[This is a bit darker than usual for this blog. So you may or may not want to read on … transportation was the name given to the eighteenth and nineteenth century policy of shipping British convicts out to the colonies.] The Transportation Problem Poor old nags. They shuffled in on a gust of gin.…

This bear, clothed in the skin of a bear on skeletal steel, bars the gate at Buckingham P. Bars the gate and crushes my heart. I wish I could bash his knees, rust his sharp elbows, his killing claws, introduce him — oh unpatriotic desire — to lumbering freedom.

The Matchgirl Grown Up She had never cared what others thought and didn’t now that clockwork let “the cripple” dance light as thistledown. They didn’t know the agony to wind the legs, the bleeding hands that worked the key. She wrapped her palms in linen rags and watched her daughter dance. *** Good, bad, indifferent…