Paul Nemser

A girl who slept in a truck tyre and walked a year of miles was driven back down through dry forests on a small-eyed bus with drooping heads – to no rooms for a child, but the murderers were there, ones with fingers, ones with lips, the spiny-back lizard who killed her brother after Mama ran away like an angel without wings. ‘I mean to find your father’ – did the girl...

By the time the company reconfigured the work plan, I was too old to use any of my skills, But I went along looking for another pile of trinkets, figuring my pockets were hardly full.

When we got to Berlin, the streets were so torn up that the night was a stumble through a coal pit, the holes leading only to holes.

I fumbled to repair an underground switch which, no matter what you...