Conversation with the Doctor You hold my breath before me, pickled in a jar, it looks like veins when held up to the light; this could be life, this could be the future of reproduction. You bring me back, back in the room, back to tweezers, and...

      The Stork A huge white question mark stalks a field outside Bassersdorf. Black mourning tips folded back, a softly red bill probes the earth. The legendary bringer of babies, your blessed image hangs above those more fortunate doors. Ours creaked...

      At the State Fair I wander.  Caloric food stops me. Sometimes there’s good music. This year a man in a black shirt plays a country guitar in front of a shining ferris wheel. He sings about love, it’s endless, which I guess makes it real.  Even the...

      Signs My dad when driving liked to read out road signs, shop signs or the shouty, foot-high letters on advertising boards. ASHBOCKING. THREE MILES. GOLF SALE. THE BEST A MAN CAN GET. Recently I’ve started doing this myself. My children find it...

      Found At the end of a sunny parquet corridor: the shock of mud dumped on the pristine, polished floor. Closer in, vision adjusts; the lump seems like a salt-rasp sob that clots the building’s throat. Dread-dense as a sea mine, heavy as a bell cut...

      Grace Trailing the outer path of Regent’s Park like a half-lit ghost grieving the foetus I’ve shed I crawl under the skirts of a pink rhododendron. I enter a womb of writhing branches, humming blooms, pink filtering light. A bee homes in on my...

      The Bus Pulls Up The bus pulls up at the curb beside the half-smoked cigarettes, a single rain-soaked woolen glove, and two face masks, one with peacocks, the other with Pikachu.     Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His...

      Skate Music Everything went wintry. You skated out hunched and tentative – your fading skill recognising limits. Each scrape of fate came smaller, and we watched you skirl until you were out of reach of sight or ear, free and final as a...