“I feel a twist, a glass fleck in the flesh between my forefinger and thumb, a long sliver shock shooting up inside my wrist almost to my elbow, so deep in the scar tissue my palm flexes, connects to my finger ends so I’m not sure whether my hand jumps or pushes, whether I go to slap, strike, scratch, paddle, claw but suddently we are standing her mouth open, my mouth open, my hand frozen in the air between us. She knows I have performed a trick, I have thrown something and caught it, made it disappear just before it became a red mark on her cheek, or blood on her lip, a new territory, a place we would need reverse gear.“
Steve is the offspring of a nurse and an architect, he grew up near Manchester, lived in Durham and London, stayed longer than anywhere else near Leeds, and is on his way back to Manchester, though he prefers to be elsewhere, especially in northern European cities and near Valencia. He produces cultural and found reading projects and co-founded The Writing Squad, a programme for young writers in the north or England.
