by Jacqueline Crooks

• ‘sucked into the slipstream of rippling spines.’ (p. 5)
• ‘Nobody knows if he’s lost his mind or found a higher consciousness, like our men who lead the marches and rallies, chanting ‘Black Power’ over the heads of the sistren.’ (p. 6)
• ‘ancient spirits reanimated by sensimilla and body heat.’ (p. 11)
• ‘He plays it cool, but he’s like all the other men–rebels, rude bwoys, my poopa–super-sensitised to danger, set on survival mode, stepping on the streets, torsos swinging from their waists like obeah men, with panoramic views of a world that’s out to get them.’ (p. 11)
• ‘I make my way to my tower block, where grey-white curtains billow like spirits at dark windows and metal coffin lifts shuttle between heaven and hell.’ (p. 14)
• ‘What do I make of a man who carries on dem ways, his heart locked in a cage?’ (p. 15)
• ‘It always takes me time to realise someone’s hurting me. A few minutes, a day, a year. Twenty-four years. Four hundred years. But at some point there’s the familiar feeling as my blood picks up speed, tracks and traces some evolutionary chemical inside my gut. Rage.’ (p. 26)
• ‘From the first touch his loving haunts my body, floods it with a desire that is both poison and antidote.’ (p. 36)
• ‘The story moves like a trail of smoke, winding its way into my body.’ (p. 37)
• ‘I feel to tell him that I love him bad, but I’m afraid of songs with upbeat words and downbeat music and up to now that’s all I’ve known of love.’ (p. 41)
• [discussing Thatcher] ‘National Front in pussy-bow blouses.’ (p. 50)
• ‘She speaks in scalding undertones, and I realise that Oraca suppresses her anger, like me. Because nowhere’s safe–not the streets, governed by police with barbed-wire veins; not our homes, ruled by men with power fists as misshapen as their wounds. The only place to live and rage from is our hearts.’ (p. 53)
• ‘red-and-green barges drift along the canals. I imagine a day like this, hundreds of years ago, pagans dancing around the beech trees, leaves braided in their hair, making offerings of seeds and song.’ (p. 54)
• ‘their bodies moving like the stars above, a floating stillness.’ (p. 56)
• ‘I rest my head on his shoulder, and as I look into the water I realise that what I want from Moose on the Sunday nights that I go to him is not his body. It’s his peace.’ (p. 57)
• ‘Dream I’m deep-diving in the ocean with Black women. They look like Muma. And me. Same solar-plexus eyes. They’ve been floating there for hundreds of years carrying the weight of water on their heads.’ (p. 63)
• ‘I’m just as afraid of what might happen if my imagination grows wings and my rage flies out.’ (p. 88)
• ‘Why are the towers built so close to the sky? Segregation by airspace.’ (p. 94)
• ‘And I can see now that Asase was my friend because I didn’t want her as an enemy. I’d been in a prison of my own making.’ (p. 102)
• ‘Now I’ve been thrown overboard into a dark sea. My soft-body is coral, taking root on the ocean floor, nothing to hold on to but coldness and darkness for centuries to come.’ (p. 110)
• ‘Vodou-drift black clouds, electronic loops of planetary sound.’ (p.138)
• ‘‘They didn’t just uproot our bodies,’ he says. ‘They uprooted our forests, our rivers, our seas and seeds. Reparation is needed so we can replant ourselves.’’ (p. 149)
• ‘Gotta be as gentle with ghosts as with newborns. Sing them songs in return for their truths.’ (p.153)
• ‘bare beech trees swaying like dancers in the shrouded vocals of the wind.’ (p. 155)
• ‘their skulls hanging like limp flower-heads’ (p. 158)
• ‘High E strings in my stomach, pulling on my guts, but I can’t seem to dredge the siren sound to my throat.’ (p. 169)
• ‘walking with a crocodile’s slow, dragging steps and heavy-eyed watchfulness.’ (p. 216)
• ‘Did he realise he got more than he bargained for when he stared into the eyes of ghosts, their voices fluid in his heart stump?’ (p. 237)
• ‘mystics who’ve spun their minds outside their bodies.’ (p. 238)
• ‘Vibrational smog, their voices are the cold, lo-fi crackling of that night.’ (p. 242)
• ‘saints with sepulchre eyes that see nothing but ghosts.’ (p. 249)
• ‘Ghost orchids in black-sediment darkness.’ (p. 250)
• ‘Green jigsaw-piece islands below, the past floating on blue.’ (p. 253)
• ‘spewing spells, hymn-squalling, connecting you here.’ (p. 256)
• ‘Her salt-glazed eyes widen as she lets out a star-bound note. You wait for it to fall and light the next revolution.’ (p. 257)
• ‘She squints her green eyes at me like a cat that can sense oncoming spirits.’ (p. 266)