Recipe
The font is joined-up letters, the blotched paper sticky in places, the reference to sizes of eggs misleading. In ounces, originally, the instructions have been translated into the three languages of the cooker:- Celsius from the Swedes, Fahrenheit from the Germans, and regulo British. Method is brief but I can show you how … – […]
Records
The Scratches and crackles of the old 78. Grandfathers voice spinning around my head. I never knew it but you marked my fate. The Bakelite jumps and is out of date. Clipped consonants that are now long dead. The scratches and crackles of the old 78. Your voice was vibrant and carried weight, passing on […]
Inheritance
Very rushed. Sorry. Yes, that is an excuse. Inheritance They say they don’t need to know why their skin is fair like hers. Why they tilt their heads the same way she does. They say they don’t mind that she’s the head of her tree. It’s enough to know they’re them and she’s her. And […]
The silver donkey
The silver donkey Small, with outsize head and ears, balanced on dainty hooves, always standing on my mother’s dressing table. “It’s not a toy. It’s valuable, you know,” she would say, gently removing it from my hands, then those of my children, putting it back in position. Nowadays I gently remove it from the hands […]
The Next Generation
They talk about family, about grannies and babies, about hopes for the future, strange words in sound from 3D printers that call themselves human. There is only the present. I wait to do my work. There is a pride function. I wait for the touch of a hand. They show each other images of earlier […]
Day 10. Inheritance
Inheritance. Here’s a poem by Anne Stevenson http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/179576 An unusual inheritance.