On the birthing table, the Red Queen, knees up, legs spread far apart, pushes and pushes and pushes again. Snatches of Beethoven – or maybe it’s Mozart, something classical anyway – float out of her. And the royal physician is like “OK, why not?” Meanwhile, red ants the size of delivery wagons are rampaging through the countryside in what the Lord Chamberlain describes in official dispatches as just a temporary disturbance of nature. Even if true, the explanation is of no comfort to the defenseless peasants who die in their thousands with wounds that resemble the velvety red petals of roses.

Howie Good is the author of more than a dozen poetry collections, including most recently Gunmetal Sky (Thirty West Publishing) and The Bad News First (Kung Fu Treachery Press).