At Breakfast
The kitchen tiles are finding their corners in the half-light. In the small flat on the top floor of the house, two women sit at the breakfast table. They’re nurses in the early months of 1933. Two empty porridge bowls have been pushed aside. Two half-drunk cups of tea stand between them on the ta
Marmalade
It came as a shock to learn that Barbara was still alive inside the marmalade. The sight of the oranges had brought back the memory of her. She appeared as an embryo suspended in jelly – the incarnation of a rumination, preserved in vitro. I knew it was her because of the slightly crooked spine, [
Stockholm Syndrome
Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea” (Genesis 1:26) Three fish are bored. They pass the time thinking. “Why are we here?” one asks. Another answers: “If we were not, then who would force those simple sea [
Doctored Front Lines
In these unprecedented, uncertain times, as we navigate the new normal, I hope this note finds you and your family safe, as you know many people are struggling. Or something to that effect. The ‘new normal’ of email etiquette, so brilliantly satirised by Jessica Salfia’s poem ‘First lines of
Icebergs
CLOSING SOON. Olafur Eliasson’s Ice Watch, Tate Modern, 2018 We had come for the melting icebergs. We came early, clutching phones and children, to our space before the Thames, where the artist had assembled those lumps of cold whiteness. A menagerie of endangered specimens of ice – it wanted so
Aesthetic Unease
Tom Collister was twenty years old when he was sentenced to two and a half years at HMP Camp Hill, a sentence cut short by his suicide in 2010. Before the government shut it down, the prison was was infamous for its incompetency and nicknamed ‘Concentration Camp Hill’ by its inmates. Human rig
Success for Sale
*names have been changed for anonymity Michelle* leaves me a voice message. She must be on a bus or coach; I can hear faint noises from the engine. She sends me a text: “We are in Mexico On a trip from Arbonne Having a blast.” Michelle is a National Vice President at Arbonne, a multi-level [&hel
A Woman Disobedient
No tattoos, my abuela says es feo, muy triste paying someone else to give you scars, one eye on her telenovela and the other on my arm, she says no more pie
A Ghuí ar a Croí
Dá mbeadh brait gréasacha na neimhe Maisithe le solas airgid óir, Iad gorma, dorcha, agus séimhe, ‘S mise amháin ina sealbhóir, Chuirfinn fútsa na brait gan agó; Ach, níl a’am ach brionglóidí bochta; Chuir mé mo bhrionglóidí fútsa fadó: Céimnigh orthu go ciúin, cosnochta.∎ &n
