Maybe the Birds
Women’s instincts and memories are alchemical in A. J. Ashworth’s unnerving speculative collection Maybe the Birds.
In one tale, a school shooting survivor carves mementos mori for the lost; her relationship fractures with the knowledge that “she cannot now be the person she was or the girl he still wants her to be.” In another, moths “clutter” in the mind of a woman whose mother warned her to be careful around strange men, but who is seduced by a Bluebeard-evocative falconer anyway.
The title story focuses on a widow in a postapocalyptic landscape who adores her dog. In her studio, for him most of all, she tries to recapture the disappeared sound of birdsong. Elsewhere, there’s terrifying poetry to a mirror-maker’s daughter’s turn toward vampirism. Though mourning her father, she conceives of a way to protect her neighbors, who protect her in turn.
These are tales with body horror elements that leave breadcrumbs toward transformation. Their sharp lines become tactile through mentions of baubles both internal and palpable, including a monolith, a scrap of witch skin, flickering desire, honey rum kissed from lips, and rainbows that are “violently alive.” Metafictional elements arise, as do fourth wall breaks and internal references—curious, spark-throwing throughlines.
Some tales carry recollections of lonely shame; there are visions of a lamp “carved from red sandstone” and finger bones in jars too. Among the entries, which crawl forward from the ancient past and reach into uncertain futures, are accounts of love and loss, of coming together, coming out, and dissolution. They range from foreboding grey to prismatic in their raw and aching tones. All hold awareness that “death will come for us all, regardless of our pleading and magic-making … But, yet, we try. We still try.”
A bounty of otherworldly charms await in the speculative collection Maybe the Birds.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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