MIR Editor

Near Brownsville, where the Rio Grande zigzags from border to border, a man and his twenty-three-month old daughter float face down in the murky river. Beneath his sodden t-shirt, she’s clinging to her father in one final, primal embrace. * “Alaska, that’s where it starts.”  Kingi’s smoke ring floats for a moment, then dissolves into…

Whenever there’s a crisis, the women in my family cook. A health crisis in the family, that is. I’m not talking about the tsunami in Florida or the genocide in Scotland or the famine on the Isle of Wight. Just common or garden family matters of birth, illness and death.

If someone broke into your house now, how would you get out? Ever since I was a child I have always planned my escape route.  It started as a game; a question posed to myself. Then I would spend a delicious few minutes plotting my escape. It was a child’s flight of fancy of course,…

Whoever named this town Prosper had a sense of humour, and no one was laughing anymore. Prosper was dusty and dry, the kind of sleepy place that looks good in an old black and white film, but not so good in technicolour. Once there was a mill, and fields which could be worked. Then the…

His mother had been a fan of the Ford Cortina. Like her son, she had admired the shape, their finesse. Finesse. Through him, she had acquired an interest in cars; we’re just two car freaks spotting on Holloway Road, they used to sing to the tune of Wish You Were Here. But this February morning, almost a year…

Today is my Dissolution Day. I’m supposed to be relieved. I’m not. I’m not anything. I place my ear against the wall of our shared quarters and ignore the half-hidden glances of my bunkmates. This far down there is only a head’s width between us and the water. It’s a constant, a lapping hiss that…

The day Mohammad came into school after his father had disappeared was a memorable one, in that the teachers mostly did not know how to behave. It happened a day after that rip in space and time within the walls of the elevator. I wondered whether his disappearance was an unintended byproduct of that tear…

The woods at this time are poised, stalagmite; somehow, their lack of rustling voices makes them all the more disturbing. They are often compared to silent men, soldiers in solemn parade. But to Renée, the twisted conifers coiling themselves in throttling spirals move as women. Agonised, wild-haired, long-fingered, these trees crawl towards the sun. Like…

Note: now that certain obstacles and anxieties are finally out of the way, the big question is this: can you handle the security that monogamy promises without the boredom that causes you to fall asleep at the wrong time?

See through me. See through me. The base picks up, my nerves spark and the words slow down, stretching over me. Spin, spin, sugar.