Nod

by Adrian Barnes

The names we give gatherings of birds are telling: murders of crows, sieges of herons, unkindnesses of ravens.

At times everyone wonders how deeply buried contempt is beneath the surface of their friends’ and lovers’ smiles; most of us suspect—accurately, I believe—that it lies in a shallow grave,

there’s a fine line between ‘writing’ and babbling to oneself.

When you stop and think about it, that’s the take-home message of the entire New Testament: off the prophet.

jitters. After all, anybody looking with open eyes at the world we’d made would have to have been very, very worried.