on and on.    Today, the baby should be the size of […]

Years passed and I received no letter with the word “trombone”.     The distant cousins wrote, offered their shriller sympathies.     “What’s wrong with us?” Nothing I knew. Plugboard and isinglass, grimoire and cwm, friends all. Still I felt horribly alone.     Until one day it dropped through roundel-light onto the mat.     I was […]

I used to wear pinstripes, with parrot-coloured love-beads. I had no idea what I was trying to say or do. Now clothes hang no better on me at thirty, my hips being as ample as beach coves in holiday season. In my wedding dress I had good breasts. I had tight skin like the hide […]

She has practised the safe phrases – ‘I passed through unknown countries.’ ‘Agent took my passport.’ Even in her broken English she says only what will help her case. But the sides of the path are mined and he is waiting for her to slip. Her skin sweats. Catarrh is blocked solid in her nose. […]