Flesh
He sleeps with Thomas’s nanny. She’s Canadian, about twenty-five, and also lives in the house, in another small apartment at the top of the service stairs.It just sort of happens.One evening they arrive home at the same time.She’s drunk.She asks him if he wants...
JR
Beyond the glass, the boy inside darted a glance from his newspaper out into the purse snapped open; snapped shut, he smoothed the porous fold of the obituary page away from him, nagged his lip with a pencil and then scratched his knee with it before his foot returned...
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing
For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say. Mammy me? Yes you. Bounce the bed, I’d say. I’d say that’s what you did. Then lay you down. They cut you round. Wait and hour and day. Walking up corridors up the stairs. Are...
There Are Rivers In The Sky
The day he receives his first wages, King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums leaves the office with a quiet sense of achievement. As it is a Saturday, most of the shops have stayed open late – the gin halls, the oyster saloons, the tobacconists, the confectioners, the...
We
Through the glass walls of the buildings, a windy, feverishly pink, disturbing sunset. I’ve turned my chair so the pink won’t get in my eyes and leafed through these notes. I see: again, I’ve forgotten that I’m not writing all this for myself but for you, unknown...