Matthew Sweeney

Last year I was going downstairs, now I’m going upstairs. Up there is a rocking horse in red velvet. I’ll dust him off with a crow’s wing, then I’ll shake the kitchen ceiling. I’ll jump off in mid-buck, onto the round water-bed I bounced on with black-haired, patchouli-scented X to the drawl of Mick Jagger. I’ll take the brass telescope to the...

White are the streets in this shabbiest- grown of the world’s great cities, whiter than marshmallow angels. Descending by parachute, one would be arriving in a world long dead. One would also be stiff with cold.

And if one, perhaps, would dangle there in a skeletal tree, swigging brandy from the equipment, rubbing fur ear-flaps, one would have a view of the street unhindered by...

I am summoned: a double handclap from my mother’s ivory hands and I fill the silver tureen with pumpkin soup the colour of oranges. I enter on feet of air. Her smile subsides like a wave on sand pointing me towards the curtain of mauve velvet where I must stand.

Wine is shared. A toast to mother updates a grace before meals then the ladle becomes a wand and oohs climb from warmed...