Maria Sanger

      Number 13. The embrace of decay. The much anticipated collection of Dr Franz Bauer She stared at the many photographs of blackthorns. A cluster of people wandered past and gathered at the next easel, but her feet refused to budge from ‘Number 13’....

Ansuya Patel

      Venerate Her Husband’s Image As A God Think what it must have been like for her fasting from sunrise to moonrise, to wake up three hours before dawn, bathe, apply sindoor on the parting of her hair line, decorate her hands with henna, dress in a...

Chris Beckett

      Bob & Moses Zerihun drove him over the dead-cow hills and Bob’s long hair stood up with shock at what he saw. Every time they stopped, a volley of shepherd boys attacked the Landcruiser with stinging hands and their weightless voices echoed...

Geoff Sawers

      The Generals There must be some kind of key, some motive-piece, that explains where we are, or were, or will be. We don’t know how we know this. Maybe a map held in some archive that can never safely be released or viewed; drawn up for an...

Angela France

      The Cloud Driving into low cloud everything fades to a blur, all colour and definition leached so that trees and buildings become vague shapes. The glimpse of a house light is a spark, a blink like the flicker of the broadband router and it seems...

David Van-Cauter

      Lifeboat Two calls this morning – flood of tears… She cannot eat a single thing they give her. Instead it’s up to us to ship it in like cargo: bananas, sandwiches, pork pies and now consommé soup – remember that? These are the things that bind us...