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Washing the body

I was the coward. The others were calm. They knew what they had to do. Our cousin Zen was there, she had done this before. Zen is a happy person. She made us giggle in the waiting room, while the funeral director was telling us everybody have a sense they will pass about say maybe […]

from traces

It is forbidden to spit on cats in plague-time. – Albert Camus, The Plague, translated by Stuart Gilbert i. mark You have ruined your eyes reading by candlelight, and singed your wings – white feathers smudged like Ash Wednesday, in this, the year of the plague. You have saved her voice and when she speaks […]

a constitution

…grape vines actually perform better when nutrients are scarce… These conditions cause the vine to focus more energy on survival and less energy on growing grapes… and each grape has more character, concentration, and quality. – Winefolly.com The harder an entity has to work for something, the greater it will be rewarded in the end. […]

Treading Water

When I find myself slipping, I hold on and remember what the canal taught me: No journey is a straight line. The last time we walked here together, I reminded you that not long ago this canal cut a dark scar through the Pennines, from Manchester to Sowerby Bridge. Its future slippery, almost sunk. But […]

Landscape of wounds

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Claire Carlotti I am the night; my soul, my gaze, my dream are the worst wounds While in the shadowed mirror, my lips brush against pursed wounds. Autumn bleeds through each season, my Libra upsets Sagittarius And the arrow strikes Scorpio, releasing venom from burst wounds. The bull, weary and […]

Land of Wounds

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Crystal Peng I am soul        gaze, ghost, & slumber                                            my nights are sullen, wounded        when I kiss myself in dim mirror                                                  my lips are gushed & swollen, wounded I am years        stitched […]

Woundistan

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Jhermayne Ubalde My soul, my hopes, my dreams – they bleed My reflection, stained red with the taste of an estranged lover’s kiss Autumn bleeds into centuries Scorpio: dancing with death Libra: pulling back the drawstring Sagittarius: embracing its result The world sways on a bovine axis of fury painted […]

Realm of Wounds

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Divya Mehrish I am soul, eyes                  my shadow haunts my dreams      wounds            these dreams: nights of wet mirrors;       lips pressed against reflection;        I kiss my lips,       I kiss my eyes. My lips are wounded.             I am a time […]

Bleeding Home (Wounded)

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Annie Lane My soul, my sight, my shadow, my night, my every dream – all are bloodied. I kissed my reflection, the mirror split – My lips are wounded. A venomous year, an autumn year. Each constellation ploughs into the next and My Scorpio is wounded. The bull’s horns shake […]

Wound Without End

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Gemma Craig-Sharples My lips on mine in the mirror, wounded A comfortless kiss for my soul, wounded His arrow pins me to poisoned autumn And the year snags: seasons wounded Earth trembles on the raging bull’s horns with A hitch of heart, this heart, my heart, wounded I have no […]

Wound-i-stan Ghazal

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Charlotte Hughes I am sleep, a body gazing down at its own shadow during the night of wounds. I am lips the color of the red dawn that kiss the mirror, love their wounds When each season turns to autumn—Sagittarius shot through, Libra uneven. Venom eats Scorpio inside out like […]

headwound

by Suhrab Sirat, translated by Ellora Sutton Gaze: the night is bright and light-wounded. The mirror shatters. My kissing lips are wounded. I am a calendar, days split and divided by barbed wire. I am Libra, Sagittarius, Scorpio, wounded. My sloppy red heart, heart, heart, this raging bull is wounded. I have no footprint. My […]

Tammy

For Tammy the hamster I think perhaps nature made you Soft for us, because there’s no sane Reason for you to wear a cloud for a coat. If there is in your littlenesses Some ancient, statue-high message I think it is not a lofty one. You speak more in the warm Thereness you bring on […]

Ode to Blu Tack

Speck of skyslide, Penicillium mold grown in zero gravity              you have no shape to speak of. Semi-precious adhesive, you belong with beautiful things. Ancient Egyptians would have placed you with gold              inlaying death masks with Blu Tack and fingerprints understanding that a soul takes many forms, each carrying the same weight.              O […]

Ode to a Desk Fan

You, my favourite soprano, sizzling egg white, caged bird with metal tongue, the moon reflecting the air of the room back to itself. I turn you on in the morning and you don’t stop, spinning gold from the open window, festooning my face with the curious fingers of unsure ghosts. You are a crystal ball. […]

Joy Museum

Content warning: references to suicide Even after it all, I want to live so badly that I lock the doors, I turn the gas stove off and lift my head from the bathwater. I return the insignificant calls and write letters to thank other people for living too, for waking up early and making bread […]

To the Ladybird of Uber

I am sorry for tearing off my mask (your holiday home) and shouting what the – as you huffed on car carpet but I remember how strong your red bauble back gleamed with its dilated pupil pattern and – at the rolled window – how reluctantly you allowed the wind to touch your line-drawn legs […]

Ode to Pubes

Black Hydra jungle vines, curly and thick. Cut off the head and three more grow back. Dear pubes, I am supposed to despise you. Mow the lawn until I am smooth, pure and woman again. Rip you from the root like some unholy and unfeminine weed. Perhaps I did this once – forgot about cavewomen […]

After the Funeral

I wrote an ode to the dust motes kicked up like the smoke of her body. O light and pixie-ish things, disturbing the still of the air and mind. Giving us leave to crack the silence. Gifting us the salt to cry with. O catching of grief in my throat: an excuse for the broken […]

Ode to a Dog Howling in the Background of Zoom Class

Sometimes I think my whole little world               revolves around me— my four walls of paste and foamboard,               plywood turrets and hollow molding, all held up by a nail from the eighties.               Each day a reflection of the next. The same food—apples pierced               in the center, white bread, orange cheese stuck together […]

ode to the fridge in our student house

you are the most non-judgmental cuboid. o pockmarked monolith, not full of stars but carrots (accidentally bought in bulk), and buttery light that melts across the floor like a sunrise in the kitchen at 1am. i love my home but i miss your magnetism, your souvenir fridge magnets worn like medals, princess leia declaring to […]

The Angel Gabriel Visits Mary in Bedlam (Ecce Ancilla Domini!)

after Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting ‘Ecce Ancilla Domini!’ content warning: mental ill health, self-harm suicide   look at the dove   so wide   a suicide against the wall   wrap it up in the blue cloth   I’ve been keeping it unwrinkled for such a purpose   long blue tongue of heaven   little feathers   […]

The Piano

after Rebecca Horn’s sculpture ‘Concert for Anarchy’ Of all the stupid things I bought with your money worst of them was the piano, a big black grand far too big for our cottage, seeming to tip the floor, upend what little light made it through our windows. I had every intention of learning how to […]

Angel’s Flight

after Millard Sheets’s painting ‘Angel’s Flight’ Only just May and hot as hell at the top of Angel’s Flight behind the glass that keeps you from the sky, your hip jutting out like a threatened cliff, that malted milkshake dress declaring every bump you’ve ever ridden roughshod over, cradling the vacancy inside – too many […]

Millais’ Return of the Dove

after John Everett Millais’ painting ‘Return of the Dove to the Ark‘ I.               and the girls have been floating                  in this barn                  for almost a year                  remembering and forgetting     […]

You Bring Out the Bourgeois in Me

after Louise Bourgeois’s ‘Arched Figure’ Please don’t wake me. Walking on my hands through dream-suburbs of green belt, the gabled house-fronts of Ickenham, I must slumber on through volumes of obsession-diaries, feeding myself with my clever girl’s fingers, tongue grown too big for my mouth. Lying in my stockinette of lard, stitched pig, I feel […]

Waging Peace

after Cai Guo-Qiang’s ‘Gunpowder Art’ the rumour unfurled like ink in water that a ten day-war was imminent on the first day we woke to small gifts on our graves rice and apples, toys and books and slices of cake on the second day 100,000 cherry trees were planted on the border that our divisions […]

Interior, Vincent Terrace

after Frank Auerbach’s ‘Interior Vincent Terrace’ Let’s start with a piece of furniture – say a table or chair or bed – add some figures have them doing something – making love, quarrelling, misconducting themselves – have me enter with the desire to hang myself like a lantern from your ceiling in the warm wet […]

Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales

after Hendrick van Anthonissen’s painting ‘View of Scheveningen Sands’ for Sionna we stood on the shore for a century at least, waiting for something to happen. when paint dries it leaves a ghost of the liquid sea; time exists as space; we watch the enormity of your absence. the past goes extinct. it’s like being […]

Miss Clara, Rhinoceros in Venice

after Pietro Longhi The fifth specimen, I believe, since the time of Rome she is an old and nicely padded lady with her skin all ruched and drooping Poverina, ten years paraded before Empress and Elector in the sad company of two dwarves and a crocodile until she ends up here, sans corno to be […]

Ash Flower

after Anselm Keifer the dead, who are thinner than gas might fit comfortably in their millions in a simple cardboard box so why this desolate hangar – ankle-deep in guano and plaster-dust, quiet as a sick forest was Buchenwald once really a forest – trees     acid-stripped and skeletal grow down out of a broken pane […]

Mollusc

after Sigmar Polke’s painting ‘The Illusionist’ Her bedroom became her father’s darkroom. Here he made magic, turned negative positive, called her his special assistant. Closely he focused on his assistant, taught her how to work the developer, stop-bath, fixer, too, left her with prints of the family history. Downstairs with arms crossed sat her mother, […]

Unliving

after Callum Innes’s exposed painting ‘Green Lake’ It is enough to paint a square of black, so black it swallows light, black as a trap-door to the past, black as basalt. Next to it, another black square. Unpaint it with a brush dipped in turpentine, unpaint until the green inside black appears. Focus on black […]

Seascape, 1952

after L.S. Lowry’s painting ‘Seascape’ This scene is teeming with next-to-nothing: sky only just distinguishable from the sea, the sea a hair’s breadth from being beach; I have the feeling that any minute now a single gull will appear, or a pebble will emerge from the only-just sand; that not too long ago, something vanished […]

Cartoon

after Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawing ‘The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist’, kept in the dark room at the National Gallery This love is kept in the dark. You only visit it, through curtain Of hush and black, you step Into a different colour of time. There is no eye […]

Bride of a Beast

after Odd Nerdrum’s painting ‘Running Bride’ Bride of a beast, silent, tyrant woman caged out of her own poem. I’ve been cradling a wet rag to his feet when I could be dressed in nothing but a summer mist. Where is that girl gutting a bear to wear its hide as a bride, chopping fur […]

the lake is enough to blind you

after Bob Ross’s painting ‘Winter Mountain Lake’ It is an old story. Girls, perched on banks, shedding masks onto the moonlit pebbles. They are giggling, brushing white flecks off their noses. The myth tells them to drag fingers into the lake, lick the ripple, splash dirty off their mishaven legs. Mother warned of wolves nuzzling […]

hangul abecedarian

after Franny Choi and Jeff Koons’s Gazing Ball Series get up—as in the world goes on, as in you cannot not spin until you collapse into the couch next to you. do you know why you can move in a moving world? listen. you don’t hear the gentle whir of an axis, mounted on a […]

Pink Dress Pastoral

after Andrew Wyeth’s painting ‘Christina’s World’ 1 When there was such a thing as country I stood in a tobacco field and felt I was drowning 2 Now I can buy a muslin pink prairie dress online. If I don’t have enough money the website says I could cut my hair with an electric razor […]

Acquainting an Orange

after Edward E. Simmons’s painting ‘Old Woman Peeling an Orange’ The art of peeling an orange gets harder each passing season. Still, her thumbnail presses under the rind like it’s an envelope, a love note from long-gone seasons, ones where the shadows bleed out at noon, and the rain is delicate as a chandelier. It […]

Shibboleth

after Doris Salcedo’s photograph ‘Shibboleth I’ Tell me, do I pass this test? All day I have studied the ways things break apart – the shapes of the spaces they leave behind. It is not unusual, to want to know how two halves of a peach pull away from pit, how scalpels propagate brief stories […]

Body in Exile

after Mira Dancy’s painting ‘Blue Exile’        Mid March I give up my lungs.   Here are the seedy airways that have shrunk              in my chest; here                                      is a bruised […]

I asked them to look at the sea, as long as they wanted

after Sophie Calle’s ‘Voir La Mer’ to know the sea is to know obliteration— foreground and background coherent in a vista of absolutes. it is the latticed distance between a human body and infinity, forbidden texture of low desire, the sole existent way of approaching the earth from behind. it’s here, stranger. before you. your […]

120 Bricks

After Carl Andre’s sculpture “Equivalent VIII” sculpture, made up of 120 fire bricks I will lie down                   like bricks offering you                   the rectangle of my body:                   spare sparse angular                   like the wall you build                   each time I approach

The Nineties

This is our fear of ‘the other’ – Indians, blacks, Mexicans, Communists, Muslims, whatever – America has to have its monsters, so we can zone them, segregate them, if possible, shoot them.     – Robin Robertson, from The Long Take i. April 29, 1992 This is not your city. What burns and whose likeness with […]

Inheritors

The speakers are all liars, sweating red sunset, orange sunrise vibrates the TV at dinner, the conversation doesn’t start again, in the static silence a crackling of throats, after twenty-five years the clock halts, clattered forks, hands well-washed, plastered over, hollow words richochet off walls, snarling family, poster smile, “theresalwaysgoodinbad”, the rattling cars at five, […]

Paris

All I think about is love and money, marrying for money and falling in love on the side. Staying in love with my old loves, meeting them in oyster bars, never forgetting anything, never making any money. I think about Jean Rhys in Paris, waiting for Harrison Ford to wire her some money, she was […]

About me

My Hinge bio says travel photographer / amateur barista / debut forthcoming from a publisher you haven’t heard of / anticapitalist pop-up shop founder / found my latest calling / when my Hollywood career stalled / sordid story / identity theft / I try not to talk about that these days faked my own death […]

Everything you’ve always wanted

I was outside the Salvation Army building licking the cream from the rim of my hot chocolate when a man appeared beside me and said, You’ve won! Won what? I said, wiping my moustache with a finger to make sure I didn’t have cream on my face. Everything! he said, You’ve won it all! He […]

Novelty Race

   Three-legged, most kids rollick along,    like good-natured argument. Naturally, the twins get it right and stride off in time    like a well-made dovetail joint,    a catamaran, or scull. They pulse out in front,          pulse to the Finish line – laugh as they double or halve their one sporting moment in […]

Making History

In all my years of sewing embroidery in Kent, I never believed in chance, so I took great care to get the bones of this story to be tapestried, so was obliged to hear several men’s witness. I am also used to tapestries being their proper size and shape, so when Bishop Odo lessoned us […]

The puzzle room

The waterfall is complex: white foam spilling over black rock, two centimetres wide. Marion slams each piece into its rural setting and rebuilds the cottage with no roof. I try to distract her with a map of the world, tracing routes and jig-sawn borders. She sings Angola, Namibia and South Sudan, her fingers landing on […]

A convocation of pylons considers how to celebrate country-wide conversion to renewable energy

Were they to dance –            the girdered piecemeal sky would limber up,            cables would be swung for skipping ropes, there would be sparks –            fierce fire in stuttered arcs, in zig-zag strike            on latticed steel, zinged buzz of seared scar, they would be clad –            skeletal frames in kirtled folds […]

Letter from the Foothills

for H.M. She writes: time is passing very fast here. You go to the pet store, buy a kitten, take it home, clean its suppurating eyes with a Q-tip – don’t tremble! It starts purring, very loudly, then it’s a ball of dust. And the waterfalls! The majestic waterfalls! Each of them seems to be […]

hotboxing

Poem Beginning with Lines from Ye Hongxiang*

I’ve leaned towards the edge of the sky along the curved railings; where the sun falls aslant on the gaunt green hills… How will I survive the moonrise for one more evening, or the sound of dew dripping from my leaking parasol when it would be so much easier to die and die and keep […]

Red Hoover

He was ridiculously good-looking. He was even Nigerian − though Mum flits between this being a good thing in people and the worst. I pulled his photo up on the internet, showed her. She decided, on the spot, his Nigerianness was a good thing. It was easy to pull his photo up on the internet […]

Sunset

I turned the corner and spied a nice shell. I clamped onto the arm, pulled out the body and crawled in. I heard the sea inside. I crawled along the beach. It was light and the shell was cracked. I went under a rock. I went under a rock. I went under a rock. I […]

Sunrise

I turned the corner and spied a nice car. I opened the door, pulled out the driver and got in. I played music on the radio. I drove along the road. It was dark and the lights were broken. I screamed around the corner and knocked another car into a lamppost. I swapped vehicle for […]

M

you waded through my dreams again last night    drew yourself along the current of the partitioned streets I had shuffled down in my youth    beside a girl a few days older than me    and bargained for my time    said that you had swept along our earlier days    the chiselled jaw line hook and sinker    the […]

Letters

We cram our lives into tight spaces, love dried and pressed beneath all the books you’ve ever lent me. My postcard heart flutters as I tie and untie knots to your quivering breath. Origami sweet wrappers, the closest thing to skin, stamps like fingertips. Here, let me give you my kneecaps, pin them up on […]

Suburbia in Isolation

Around the corner from Rock Rd to South Maple I’m watching a drive-thru birthday, cars in procession, squared-off in gift paper, a great parade. I string along, dragging my dog to the fence, yipping, yanking, to give her a little privacy—our local drugstore is taping an X underneath my feet so I back up only […]

What I wish I could say during this pandemic

I want to tell you I believe I’ll survive this. That I haven’t been updating my will or receiving texts from the government as a ‘high risk person’. That dad isn’t a firefighter. That six of his colleagues haven’t contracted the C word and are off work. That he doesn’t lie in bed pre-empting my […]

Explaining Animal Crossing to my Nan

Look, see? It lets me hang out with Kevin in America and Lydon in China and Hayley in the next room. I can give them things – cherries, or campfires, or a lamp I made out of two giant clam shells and a lump of clay. This pastel pink koala is my best friend. She […]

Birds Bathing Under a Drainpipe

Content warning: sexual assault, violence             for Naureen Bhat Elspeth edifies Edith’s wish; walks with her every door that smells of dead elks; questions the government; kisses raped women; questions the government; takes a shower; thinks of Emily’s emails; sends six texts – to say hello; say sorry; say the police beat two men because […]

shopping list as a sign of tenderness

candy mints kitchen knife singing hallelujah darling, if it’s between me & the sickness i will always choose                                        the sickness bathroom mirror during golden hour black-eyed syringe a full visible spectrum of light summer divorcing my throat & sternum                         both, this blueshift -jawbone an old house piano keys in my head […]

On wheels

I had never ridden a bike in the city before now the wheels are the only shapes I can safely hold I use them to remind myself of the day of the month I stroll through the empty streets and notice what cannot be seen – salted tears, hands shaken, the figures with no face […]

Outline

There is a sharp sleek outline on the hallway wall, Pretending to be a metaphor. Graphite lines chase their way up the outline, Pausing and dipping for moments in time. Many have inhabited the metaphor, Many more will. The lines flow Up, and are broken at the top. There, the lines flatten themselves into Measurements, […]

Thus I became a heart-eater

I was holding myself like an open flame at Candlemas, when the doughnut presented itself: glossy red and obscene. The same vague heart-shape of a woman’s face. I ate it in three bites, in the street, thinking of Valentine’s Day, how every year it manages to hurt my feelings. How when I was young I […]

Translations in Survival

I became a boat, became             closed scope, became static.  Does the water not move, still, in waves?  I became a road, became             oil and bone, became static.  Do the cherry blossoms not spill, still, like a watermelon cracked  open with a mallet? I became a home, became             soap and lye, became static.  […]

Are Your Words Empty, Or Am I Hollow?

You needn’t worry Mother places her mantra in the palm Of my hand and presses reassurance. Then she lets go. Her words slip through my fingers like Water. And I can’t be wasting water. Temperatures surge to 25°C It is April and we’re burning. Run inside and switch the lights Out, plugs off, silence. They […]

Not All Warmth Consoles

to tread tenderly and still feel the whole earth creak and crave wilderness but leave tracks binding the terrain to fear the summer, the sweetness of fruit in decay and yet to see mushrooms flourish madly in spite of you to let every grief make a garden of you and to bloom and bloom and […]

Wildfires burn across Australia as Edward Cullen takes his top off for the twentieth time

A thousand miles away a country burns as we decide it is time for a Twilight marathon silvery moon cold skin in my heart as Bella moves from Phoenix, Arizona making me see climate refugees even in my YA we cannot see the flames like bees we are asleep smoked out impervious to our home […]

Bees

The sun rises; there is no rain. I  look out at this gazed upon world, And I am counting the bees again. Do spiders return to the window pane As they should after so many moons? The sun rises; there is no rain. I find no relief in the quiet old lane Where I would […]

Earth (you are here)

after morn1415’s YouTube video ‘Star Size Comparison 1 (HD)’ The Sun swallows Earth in 7.5 billion years and life is 3.5 billion years old, which – relatively speaking – means both myself and all life on Earth is at a quarter life crisis. Katy Perry was right: I feel like a plastic bag drifting through […]

You Call it Eco-Trauma

Wendell Berry called it the “Peace of Wild Things” but the milk boy called it the curdled edges of his skating pond and the priest in his red house called it this too shall pass, and the black geese called it a generational flailing, and my lover called it a summer storm but really it […]

Grace or Trial

after ‘Quiet People’ by Moniza Alvi His wife and I are peaceful people but that does not say it is rare. We swing thunderstorms between us, split budding fruit from budding branches, share lipsticks like domino masks. She is quietly excited, a great composer in full swell, full crescendo or blooming. We have our signs […]

Tides

after ‘Moon’ by David Constantine We defeated the sea. Heavy rain and gusts of wind brought widespread flooding, Lifted our palms to meet the droplets. In yours landed a quiet fever, shivering. It spoke of moonlight, Trees toppling, buildings damaged, rivers bursting their banks. “In your last night, we will replace the sun.” Keep talking, […]

Madame

after ‘Fingernails’ by Ruth Fainlight I often see an elderly woman in my Paris neighbourhood waltzing down the street to her own imagined music, flashing a slightly demented smile at everyone she passes. When she was really old, desensitised by age and time, she never cut her nails. Instead, she let them grow until they […]

(Just Not) Cricket at Les Névons

after ‘Youth at Les Névons’ by René Char (tr. Michael Worton) Buzzzzzzzzzzzz pause buzzzzzzzzzzzzzz In the fields by Les Névons the sea and the sound of the crickets are a conversation you are interrupting. In the fields by Les Névons encircling the grounds of the park a fast-moving sea and a thousand crickets are breaking […]

Planks

after ‘Scaffolding’ by Imtiaz Dharker A house if I were Like this shored up Ancient scaffolding with Bars for the threat of windows And damp doors of roof tins Take time then would you Face into my walk From move to room to room And find the space quiet I begin where? Would you be […]

Found

after ‘Missing’ by Moniza Alvi When I disappeared, It was pale, clean, grey, Like the first morning of January. Waking up to a new year with no name And no me and no you. Tried on a dozen lives, and realised none of them fit. Not orphan, child, wife, ex-wife, Nor astronaut. Tried to squeeze […]

Taken For Granted By Everyone

after ‘Lost Weekend’ by Helen Ivory You lost a whole piece of wheat from that husband. Toast became forever and then no toast at all, at about eight o’clock on frost, like something stopped. The sunscreen shone through the noise and the blade of the sun sang so loudly, it was impossible to sleep. On […]

Paradisiac Snow

after ‘Tyranny of the Spectrum’ by Elizabeth Garrett For scissor-shattered rainbows take ONE capsule in laughter THREE times a day for THREE days. It is a grey occasion to drink the rainbow. Ignore side effects and the seven certainties. Carefully read all of this bland, transparent leaflet before you start. Take this whiteness. The window’s […]

Interim Relief

I went to the judge and asked for interim relief. He said, “What job, what relief?” At Security they’d frisked us for pearl-handled lady pistols and stained Tupperware. At 10 a.m. I stood up to address the court. All I wanted was to dutifully inherit this small patch of useless land, its parched soil rarely […]

The Injection Lesson

What do we do when we’re done scooping rice? I wanted to ask what the procedure was, after we’re done with things. After the dishes what heaven? After the car is parked what casual thing other than boredom? All around you, the preparations are being made for the great event, each syringe is lain, each […]

The Panther

You remember the panther pacing from one end of the enclosure to the other, loose skin draped over her shoulder-blades, hip-bones raw, exposed, and the day-tripping crowds gathered first wondrous, then pitying, then helplessly traipsing away. It’s true there’s always a choice you say as you order another black coffee, your flamingo legs folded beneath […]

Last breath

Drawing the field-edge to a knot, scanning windward sweeps of scrub, eyegold splashed from ferric pools, she is the buffeted grass, a demon crow, a sudden curl of smoke tearing lungs of fieldmice their redcurrant hearts. Lost amongst paths of vanished towns desolate farms, rusting tractors, she wanders every breath of wind a question mark […]

Boy cat

with your human face and pointed ears drawn on by a child press up against the window to see if she’s inside; she sits cowering beneath the table or the chair. And you are there outside the door after a week, a month a year, waiting – hoping to relive your pleasure and her pain […]

Kittens

Slap of Start Rites on a warm pavement. Two streets away, ‘Greensleeves’ on a tinny loop. Hand-smocked cotton dresses and a summer that slid through our fingers like a satin hair ribbon. Butterflies in the old quarry, the perfumed blackberry pathways that scratched and snagged bare legs, twisting down to the flooded pit. Pass me […]

Cat voice

I     sound       the spaces      you        have made     black blip that shoots from no where     now here      across your scope   and        so                      you throw noise off […]

Artless

I fill my nostrils with her warm fur       exhale family wish        I did not fret about language        its stresses, tense and pattern        that writing could be like her stretch on waking        – rump raised, chest dipped, one paw tendered – […]

Visit to the Monastery in Greece

We stayed ages in the church where Mummy lit a candle and stared at it. I did my best to be a good boy like she asked. I tried not to look at thorny Jesus on the wall. Jesus in my Sunday school suffers the little children. He doesn’t look like this but Mummy says he […]

Reading the Safeguarding and Child Protection Policy

 has left me feeling vaguely sick and I think a walk is probably the answer, is often said to be the answer, though I now understand physical intervention must not be undertaken lightly and the appropriate training must be given because the policy is designed to prevent the impairment of health or development even […]

Letter from Kermanshah

If you do not feed yourself, your hunger will eat you; remember to attend and your food will make itself so that you can stand back and watch how it wishes to make you. There is nothing that cannot be cured with cardamom. It will listen to the way you imagine and it will taste […]

Middle Name with Diacritics

Linh hồn [soul] 1. A voice / tapping / from inside the skin 2. Quan Âm / the goddess of compassion / at the end of her ninth life /      having shed the last stinging layer / of flesh 3. A temple full / of starving yellow birds 4. Ancestors / who stitch your […]

Reset

She chafes a flame from the lighter, listens to its gush of butane. This thirteen-year-old, hunkered down behind the PE hut. For a full minute she watches the raw egg-white heat quiver round its yolk. Then she unthumbs and the flame slims out. She tugs back her sleeve on a scar, a small pink socket […]

Kindness

Instead of you dying, why don’t we go for that walk, in the woods I couldn’t find in spite of your neat, hand-written directions. You’ll pick me up, I’ll climb into your car, you’ll say Sorry it’s a mess, although it will be clean. When we arrive, I’ll say It’s so pretty here, and we’ll […]

Due to a series of ill judgements on my part

my son lies asleep in a tin sandwich box inside the knapsack of a man deep within the Cayuga salt mine’s corridor of teeth where there’s the sound of what in my son’s dreams he takes to be our neighbour’s cough but means, in fact, they’re blasting new seams in the caverns beneath the man […]

Where Dedushka Comes From

From the bird’s head of Azerbaijan to feathered Caucasian mountains. From October 1917. From the years that followed. From the oil fields your father owned. From those fields he lost. From desert and steppe. From the place where fire jumps out of rocks. From a country which has not been a country for a very […]

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