The Missing Links
Lee Rourke reviews The Bird Room in the Independent: “An impatient reader might acquiesce, mistaking this novel as yet another male-in-crisis fiction about unrequited love and loneliness. But those who seek something unique in the contemporary British novel will delight in this adroit, snappy debut, a dark and beguiling meditation on the weight of being, […]
Eat Y’Self Fitna
From freedom of expression organisation Article 19 (you can view the film for yourself here, with the usual caveats.) ARTICLE 19 considers that the decision of the Secretary of State for the Home Department (the “Secretary of State”) to ban Geert Wilders, a member of the Dutch parliament, from travelling to the UK on the […]
Three Poems
The bottoms of his feet are dry and crackled, like paper. Almost sharp curly black hair on the top of his feet. On one side, it’s all smooth. I run a finger over his dry skin. He pulls his feet away. Says stop. He watches television and I lay belly down on his back. I loop my arms through his. “Am I crushing you?” I ask. “You like it,” I tell him. His belt rubs a raw spot into his side. He’s embarrassed of the scab. The studs on his belt rub against my hip bone. Sometimes at night he pulls me to see if I’ll roll over onto him. Later he snores and I tell him not yet, that I’m still awake. He snores again. I try to push him to his side of the bed. My hand is stuck between him and the mattress. He rolls over onto my pillow. “No,” he tells me. I hear an ambulance go by and see the flashing red lights shine through the blinds and reflect in the mirror. I kiss him and he rolls away.
By Brandi Wells.