Even the night air feels as if it has been breathed a million times, as if some desert djinn is panting stale air straight into his lungs.

The snows are melting in the high Kush, sending emissary streams needling down the slopes, feeding the wadis of the plateau, the poppy fields that glow red in the foothills. As the air around lightens, he can make out the stream in the distance.

He’d passed the dry bed a few days before, with the Multiple on foot patrol – eight hours with guns, ammo and water, climbing into the nearest hills, always walking with one foot tapping the ground ahead like a blind man’s cane. They’d found an IED on the main Lashkar Gah road. A basic device buried under a mound of blue-grey aggregate. Later, he’d stood for a while in the centre of a poppy field, the heads of the flowers nodding in a warm breeze. He picked one and tore the petals off. On the way back they’d crossed the riverbed which now babbles with dark water.

He leans out over the side of the watchtower. The sun begins to rise, and not with the pink diffidence of the sun at home, but already white and cruel as it explodes over the peaks of the Kush. The coming of the light changes the sound of the water. His throat is dry and he reaches down to his belt for his flask to find it missing.

He doesn’t know who has been taking his things. It has become part of a more general deprivation he barely notices. He came here because he thought it would make something of him; in fact it is unmaking him. The road leading up to the gate of the compound is lined with Hesco barriers. They look fragile, almost transparent. He imagines them as Chinese lanterns, imagines lighting them and seeing them float up into the pale sky. He looks at his watch: an hour to go.

He lifts his binoculars and follows the course of the stream. A mile to the east it passes under the lip of a rocky levee and fans out into a pool. It looks cool there in the shadows by the rocks. Silver flowers open and close on the sandstone lip that juts above the water as the sun catches the stream. He hasn’t swum since he’s been here.

He remembers swimming with Marie. They rushed past Dawsholme Park, over the canal, and then they were in the countryside. They pushed their bikes up the steepest part of the hill and then stood on the crest looking down. Two lochs – Jaw and Cochno – separated by a narrow isthmus. After their swim, when they dried off on the banks of the loch, she looked around with quick, narrow eyes and unfastened her bikini top, letting the sun and his gaze fall upon her as she stretched out on the grass. When he kissed her it felt like they were swimming again, nervelessly, over deep water.

It is time for his relief. The sun is higher now, near-unlookable. He hears the reveille – a short, brutal blast over loudspeakers, and the clatter of breakfast being prepared in the mess. Someone is singing in the shower block.

His relief is late. The sun detonates above him, raging into the space behind his eyes. He’s aware of every patch of exposed skin. He tries to think of Marie in the loch, but it is too distant and cool a picture. He looks over towards the pool of water and sees it is still in shadows. He feels an urgent need to swim. He imagines standing on the lip of the levee and hurling himself into the water.

An hour passes. He is sitting in the narrow band of shade on the floor of the watchtower, not even pretending to keep watch.

Every so often he rises and scans the maze of tunnels for sign of his relief. He knows that they want him to leave his post. That some shameful plan was hatched over beers in the mess last night, the snaking path of its plot ending in his humiliation. He feels himself pitching as if on a boat. He rises again, but this time, binoculars to his eyes, he looks at the pool.

More than anything now, he wants to feel water on his body. He would choose swimming water over drinking water. He knows about the water gardens in this part of the world, the wide avenues of whispering trees and fountains. There is a religion of water here. He can understand that. He can see that God is dancing in the water under the levee.

He climbs down from the watchtower. His joints creak, his binoculars slap against his neck, his sweat spirals to the ground beneath the ladder. He pauses at the compound gates. With a sudden instinct, in the free space where solid thought forms, he reaches out and opens the door that is set into the right-hand gate. Still walking, he steps through and out into the world.

He sets off brisk across the fulvous earth. His feet are scorched by the heat, torn by the sharp spines of scrub, cut on rocks. He begins to run. He takes off his jacket and lets it drop to the ground behind him, peels off the white t-shirt to reveal a bone-thin body. He doesn’t even think about IEDs. He draws in a deep breath of air and lets it out with a low, delighted whoop. In the mountains above he catches a momentary flash of sun on glass, ignores it, and presses on. He is sprinting now, leaping rocks and brush.

When he comes to the levee he looks back to the compound and sees the watchtower is still empty. He undoes his belt, pulls down his trousers, his boxer shorts, is suddenly pleased by the burn of the sun on his body. He edges to the lip of the levee and stands there, angeline on the rim of a cloud. There is a crack, and it is the sound of a body plunging into water, the sound of thunder, the sound of a rifle shot in hill country.

He plunges downwards into this water that remembers when it was snow. Water that wound between grazing goats, through poppy fields, beside the small house where two of the young men live who now stand above the stream, looking in.

The water carries in it iron, zinc, silica, traces of goat and human faeces, the spit of a grandmother from Chitral, opium and poppy stems, the petals of flowers from a wedding at Kachil, potassium, magnesium, gunpowder, human and dog urine, the sweat of a man who bathed that morning at dawn in Tang e-Gharu. Despite the weight of all this, the water bounds along the stream bed, dancing and tear-clear. The young men shoot their guns into the pool for effect and then scamper back to the truck at the foot of the levee.

Already the force of the current has carried his body onwards, over jagged shallows where it roils white, into another, deeper pool, where swimming creatures are congregating, insect larvae thrusting themselves from the bed into green depths. His foot snags on a root and he is caught, trembling, in the stream, his eyes wide and bright under the water. A plume of blood escapes like the ghost of a watersnake from the hole in his head, is caught by the current, and carried away.

Would you like to send a love letter to anyone?

Yes. Here it is. Anyone, I love you.

If you could reverse or bend a moment in history into an outcome regarded as the opposite of what happened, or at least as substantially different, what moment would it be?

I’d replace Hitler with Chaplin. I’d give Keats, Burns, Austen, Mansfield and Plath full long lives. I’d resuscitate all the butterfly species that’ve died out, and bring back all the lost varieties of apples. Assuming others will already have dealt with war, poverty and disease.

Why won’t the aliens step forth to help us?

They are busy with their own histories.

Do you ever wonder after the stories stolen in Mr Hemingway’s valise on the platform in Paris?

Yes, I do – I wonder whether the person who found or took that suitcase read them, or liked them, or found him or her self years afterwards thinking of the stories they found in the suitcase one day and read.  I wonder where they ended up, where exactly the paper they were written on broke down and mulched itself away, or disappeared into landfill, or … Maybe someone published them under another name.  I hope, if whoever found them burned them, it made a warm difference to a cold night and someone’s cold hands.

Would a small red balloon cheer you up?

Invariably.

Do you ever devote yourself to making a cake and then sit down and eat it?

No, I was psychologically scarred by my mother’s weekly baking regime and as a consequence I never bake.

Of which lost or destroyed culture are you most fond?

The 1960s Greek musical.

If a gentle specimen of livestock passed you by en route to its slaughter, would you palm its rump?

No. I would inhale the scent of a fellow being and look at the way it moved and how its skin sat well on it. Then I’d offer the person taking it to slaughter three magic beans, and I’d take the gentle specimen back with me to live on the farm overrun with animals whose lives have been exchanged for magic beans. (And when I am on the slaughter road myself, I will hope to meet someone who’ll do the same for me.)

Do you favour a day of the week?

I actually quite like not to know which day it is.

Are you happy?

More often than not.

Do you believe in ghosts, or want to believe in ghosts but really can’t, or dismiss ghosts outright?

I’ve never seen one, but I like listening to people who have tell me the details, which are usually very pedestrian, a fact I find really interesting. Even ghosts are subject to conventional narrative realism.

Ali was interviewed by David Whelan, who asked questions from his copy of The Interrogative Mood: A Novel? by Padgett Powell.

Kids can be so cruel. But these kids just lack imagination.

They will call him Meat now, because he is ripped.

He’s chiselled.

He’s been sculpted by Muscleangelo.

He brings the abdominal domination.

Meat says he can’t go to school in a short-sleeved shirt anymore because he’d get suspended for bringing his guns to class.

Meat’s best mate Stumpy promises he’ll call him Meat.

“I’ll call you Meat,” he says, “as long as you call me Tom.”

Meat and Stumpy are fifteen.

Meat tells Tom that he would give anyone who called him Stumpy a critical beat-down. Stumpy believes Meat.

Meat goes home from school and eats a protein shake while he watches Neighbours.

Slurp.

Boy that Andrew is shredded. Check out the biceps on the Aussie chump. No wonder the girls love him.

Slurp.

Karl Kennedy better recognise he’ll be losing the most bangable older lady on TV if he don’t shape up and start crunching his abs. Too much jelly on the belly, Karl.

Slurp.

Toadie, get off my screen you lump of lard. I’m gonna sue you for crimes against gym membership. I’d like to see you defend that.

Slurp.

After Neighbours, Meat goes to his room.

He lies down on the floor, legs straight, arms stretched out to the sides as far as they will go. He’s like an awesomely cut cross. Meat wraps his fingers round the handles of his one-kilogram dumbbells and lifts them off the floor. He breaths in deeply, pauses, then pushes air out of his lungs as he brings the dumbbells together above the centre of his chest, arms still fully stretched.

Meat stares up at the ceiling.

A poster of Ronnie Dean ‘Big Ron’ Coleman, Mr Olympia 2009, glares back at him.

“You think five reps on 1KGs is good–do you, Meat?” he hollers. “Lightweight! I bench press boys twice your size. Look at these guns, Meat. Look at them! I could start a military coup in Africa with this hardware. Yeah, buddy!”

Meat pushes his reps to twelve.

He lies in the cross shape and rests for ten seconds.

Ronnie smiles, “Now the crunches, buddy. You think you gonna win a fight without crunches? Crunches beat punches!”

Meat brings his hands up and lets them hover by his temples.

His mum calls.

“Jonathon. Jonathon?”

“Yeah?”

“Dinner’s ready, darling.”

“OK.”

Meat stands in front of the mirror. He flexes the pecs. He presents his biceps. He tenses his stomach.

It’s all good.

Meat is carved out of wood.

*

Meat is on a run. It’s dark and cold, one of those nights so fresh the air feels edible. His throat is starting to hurt. Breathing in that air is beginning to burn. Each breath he takes, he takes with a wince.

No pain, no gain.

In it to win it.

Just do it.

Meat stops when he gets to Stumpy’s house. Stumpy’s dad comes to the door. He smiles at Meat and ruffles his hair. Meat shakes his head away.

“You wouldn’t ruffle Dexter ‘the Blade’ Jackson’s hair, would you?” he says.

“I don’t know who that is, Johnny,” says Stumpy’s dad, walking away.

Meat runs upstairs to Stumpy’s bedroom. Stumpy is sitting on a small chair and playing Xbox. The headset is too big for his head. Meat checks himself in Stumpy’s mirror.

“You wanna go do something?” Meat says.

“Alright,” says Stumpy.

They walk to Dane John Gardens.

Stumpy walks on tiptoes and stretches his hands as high above his head as possible. Meat walks by lunging.

They arrive and sit on the swings.

Meat says he would bench press Sally Coleman as many times as she wanted. Stumpy says once he defeats the big boss at the end of level fifteen, Josie Caverhill will be so impressed she’ll eat his face for breakfast.

“Stumpeeeeee!”

A voice cuts through the night.

“Oi! Stumpy, you nobber.”

Meat looks at Stumpy. They both recognise the voice of Matt Mallor.

Mallor emerges from the gloom and stands in front of them.

“What are you two swingers doing here? Gayboy batty sex?”

Meat and Stumpy are silent.

“Veg, you skinny chimp–are you a mute? Why do you insist on bumming Stumpy? You into bumming little children?”

“Don’t call him Veg,” says Stumpy. “His name is Meat.”

“Meat? Ha! Shut up, Stumps. I’ll do the naming.”

“Shut up yourself,” says Meat, jumping off the swing. “Just shut up! I’m called Meat cos I’m packing beef. He’s called Tom, not Stumpy.”

“Ooooh,” says Mallor, “suddenly grown some hair on your nuts have we, Vegetable? Standing up for your life partner? Look, Stumpy, your boyfriend’s finally got pubes. When you gonna catch up?”

Meat stands taller and eyeballs Mallor.

“Don’t. Call. Him. Stumpy.”

Meat pushes Mallor in the chest.

“Ha!” Mallor laughs, “what was that?”

Meat pushes him again.

Stumpy is still swinging, rooted to his seat in fear.

Mallor laughs again.

“Why don’t you punch me this time, Veggie sausage?”

Meat throws up a jab with the right. Mallor catches his fist and twists it. Meat bends round to try and counteract the twist. Pain shoots out from his tendons. He tries to swing a punch in with his left. Mallor kicks him in the crotch. Meat doubles over and then Mallor kicks his shoulder so he falls on the ground.

“You two are the biggest pussies I know,” Mallor says. “Go back to your rooms and play with your cocks in front of your Xbox.”

“One day I’m gonna kick your ass,” Meat mumbles into the grass.

Mallor cackles and walks back into the darkness of the park.

Stumpy gets off the swing and helps Meat up.

“Thanks for sticking up for me,” he says. “I reckon you almost had him there.”

“I told you I’d do it, didn’t I? I told you I would. Next time I’m gonna give him a proper critical beat-down. Next time he’s gonna be sorry. I just need to get more ripped. Two protein shakes a day. Twenty reps. Twenty crunches.”

“I’m going to stretch till I almost split.”

They get back on the swings. They start to swing, getting higher and higher.

“I’m gonna get swolled.”

“I’m going to get as tall as that tree.”

“I’m gonna get so thick people will think I’m two guys combined.”

“I’m going to be taller than a basketball hoop.”

“I’m gonna be jacked.”

“I’m going to have legs longer than Matt Mallor’s whole body.”

“You wait, Tom. We’re gonna be massive one day. I promise.”

And I see her, the girl of my crutched dreams -
La Gioconda smoking a pipe that’s not a pipe,
sipping absinthe from a fur-lined cup
that tickles her moustache.

We miss the train that leaves the fireplace,
but it’s raining businessmen so we stay inside,
smooch to the Broadway Boogie Woogie,
sleeping in this tent with en suite Mutt urinal.

We’ve learnt our lesson. Abstraction came too easy
for Brancusi, the universe already constipated with objects:
he fed his two white dogs lettuce floating in milk.
Schiele was more realistic – he couldn’t afford the paint,

he said, when the judge who burnt his work in public asked
“Why choose models with amputated feet?” Our millennium
opened late for staff training. By the time we wake to
Turner’s blazing sunrise, it’s all on video. Our taut bodies.

She will ignore you, by the way, and you’ll decide to wait till evening, thinking it makes more sense, and it’s true: there will be red slashes and parrots whose cries will wake you in the morning, and when you go back into the square, damp clouds will be hung in the jacaranda trees, and you will find the yellow shawl of Frida Kahlo, negligently thrown over the wooden chair.

But you will not find Frida Kahlo.

Here is what you will think, or here is what I thought: I have lived my life without seeing until now how the prairies are pinned inside the dense mountains. Nor did I realize that the Aztec canals with their barges were carrying me to mere templates. And stupidly I thought Frida Kahlo was a painter.

I woke from this dream sometime later. A woman had fallen from a cliff, and I fell from that woman into another woman and in the agony of cliffs, I fell, and found myself in the deep embrace of Frida Kahlo. She wrapped me in her monkey hide, stinking of the urine she used to cure it, and put me out to dry. I did penance on the shelf marked Productos de Mexico.

My love – if I may be permitted to speak so familiarly – is deep and shallow and urgent as the night lights on Death Row, as prophetic as ambergris caught in the wings of flies, and prehistory knows that it is nothing to please forget, please forget, please forget.

And: I will be happy to take back these words in a court of law.

How was I to know how hidden the world is? Or how the hidden world is? Or how hidden she was, necessarily?

And then to find out that the juice of the female comes from her blood, and does that mean the semen of the male too comes from his blood? I think so.

And so on that night in San Francisco in 1977 in the Haight, what was my girlfriend doing at the bottom of Frida Kahlo?

And do you remember reading Lautréamont at the laundromat? We ate in that place in Chinatown with the walled-off booths like in Dostoevsky. Perhaps it’s why Yevtushenko ate there too, according to the plaque. Yet why was Frida Kahlo lurking there in the bottom of the tea glass, and when I raised my eye to yours why did I know that I was looking at you for the first and only time, and then – my crime – why did I look away? But life doesn’t really hold on to these dramas. And we know that too. And of course we know better.

But I believe the singer in the cantina anyway. Her notes are the tide I go out on.

And so I knew her and I went to her and knew what was inside her, or guessed, and no one suspected I didn’t know her at all, and now that she is dead, this is her death song, and this is her marvelous journey, and even if the desert beyond Guadalajara has lights that we decide are signals crawling out of the mountains curving down the dangerous roads, then on this day, when the sunlight is crashing into the room, we make claims for these signals too.

Or will we waste them? And anyway, she had a little bit of the cat’s soul. Is that so wrong to say? She believed in the monkey and its lack of shame. And she fought her shame using the monkeys she built out of her shame. It was brave, brave, brave. It scares me to think even a little bit honestly about it.

Six months before she died – it must have been just before she was diagnosed – I saw her, but she didn’t see me.

I was in our living room. It was two or three in the afternoon. My girlfriend was working so it was just me in the flat, rambling around. I do most of my day’s work in the morning. I usually have a burst of energy and get started at eight or half-past and go straight up to lunch. I don’t do anything much in the afternoon: half-hearted reading, play some music, go to bed. If my girlfriend’s not working sometimes we go out – just for a drink or something – before I get my second burst of energy in the evening. But that afternoon my girlfriend was working and I was alone.

Her name was Hannah. Literally a friend of a friend. About thirty-seven I thought when I first met her, but forty-two as I now know. My girlfriend and I met her when we went to dinner once at my girlfriend’s best friend’s. My girlfriend’s best friend always invites a couple of other people along whenever we go to his for dinner. I used to be a bit slighted by this but over time I came not to mind, almost enjoy it. If nothing else it meant that myself, my girlfriend and her best friend didn’t dwell on our favourite subject: how our professional success was not commensurate with our abundant talents.

The people my girlfriend’s best friend invites over are always either Brazilian, or Italian, or Israeli, or German – as was the case with Hannah. I don’t think he ever invited someone English along. Which is fine by me. I’m not English, neither is my girlfriend, neither is my girlfriend’s best friend for that matter. Whenever we’re at his place for dinner it feels like a bunch of exiles together in a foreign land – although of course it’s nothing of the sort. We’d be exiles anywhere.

I think we probably thought ‘uh-oh’. The women he invited to these dinners were usually the same stern, prickly types who look like they’re in transit from one argument to another. But we found out she lived around the corner from us. She became ‘the woman who lived around the corner from us’ and we met her a couple more times, once at someone’s party. My girlfriend’s best friend would always mention how Hannah was doing whenever we’d meet up with him. I suppose he mentioned to her how we were doing when he met up with her too.

We never visited her. We never decided not to visit her – in fact we often said to my girlfriend’s best friend, then later on to ourselves, “We must go round and see Hannah”. But we never did.

Six months before she died – it may have been the week she was diagnosed – I saw her standing underneath the tree on the pavement outside our flat, waiting for the rain to stop. Who knows, maybe it was the very day she was diagnosed. Maybe she was on her way to the hospital when I saw her. Maybe she had just got the phone-call to say could she come in immediately; the call that could only mean one thing. Whatever the chronology, one thing is certain: it was before my girlfriend’s best friend called to say Hannah was ill. Definitely before.

I was rambling about, as I said. I could hear it had started to rain – one of those squalls that come out of nowhere. I went over to the window to look, to see the rain bouncing off the car bonnets, a bone-dry world drenched beyond reason. But when I looked out onto our quiet street, there she was. Standing underneath the tree on the pavement outside our flat.

Rain was, I expect, bouncing off the car bonnets but I don’t remember. Here was Hannah taking refuge in a dry white circle underneath the dripping tree, while around her the ground grew dark and shiny. She didn’t see me. She had her back to me and was wearing a jacket with no hat or umbrella or anything. She kept looking to her left, back the way she’d come; poking her head out into the rain to get a clearer sight of something back there. What didn’t make sense to me was that she didn’t look to her right where the tube was only a minute’s dash away. That’s where I’d be looking, I thought.

No, she kept looking left, kept looking back. I couldn’t make sense of it. So I turned on the TV, turned it off again, ambled over to the bookshelf. After a while I realised the rain had stopped, so I went to the window but she was gone. A scant chorus of birds celebrated the end of the rain. In the dry white circle of pavement where she’d stood, a solitary wet footprint – hers, I presume – exited right.

When I lived in King’s Cross
I used to lie on the bed and listen
to my bones melting. At first
I thought I was listening to Elgar
and then I thought I was listening
to the couple who’d moved into
the flat above and who were getting
to know each other better
and then I thought I was listening
to the music of the spheres.
I was listening to my bones melting.

I remove her hands at the wrist without permission because she never touches my dick. I am quiet and careful not to wake her and am not thinking of anything to help me along. I just watch her hands on my wrists as they work my dick and balls. Her thin delicate fingers and nails, so much smaller than my thick workmanlike digits, make me believe my cock is somehow suddenly much bigger.

We recently discovered our hands have matching fixings. A simple snap and shift locking mechanism at the wrist means we can swap pairs with no trouble. The join would be impossible to see except for my bushy forearms ending abruptly where the pale slope of the backs of her hands begin. Of course for her the reverse is true, the smooth skin of her forearms giving way to my tufted, vein-ridged meat hooks.

Earlier this evening, trading right hands first then left, we clicked and slid each one in place then looked at each other, the absurdity of my hands on her arms, hers on mine, made us laugh at first. We explored each of our new hands with its partner, spent the evening on the carpet of our room, stroking the pile first, running each other’s fingers deep into it, then hours touching stuff, apples, blankets, the leather of the sofa.

“Feel this,” she said about each new thing. And I did.

We scribbled love letters, amused at our writing with each other’s hands, my words in hers, hers in mine. It pleased me no end to write with such neat feminine curls. She giggled at my scrawl emerging from fingers under her control.

“It feels like wearing you as gloves,” she said.

Touching each other was new again, feeling her through her own fingers she seemed once more strange, once more undiscovered and she said it felt the same. We lay facing each other and watched our own hands measure our dimensions. A lifetime of familiarity with our fingers washed away as they moved to the will of another. She was deft, made my fingers, often clumsy under my control, somehow agile, spry, not at all the hesitant fumbling fools they are for me.

“Touch my cock,” I said.

The shake of her head and the silent, mouthed ‘No’ had me squeezing her hands into fists. Then I let it go. Waited.

Later while she slept, I slipped her hands free, took them downstairs. I was gentle. She did not stir. Her hands fixed on my arms I stroked myself, ran her fingers through my hair, over the flabby skin of my middle, embraced myself tightly, stretched her palms and fingers over the dense globes of my shoulders. I felt myself as she feels me, delicate fingers on my stocky, gristled trunk, allowing her hands to reach for my cock once I’d done enough to convince myself this wasn’t all I’d headed downstairs for.

Of all the wanks I’ve ever had, this one, wearing her hands, is easily best; her slender fingers do exactly what I want when I want as hard as I want.

I hear her stirring.

“Very funny,” she calls down. “Now give them back.”

“I’m coming,” I say and I am.

I wash her hands and head back to bed.

Once we’re wearing our own hands she says, “What were you doing?”

“Seeing how I felt,” I say.

She holds her hands out in front of her, runs her eyes over her fingers and her face pulls.

“You bastard,” she says.

“I’ll let you borrow mine,” I say

“No thanks,” she says and she smiles.

We touch then with our own hands on our own arms and afterwards lie limbs tangled, fingers cat’s cradled, feeling somehow each like the other.

The teacher typed them up on tiny scrolls, one per person, and inflated balloons around them. Everyday before lunchtime she would get one of the children to pop a balloon with this health-and-safety pin on a stick.

If you’re imagining at this point the teacher was slim and sang to birds and didn’t murder the insects that flew into class when it came near to summer, let me stop you. She was pudgy and middle-aged with an unnerving eye that pointed too far towards the other, and none of us could tell which was the rogue. And she liked Oasis, the band, not the drink. That’s about all I remember. She was nice though. She got married and kept the wedding photos in her bag for the next few years. If you saw her at the bus stop she would show them to you again. She never was quite the same after her name changed, but it was years after I’d moved to secondary that they found her.

When they popped my balloon the note read:

Funny
Clever
Good sense of humour
Friendly
Polite

I still have that note. It’s mounted in the attic, facing away from the door, covered in a dust sheet. I climb up to see it every few days, to make sure it’s still there, mostly. I couldn’t live for the thought that someone else might see it. In the corner opposite, leaning against, is a bowling ball, just in case.

These are the things I didn’t tell you. 

1.   When I saw you tilting the Egyptian Pyramid Explorers Kit in the heel of your hand in Godleys, I was not only shocked it was you, and gently thrown by the hint of grey at the roots of your parting and your sensibly brown wool skirt when I associated you with tie-dye. Dread threatened to overwhelm me.

2.  To steady myself, I thought about the first time I placed my hand on your thigh. You were sat on my desk, swinging your legs and going on and on about mojitos. I couldn’t help it that time. I grabbed hold of your thigh and you stopped talking. One of your mules fell off and clattered on the floor.

3.   When I saw you holding the Egyptian Pyramid Explorers Kit I’d imagined your children and their unwavering father. If you had not dropped the box and said my name I would have skulked into another aisle.

4.   The client meeting I mentioned, the meeting I used as an excuse not to have coffee with you there and then, was a lie.

5.   Overnight I was convinced I shouldn’t see you.

6.   I had restaged certain scenes and edited certain situations in my head.

7.   I knew you were my end.

8.   The day after, in Cafe Pizzicato, I suspected you were sparing my feelings when you talked about yourself at such length without asking me anything. It took you about an hour to explain that you were on sabbatical from aid working. You were taking a break from the dust and the airstrips, the shuttling between compounds, the bureaucratic wrangles, the political fudges. Your mother was dead. You were sorting out her house. You might keep it, you said. Be home. You were getting too old to feel so helpless. You smirked as you started your second coffee – I’m not sure why you were smirking – and repeated you were fed up with feeling continually helpless.

9.   I could hardly contain my relief when you said the Egyptian Pyramid Explorers Kit was for your nephew.

10.   A week later, when we revisited the abandoned meander and sat face-to-face in the dip and you told me harrowing stories of Bosnia and Afghanistan, I did not tell you that those lunchtimes, when the weather was warm and when we were clear of the building and would hold hands openly and cross the woods and the field and end up here, and you would undress and the sunlight would slither about your bare shoulders and afterwards you would whisper the names of places you wanted to see – Zanzibar, Marrakech – these were the moments I’d brooded on most deeply during the years.

11.   I did tell you, on the night you cooked for me at your mother’s, that it unsettled me that the house seemed unchanged: the fifties décor; the diagonal smear of flying ducks above the mantelpiece with their chipped wings and goofy smiles; that faint smell of bleach, but I didn’t tell you, when we were full of gin and slow-dancing on the patio, that bleach always smelled like that night we left the Christmas bash shamelessly early, no longer caring if the others knew.

12.   When we kissed like teenagers under the burglar lights, it felt like us as teenagers kissing on your mother’s patio.

13.   When you left and for a long time afterwards this moment on the patio had ceased to be beautiful for me and contained only warnings.

14.   After you’d left work I could no longer come up with the straplines and copy.

15.   I started to enjoy, strangely, a cavalier attitude to time keeping even though I knew Collins was a pernickety little stickler. I slept off the nights in the washroom, then topped up at lunch like a real live advertising creative and soon started handing in all those joke ideas I used to share with you but then cross out.

16.   After that place I was turned down by the police force, and then the ambulance service and worked in the Housing Benefit office for a while.

17.   I was flitting and pausing for over a decade.

18.   I woke up in small rooms and wondered where I was.

19.   I once found myself on a bench, in a park, on a Sunday, it was sleeting and I had what I’d now call sloppy thoughts when I could hear an airliner roar overhead but couldn’t see it, the clouds were so thick.

20.   I’ve since kept a routine of TV and computer games, junk food and nightly beers that help me face forwards.

21.   I wrote rules. After the therapist explained the sloppiness of my thoughts, and the men’s group facilitator the self-indulgence and control-freakishness of taking things hard: never show, never give, never ask, never plead. Never care or make the first move. Never covet or look back. Never surrender to whining loneliness.

22.   If forever breathes the lonely word I covered my ears.

23.   At the end, when you came to me in a panic about your solicitor and your mother’s equity, how it had been released early, tranche by tranche, and spent on cruises and medical bills – I still didn’t tell you. You said kind things about me that couldn’t be true. They made me wince.

24.   When I saw you tilting the Egyptian Pyramid Explorers Kit in the heel of your hand, I was en route to the packing bay, where I worked supervising the dispatch of goods.

25.   I told you the first lie in Godleys, and then a series of lies in Cafe Pizzicato and Extremadura, on the towpath and on the way to the folly, because I had spent all day watching young people wrap things up and send them away.

26.   I told you I’d just nipped in to buy one of those Egyptian boxes for a friend’s kid but they were sold out: you must have had the last one.

We ended the second time in the street, if you remember, by the entrance to the covered market. It was raining and the first thing I said was something along the lines of the weather can be so clichéd on occasions like this. I thought you looked alarmed so I did you the service of not telling you any more lies.

I was married.

I was dying.

I was about to leave the country to avoid tax.

We each have only one chance with young love.

We’d had ours. We should leave it at that. It was over. I told myself I must never regret this. I stayed under the yellow hanging lights by the market entrance as you walked across the square. I did not go after you.

I was the person I should have been. I would wait for routine to kick back in. I would get back to normal. I would work and pack boxes and sit you out. I had rehearsed. I was sure. You must never know.

Rain glittered on the cobbles. The rain looked no longer real, like the rain in films never looks real. You were growing smaller as you walked away and I could feel the thud of you descending through my shins.

I came after you then, Rosa. I caught you up. I’d had a premonition back there as I watched you walk away. I told you everything then. You know it all. And you know everything you said.

1. The naming of the house RENFIELD is an unambiguous reference to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, in which Renfield is a minor character. It provides a suitably gothic name for the house in the story.
2. The mix-up over luggage identifies that two of the house have the same initials: J.R., for John Rosowski and Janitha Rice.
3. Absinthe and champagne is otherwise known as “Death in the Afternoon” after the Hemingway novel.
4. The Bahá’í faith began in C19 Persia and is practiced by over 5 million people worldwide, Iran and India being countries of high prevalence. The faith particularly appealed to “baby boomers” who had lived and travelled abroad.
5. As a Bahá’í, even a lapsed one, the deceased will have made a will. A Bahá’í funeral should take place no more than an hour after death using whatever transportation is to hand. RENFIELD’s remoteness means that the body is buried in the island’s disused cemetery.
6. Above ground burials were once common in Britain, particularly in north Lancashire.
7. Janitha suspects mistaken identity. Benton jokingly reassures her that “there were no plans for rice this evening.”
8. Kibbe nayyeh is a northern Lebanese dish, which consists of uncooked lamb or beef, bulgar wheat and spices. A typical recipe can be found in Marwan Yamout’s Classic Lebanese Cuisine pp.22-3.
9. Ibid. pp.104
10. Group hallucinations usually take place following the ingestion of some psychotropic drugs such as “magic mushrooms”. The suggestion that this is what takes place is a rationalisation. Like everything in the story so far, there has to be, as Benton says “a more toothsome explanation.”
11. The Maricopa harvester ant, Pogonomyrmex Maricopa, generally found in Arizona, USA, is the most poisonous insect in the world. A sting from one would produce intense pain for several hours, so a swarm of ants attacking one person would be beyond imagining. For the first time the guests at RENFIELD are not convinced by Benton’s rationality.
12. Diane’s incantation, and her drawing of the funeral pyre, with the guests of the house leaping into the flames, could be interpreted as “sati” or Dakshayani.  It is unsettling enough to convince the others to abandon RENFIELD and the island.
13. In folklore a Demon can’t cross a line of salt without counting each grain. The others doubt Diane’s superstitions but do not stop her from creating a circle round each entrance, even as Benton more pragmatically locks the doors.
14. The “skiff” by the boathouse could relate to any kind of small craft. Still, fitting all four inside will be a squeeze.
15. The Scorpion and the Frog is an ancient fable in which a scorpion asks a frog to carry him across the river. The frog initially refuses, fearing a sting, and is only convinced when the scorpion points out that to sting him is to drown them both. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, putting them both to death, because, “it is in my nature.” As Benton tells the story, it appears that he is the scorpion, but in reality he may be using it to suggest that none of them are safe.
16. Janitha’s final words “is anyone else getting tired?” echo, unconsciously or otherwise, the poem “When” by Methodist poet Robert M. Latterday (1850-1901):When the LORD is bidden
    The body is expired;
    HIS words un-hidden:
    “My love is getting tired.”
17. A pandemic of “sleeping sickness”, or encephalitis lethargic, occurred between 1915-1925. There have been only isolated cases since. It places the victims in a “statue-like” condition, without speech or movement. Its cause is not known. On making shore the inhabitants of the boat will have escaped the island with their bodies, but capable of little else. Whatever they were escaping from has not let them go.
18. See 1.

In the front yard the mastodon sat, looking grateful, denting the lawn. His trunk paddled the air in boredom. His tail curled up and then flattened out. His withers worked the surrounding gravity like a washerwoman at the shallows of a stream.

These men were mammoth rustlers. Big, crazy, four limbed men. The type you allow to cut in line at the supermarket. The type who insult your wife and you say: pay it no mind, it’s just the way these men are. They breathe like they are angry to take in or give out air, as if any motion on their part is a concession to a world that doesn’t deserve it. They hold their urine until the force of it slaps against the urinal.

I am an academic, one who looks lovingly at the world, with the world looking back and saying: I can eat you, you unnecessary product of cell division. I make no ripples. My magnetic field slips and slides about my body and has never fit right. My hands have open argument with utility. My wife has never had a climax when she was coiled with me, and hasn’t thought enough of our interventions to invent the sound of one. I stumble through any ordinary social event like the space bar on a typewriter. I can better tell you what I am doing than I can do it.

But every man, even that sneeze in blue cloth, has a moment when he has to reach down to see if his jingles jangle. He has to know that, for all his intelligence and charm and grace and sophistication, he has in his cluttered cellar what he needs to become bull faced terrifying. To raise his scorching hackles and draw from the options resident within him that atavistic solution that will blow bone splitting pride through its horn like steam from a thunder well.

I said, “But that’s a mastodon.”

And they looked at me with that hatred I have seen in the eyes of thousands of anti-intellectuals: hotdog venders, grocery store clerks, pizza eating lawyers, recumbent girls in string bikinis, wine drinking pet groomers. But this was something more. There was just a hint of an exhale, a hint of room being left in the balloon. The shoulders of one dropped, a crispness passed over his face like an atmosphere exhausted on the moon, and the corner of his mouth started just slightly to crack out of its frame.

They both looked over at the mastodon. The mastodon, unaware of its sudden nuance, was staring at the movement of the stars, the everlasting glide that makes people believe the sky is turning, and others believe, for a second, the earth is turning. His head alone was the size of the neighbor’s wheelbarrow.

They said nothing and I stood in my home’s simple doorway, the light behind me, the two men in the dark, and held my ground. I could see them thinking, flash cards rising in the hardware of their brains: this is a mammoth, this is a mastodon, this is a mastodon, this is a mammoth. And they turned. They turned and started to walk slowly down my curved patio walkway, moving their feet in short frizzy glides, their hands hanging in wire ball fists, their heads bobbing like whales’ heads: unsure, but moving, moving.

I watched my shadow lay comfortably behind them as they moved out of its way. The light flooded out from around me and I counted their steps as they neared the public sidewalk, turned to head back up the street, and began to move faster, their decision reached, their purpose exchanged.

I watched them go for four houses and then lost them in the yard growth. In this neighborhood, people grow things in their front yards: roses, trellises, ornamental trees, a second or third car, gnomes, mint. I had to lean forward for a last glimpse, the two of them sliding into their next task.

In the meantime, the mastodon had moved. In slow, muted steps he had crossed the recently planted six inch hedge between my place and the pharmacist’s place next door. Leaning half in my yard and half beyond it, the mastodon was nosing my neighbor’s statue of a boy, almost the size of a real boy, standing in a fake clam shell, giving from his limp penis a stammering arc of processed water for any bird that happened by.

In a violent country across the Western Ocean
lives and breeds a type of moth which feeds
on the tears of large mammals.

Silent, like a handkerchief settling on their faces,
its wings outline the angles of their cheekbones
and absorb the salted moisture trembling between their lashes.

Sated, it will take its sadness eastwards,
and beat itself against the glass of my window
and I will trace the dusty imprinture of its effort left there
against the woven fibers of the morning.

my naked body on a massage table video camera in right hand
panning across hair folicle eyebrows curved belly dark pubic wilderness
cock neither limp nor hard
toes unable to stay still
cut to poetry magnets on a refrigerator door skin coloured
cultural messages cock as weapon
or shameful angry
rare to find healthy idea positive model culturally sanctioned
cut to knife
the word father on refrigerator door
pan over body naked still
is sexual salvation even a possibility in this culture
cut to magnets: love, freedom. joy
close-up of cock
erect
actually my reflection in a mirror
but close-up implies no frame
impression of objective camera person filming me
not camera in my right hand
only cock in frame proud and joyful
free from expectations to be furious dirty

discuss concept and artistic merit
with graduate committee supervisor (who I adore)
“a loaded image” she laughs at her own pun
“I think you should show the film”
patient approval to undress myself
in class I warn of graphic sexual content
lights dim
VHS of my uninhibited flesh embodying joy delighted to be exposed without shame
without fear
cock much larger on the big screen so strange to see
wondering if classmates will hate me or be inspired
movie ends
applause
a man shakes his head “genius”
shakes my hand
Dore, my teacher, is smiling
her brown eyes a witness
my erection and the drop of joyful dew at the tip

The whole fuselage shook. Ray’s seat shook. The girl next to him shook. Her elbows and her book shook. The tips of her hair shook as they had with every jolt since Nova Scotia [1].

Did she actually shake, though, Ray wondered, or did she quiver? Did she quiver, or did she quake? It didn’t matter. He was certain now that next time she quivered and/or shook her head would end up on his shoulder. She would like her head resting on his steep shoulder so much that she would keep it nestled there. She would then, each time the plane quivered and/or quaked, rub her lovely head into his steep shoulder that was as hard as plate armour. The skies above Greenland might be empty but later tonight fireworks would spread over London, drizzling rosy and indigo. She would quiver and she would quake.

_________________________________________________________

[1] This short story by India Emmott arrived in the post. She’d clipped a postcard of an Egon Schiele nude to the title page. There was a note written on the back.

Dear Ashley,

Please find here a story I’ve written in case you’re disappointed with me after our night with Ray.

Finding a title has been hard. I’ve toyed with A Stranger Comes to Reclaim Baggage, The Long Lick Goodnight and Kensington Gore but settled on Not for Publication. This means that you are not, should your paths ever cross again, to show this to Ray. Please help me find a better title.

Should you find yourself in London, do try to make me have coffee with you.

You do know what I mean by this, don’t you?

                India xx

I’d like to say that I’d forgotten her, but you can’t really forget India. I took her manuscript to a café, ordered mushrooms on toast, found myself a window seat and started to read.

_______________________________________________________________

Since JFK, though, they had only exchanged the briefest of smiles. She’d been engrossed in a book. The book looked poncey, too, with its milksop-white jacket and inserts that kept falling from between the pages every time the plane jolted [2].

It came to him in a flash, suddenly.

On a flight from New York to London, a tall, mysterious, capable man meets a pretty girl with a problem. He sorts out her problem. He suffers a few grazes. She shows her appreciation. He moves on.

Several of the other passengers, Ray had noticed, were reading his books, mainly the new one, The Slaying Depot, but also some of the backlist titles: Shot From Both Sides, Bloodbath Autobahn, a couple of Pump and Grind. He’d even signed a few copies for fans in the departure lounge. Ray Gorse couldn’t go anywhere without seeing his Jock Stretch novels piled up in supermarkets and airport bookshops. Jock Stretch and he had come a long way. Their story was like something out of The Iliad or The Bible.

He’d been talking Jock all week. He’d been in LA, holed up in hotel bars, checking out the girls and signing their Jocks while his US agent, Shuff Howse, hammered out a film deal. Ray Gorse (not his real name, of course, his real name is Miles Templeton [3] but he wasn’t going to tell this to the girl with the quivers even though Miles had been the toughest dude at Marlborough College until Batson-Byers rocked up in the sixth form) was returning to his roost in Monaco via a stopover in London with considerably more change in his pocket than when he’d flown out. Ahead of him were six weeks of sheer hell while he pounded out this year’s Jock.

______________________________________________________________

[2] I’d met India at Saltsell Farm in Norfolk. A programme of weeklong writing courses had been set-up by Howard Devereaux, the farm’s owner. His original tutor, Emma Hummus, had suffered a nervous breakdown after The Engorged Coypu Review said her novel That’s Why Mum’s Gone to Rehab was “relentlessly purposeful”, and thus Howard, in desperation, employed me: locally respected creative writing tutor always available at very short notice. The farm was set in beautiful countryside. There were newly built chalets dotted around that accommodated the guests and acted as writing rooms (‘scriptboriums,’ India called them). Howard had even arranged for a big name writer, Ray Gorse, an old school friend of his, to come and read in the barn on the final night.

[3] It is as well. Howard told us when he was pissed.

______________________________________________________________

The new Jock now came to him in a flash during this turbulent storm over the north Atlantic. He would call it North Atlantic Storm Turbulence: A Jock Stretch Novel: on a flight from New York to London, tall, mysterious, capable Jock Stretch meets a pretty girl with a problem. He sorts out her problem. He suffers a few grazes. She shows her appreciation. He moves on. He just keeps moving on.

She wasn’t reading a Jock, though. She was reading something called The Pictorial Jackson Review [4].

The plane shook again. A few respirator masks tumbled from their overhead compartments. Ray Gorse wasn’t fazed, not for a millisecond, but the girl beside him let out a sigh when The Pictorial Jackson Review slid across her knees. Her bookmark, which was slate-grey and embossed with a yellow clarinet, dropped onto the floor between Ray’s shoes.

He reached down to pick it up. He made sure that he looked not at her but into her, but as he looked into her not at her he experienced a terrible bump inside. Until now he hadn’t yet managed a full frontal examination.

Dusky, he thought.

She was dusky.

The word ‘dusky’ struck him like a pile driver  [5].

One fear of mine: My children resenting these days in the future. So I told my wife to put all of it aside for one day. For one day, I said, let’s focus on being the father and the mother, not the husband and the wife.

Fine, she said, as long as you plan it.

I reminded her about the poppy festival. I wanted to say, This has been the plan for weeks. Instead I said, Let’s take them to the poppy festival on Sunday.

She mentioned something about the crowds on Sundays.

I said, It’s either Saturday or Sunday, and won’t church keep some people away on Sunday?

She said, What about Monday?

I had to remind her that they have school. Had she forgotten? Again I didn’t say anything, but I pinched the back pocket of my jeans. We were in her bedroom. Our bedroom. Soon to be her bedroom, or someone else’s altogether.

We have two children, a boy and a girl. Luke is nine, and Jessica is seven. The last time we went to the poppy festival, Jessica was still a part of my wife. Baby Luke had his face painted by a clown with blue eyes. I volunteered Luke from a crowd of parents and children. The clown asked us, No brothers or sisters for this little guy? And I said, Funny you should ask, and went to put my hand on her stomach. The clown said, What a blessing. It took every piece of her not to flinch at the sight of him. I could see it. Since she was a girl in Lancaster she’d been afraid of clowns. Nothing is scarier than artificial happiness. But up close this clown seemed softer, and she allowed him to put face-paint on her stomach, for our baby Jessica, whom I can’t remember not knowing. She let the clown paint her stomach, and the mothers in the crowd made sounds that sounded like love and community.

This time, of course, will be different. Not just for my family, but for everyone. I can remember the day I realized things were changing. I walked alongside Luke and Jessica as they rode their bicycles. Jessica’s training wheels made a certain noise. Sometimes we’d take these midday trips to the Stater Bros., and I’d let them choose a DVD or video game to rent. Other times we’d stop at the Thrifty’s and take scoops of ice cream back to their parked bikes. But on this day we came back to discover that Luke’s bike had been stolen. I was naïve then. I ate a beautiful cone of green pistachio ice cream. We waited there hopeful that the person who’d taken the bicycle, sluggish with conscience, might come back. Eventually Luke asked, Why my bike and not hers. What could I tell him? We walked home, and I asked Jessica privately not to ride her bike. When I told my wife, she said, And you’re surprised because why, exactly? Have you seen the people moving in around here? Sometimes you could almost see the italics when she spoke.

Last year’s poppy festival, according to those who attended, went off without a hitch, so I’m hopeful that for at least one aspect of our community culture, order has been retained. I have friends – Martha from the bank, for instance – who are, I’m not afraid to say, socially backward people. Martha refused to open a Mexican’s account because his English wasn’t up to her standards. She went on her lunch break and left me to work with him. Meanwhile she misspelled the word bureaucrat on her rally sign. I’m different, I hope. I’m not afraid of change. I’m afraid of the disintegration of a good thing. Update: Nothing is scarier than the disintegration of a good thing.

Or maybe that’s her excuse, too. Update: Nothing is scarier than seeing your reasonable excuse used unreasonably.

Sunday’s come. We pack the car with blankets we haven’t used in years. My wife drives, maybe for the last time, and I turn in the passenger seat so that I can look at my children in the back. I ask Luke, Do you remember the last time you went to the poppy festival? Luke’s getting to an age where he’s not afraid to disappoint me. He says, How can I remember? I was just a baby. Jessica says, I remember. They’ve heard the story about the clown a thousand times. Jessica says, It’s my very first memory. Luke gives her a hard time about it, using the word logical, which he’s just begun to use everywhere. My wife says some quiet would be nice. She’s in a bad mood and it’ll only get worse. I don’t care. Soon we’ll be at the poppy festival and the orange flowers will turn the day into a color-coded memory, and the color will give that memory a smell, and a flavor, a chocolate orange, peeled away in layers, and the flavor will turn into a feeling low in my chest when I think about it, and – scariest of all – when I don’t think about it.

We bring coolers with cold drinks, portable grills to cook hamburgers and hot dogs, portable TVs to watch him step out of the car on the news with us cheering in the background; make posters to hold up to the cameras (JUSTICE FOR KACEY AND LYLE; DIE PETE; FORGET THE COST… KILL HIM); and do interviews with local and national news correspondents, saying things like, I mean, yeah, they should kill him, the punishment should fit the crime; and, He knew what he was gonna do to that woman all along. Later on, we will tell people we know, who are working or otherwise busy this morning and afternoon, how we saw Pete Britton the wife and baby killer, clearly, up close, entering and leaving the courtroom, clean-cut, thinner than during the trial, in a blue suit, smiling, probably smiling (the fuck), although the horde of police and media block our view and we gather the details from TV like everyone else.

We never knew Kacey’s family (though we’ve seen them crying on TV) or Kacey herself. But we know enough—how Kacey’s body washed up on the rocks of the Bay, the fish having eaten her arms and legs, and then the unborn baby a few days later, in about the same condition; how Pete was making concrete anchors in the weeks leading up to her disappearance; how he was fishing on the Bay that very day and still proclaims his innocence; how he was cheating on Kacey and planning a new life with his mistress, a nervous-looking blonde whore career girl, who says she thought he was single. And Kacey’s photo on TV, turning a big smile on us, body profile fully pregnant, beautiful. So, we know.

Because of Pete, we know that our daughter’s thirty year-old good-looking husband can kill her and dispose of her body just like that, no remorse. But we say our daughter like we say our kids or our boys about soldiers overseas when none of us knows, or even knows someone who knows, a soldier overseas.

We arrive early. Every once in a while, as we wait, looking across at the brick facade of the now-silent courthouse, to disrupt conversations of refinancing mortgages or gas prices or local high school sports, someone says something like, He’ll be quivering when he’s in the chair (although we know statistics lean toward lethal injection, if the jury does suggest death), and someone else says, Yeah they’re all cowards when it’s their turn; rising taxes or reconfiguring sprinkler systems or food and beer prices at baseball games, and someone says, They’ll plug his ass like Bundy till he cries, and someone else says, I think they plug everyone’s ass so they don’t shit themselves, and someone else says, they’re always, always cowards when it’s their turn.

But no one knows for hours yet. And even then we only know gradually.

In unison, a slight stir of voices and movement across the street and here, in the Municipal Building parking lot, one of us looks up from a portable TV and says, “Death!”

“Death?” another of us, a man wearing an L.A. Lakers hat, says.

A chain of mumbles begins: Death Death? Death. Holy…Yeah, death. Just said it death Death! Death?

Watching ourselves on the news later, we will notice a woman, mid-thirties, in a tight white tank top and short beige shorts, gazing across at the courthouse with a blank smiling expression, say, at the end of the mumbling, “Ohh, wow. Oh my God…”

And we will wonder: Has the sudden reality of death, whatever the circumstances, caused her momentary stupor, or has this woman, one of us, suddenly fallen in love with Pete Britton?

In the year of the earth Snake,
on a moist Hong Kong morning,
I nosed through a black-lacquered cabinet, Grandma,
and found it full of you:

Newspaper clippings and photo albums
smelling of nguh eh nongs and mooncakes,
smelling of a girl who escaped habitual snuffing,
smelling of your Shanghai—

You, rubbing your temples,
blushing in the black-and-whiteness of Russian jazz bands
at a table full of latecomers from the international settlements,
somewhere between smoke and sherry.

You, in high heels and anti-New Life Movement hair,
purse under your arm, ceremonial rope in your hand,
guiding the Hirzai colt and jockey through a mass of sweating Chinese,
some in cheung-sams, others in fedoras and Irish tweed.

You, slender and oriental, standing along Ya-fei Lo
with a pink-skinned husband and a solemn-eyed daughter,
eyes turned towards a land of perfumed harbours,
where the Japanese will force you to go.

You, in Edith Head white gown and elbow-high gloves,
walking down a catwalk in your Zhou Xuan-esque  beauty,
in a room of tight-lipped, ex-pat servicemen’s wives,
looking at anything but you.

You, frowning at salty fish and ginger,
yelled away by hawkers, tripping in your steps,
wondering where the ingredients are to knup-knup,
a dish that makes sense to no-one else.

You, watching The Young and the Restless in your make-believe opium den,
squatting on your fold-up bed, puffing Dunhill lights,
remembering Portuguese boys,
waiting for buried friends to play mahjong.

And you, staring into a Yoksang hand-mirror,
fussing with your frizzled hair,
powdering your yellow-white face
and smiling at the shadows behind you.

Geraldine Illingworth saw
the Buitoni Oven Roasted
Butternut Squash Ravioli
with brown butter sage
sauce and said:

 Se ve
delicioso. Can I find it
in Mexico? No, Geraldine,
God answered, Come
back home.

Second place goes to Nathan Moore’s semantic comedy Exegesis, and third place to Marc Vincenz’s While Facing the Urinal. All three poets win personalised subscriptions to Stack Magazines.

Robert’s subtle and disarming poem topped a thrilling selection of verse and prose from across the world. To read all our finalists, click backwards from Marj Hahne’s elliptical prose poem Mg – Magnesium 12, published this week, to John McCullough’s Flittermouse, from July 1st.

“While I cannot say I deserve this award,” Robert told Fleeting, “I am honoured to receive it. In an age when ideas and words have become matters of life and death, Fleeting’s recognition of the positive power inherent in language itself is both heartening and hopeful.”

Special Commendations go to Chelsea Armstrong for ‘Sun Stains’, Sharlene Teo for ‘Eaglefish Lasagna’, Adrian Perks for ‘The Girl, The House, The Man, The Suit’, Luiza Sauma for ‘Milk’,  Fatima Al Matar for ‘Who Sleep Alone’, Tim Anderson for ‘Before the Canvas’, Sarah Evans for ‘The First Time’, Zoe Wodehouse for ‘In Lieu of Purpose Forgotten’, Kulpreet Yadav for ‘Not the Only Peanut Seller Who Hasn’t Heard of Osama’, Natasha Skinner for ‘A Visit’, Kate Woof for ‘Double Time’, Jazmín Oña for ‘Direction’, and Alice Slater for ‘Edamame’.

Thank you to all who entered and wrote about Fleeting this year, and to Jack Davison for his accompanying photographs. Please keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter for the next competition.

“Fleeting Magazine have started announcing their Best Short Writing In The World 2011. In my opinion, there couldn’t be a higher accolade.”
Sarah Dawson, Poetry After Ink