Poems
Magdalene Mothers
this is where the fallen women sleep. concrete floor for the too fair too pregnant too violated. be fruitful but not with them and not yet. in the image of god, girls, says the priest with the wandering gaze to nuns who nod like sheep to the children who were only half here anyway. who […]
Fill the Gaps
appointment
this is not a séance my hands aren’t touching any hard surface I sleep in a closed red flower same as my mother she planted a rose a few weeks before this whole thing is like what they say about plastic bottles you know each time […]
Things I should have done in person, that I did over the phone instead
Autumn, 2019
A girl becomes a boy becomes Tiresias blind to it all, […]
ill fate
the seven suffocated one by one i saw it in the paper their faces washed in black and white we sat around the well-scrubbed table thanking gods you were in bed that day illness synchronised with fate as if you’d read the future in coal dust gloved hands found prophesy in Yorkshire […]
Epithalamion
The beautiful geometry the trees become each winter here is beginning to blur at the edges and the robin we think must be a little deranged has for the third time in as many years returned from wherever she goes for sun and […]
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat
because it is hidden, secret (geheim), & all traces of it impenetrable, distant, like sirens blissfully sounding in the dark, what enters so assiduously broken is also what ends – the enforced meaning (Stop! Police! – how it enters the fray) after all no […]
The Poem in the Locket
After ‘The Photo in the Locket (For Louise)’ by Jackie Kay i There are things I don’t tell her private things, words eaten in sleeping bookshelves, a waitress watering plastic flowers. My new friends speak fast write less often; they come over and strip the sheets, leave the house bare. We smile and eat alone […]
Predatory
Don’t mistake this for seduction. When I make bedroom eyes at the mirror, I am only trying to see what the hare’s pupil looks like, widening like the handspan of the universe, only one arterial spray away from the wolf’s blushing jaws. I intend to prepare myself for violence. Originally, I wanted to discover a […]
When the writer visited
Again a memorial hour is near – Anna Akhmatova When the writer visited, blown through my door like a newspaper we drank champagne until white night slipped into morning while the Fontanka watched us like a fisheye, dead and gleaming, and the tree leaned in and tapped at the window. He left, leaving a glove […]
I fall in love about seven times a day
if falling in love means wanting to leave a part of yourself inside another like a memento for them to look back on once we have moved on to the next for them to cherish the way I have cherished them in that small moment of my life now a distant memory at the forefront […]
The Unofficial Financial Topography of Columbia, South Carolina
after Clare Pollard From the steps of the granite-plated State House, Columbia stretches its arms for miles, lazy & languid: to the midcentury sanatorium with windows pockmarked from stray baseballs, to the downtown strip advertising very quick cash!! breakfast sandwiches served all day!! to the three rivers at the heart of Columbia with better deals […]
Etcetera
Whenever you started a list, you always ended it with etcetera, the full word each time, between your teeth. I fell, hard, wanting to know the end of the list. I wanted to swarm with description. Who was I but the port to your starboard? I wanted to eat each strawberry whole. I wanted to […]
Wedding The Hand That Harms Me
after Selima Hill Ciara tells me I have to be selfish. So I say, the blood isn’t mine but I want it to be. So I say, he licked the butter from my fingers but I wanted something worse. Alanis Morissette sings to me in my dream. I tell her I cut the tongue from […]
(newborn)
after Clare Pollard She rises out of me like the sun, my daughter, casting everything raw. I sip cochineal soup, chew the New York Times bestseller bought by a friend who doesn’t know I’ve read it twice. A papercut c-sections my thumb. The Guardian thrums with a new Atlantis. She brays, my calf, her pink […]
Fragments of my mother’s homeland underwater
Southern Vietnam will be submerged by 2050. – Saigoneer, Oct 2019 Every place has a name for this. Here, it is tận thế. A fortune once told me that rain is worth everything and so I knew that it held all we had ever burned – pork skewers, begging letters, hell money, my great-grandmother’s remains, […]
Alipore Zoo
Always the big cat enclosure first, their moans swelling the bell curves of our brags. Tigers – drugged of course – stretched out on rocks across a moat: meagre Lakshman rekha for the two drunks with garlands, short work. The pong of spoonbills, whisked by scamper. A cockatoo on the mesh wiring climbing beak-and-claw. Between […]
January
I have begun the purge. Month of hunger, raindrops fall from window sills, ice slithers in puddles, the smoky breath of animals greets the air. Morning’s back already broken, veins obvious on everything. Emptying myself of all things ripe and wanton, I am winter grass. Observe me survive as earth’s shoulder blades that jut, cut […]
birdknacks
birds have got these world-counteracting smart-alec knacks: techno-turbojet shoulders and hup… they alone got plucked off lesbos on the salty sea breeze, while the wingless and flightless were powerless, even to get a mention in the press. feeling guilty about my rightful guiltlessness, i ate nonetheless and drank, played scrabble, slept in. lesbos under a […]
Seams
In time all cities blur and connect as each street remembers another, remembers the downward pressure on your temple as the plane rises, rises, as the lights of one city are gurgled by fog, and what’s left is one more night between time zones. What glow here. What unbreakable seams. You know the earth, like […]
On Form
Standing at pump four of the garage in Ballydehob filling the Honda with diesel, I want the counter to stop at a round number, a whole euro, so if the tank’s getting full and the flow’s clicking off I restart, easing out my finger then tightening the trigger until the digit ticks to zero. I […]
Ice Baby
When I hear what is happening in America I turn back on myself, crouch on the landing where no light falls and wait for the piglet in her sniffle to unlung. Like I know the full farmyard of her discontents and which corn snack to invoke against rainfall, I know no bailiff is coming to […]
Stone Tape Theory
Whosoever has pushed a tear of bread into a glossy pool of gravy has entered history paying the ticket price, playing statues as they lift to their mouths a fine brine of self, striking the figures of those minor gods who light the mineral tapes of creek and cliff: the shirtless walker raising his palm […]
Berlin Zoo
None of the animals knew why they were in the Zoo. None of them knew why the Jewish people stopped visiting in 1938. They were very ignorant and couldn’t read the signs all around them. None of the animals liked the sound of the air-raid warnings and in any case could not take cover. All […]
Pornography for Pandas
Yang Guang (meaning Sunshine) raises himself on hind legs, reaches for the carrot, a little higher building muscle for the two-minute act to come, his enclosure dim-lit, smooth-jazz dreamy, daubed with the urine of Tian Tian (meaning Sweetie) when last in season – all to get him in the mood, his bodyweight in food each […]
Animal House
A dolphin back-flips in the bathtub, sardines circle in the sink, a boa’s curled around the shower rod, & a troupe of capuchin monkeys claim ownership over our medicine cabinet. Up & down the hall, cheetahs sprint, while a polar bear snacks on salmon in our fridge & penguins stake out the freezer. Our master […]
Lord Percy And His Acquaintances Make An Excursion To Watch The Lunatickes At Bethlem Royal Hospital In The Year Of Our Lord 1610
It’s all rather jolly here at Bedlam, watching the Lunatickes growl and groan and writhe and rattle their Chaines, especially with a drop of hard liquor in one’s Flask to keep out the chill and a Pomander against the mighty strong Stinke. Some of the fairer sex recoil a little – those with more tender […]
From Z to A
In Spanish, it goes tho-O. Every letter is said, so it’s tho as in think, with an unvoiced th, without the ink, and then the O, as in the O of O please can we go? It might be practised along with zorro by beginners. Zorro means fox and is pronounced exactly like tho-O, apart […]
The Howdah
She’s high up in the tower block, stranded in a cage of glass, but no nearer the sun, can’t feel its warmth on her back – just another missing visitor. She’s sitting at her kitchen table where she spends most afternoons. Today she fancies a chocolate cup-cake, the […]
In The Mix
A sky with no sun A whale as light as a ton A book with no words A tree with no birds A dog with no bone I can hear them moan A knife with no fork A house took a walk A plate with no napkin I see that happen A rubbish bin with […]
The Zumbiog
Once I met a Zumbiog, Right here, next to this tree, He pombled over with brog-brog-brog, And sat right next to me. I told him his nose was awfully long, But he said that it needed to be, In order to luffle the snats from a fong He needed his nose to see. I asked […]
Smug as a Bug
What a scrumbumbling bother, my day’s in disarray; that grumbugging Humbug just won’t go away! I went to post a letter, but he was buzzing in the box. I wanted watermelon, but he’d scared them from the shops. He even bumped my bum, boy was I surprised to find that little Humbug so greatly jeopardized. […]
Moving Out
He dusted the horizon with a flock of birds, Dragged a steam train across the hills and reef. He opened the stratosphere to let some fresh air in, The asthmatic sheep bleated sighs of relief. He switched off the sun and twisted it loose; It slipped out of his hand and leapt into the sea. […]
Ode to a Soup Dragon
What is the soup dragon thinking? This poem will show you the truth. His silver-spoon eyes stare unblinking, In a dream of regaining his youth. His scales are like glistening croutons in glittering oceans of silky green broth; On the surface are sizzling droplets that bubble and sputter, to flame into froth. When he breathes, […]
When the Jambler Heard a Sound
On the murkiest of nights by the boricow lagoon The Jambler wandered in the light of the moon. An ice-cold wind steadily blew And the booming thunder came crashing through. The water glistened as the moon shone down And reflected shimmering patterns all around. A spangly jangly norjay plant was floating in the air As […]
Socks on my Ears
My socks are on my ears to keep them from the cold. My feet wear cosy bobbly hats that I think look rather bold. My scarf sits neatly around my waist to keep my trousers down. I know I look a dandy when I strut into town. Heads turn and eyes alight upon my dashing […]
We Couldn’t Help Melting The Snow
There once was a Sunheaded carnival Lay, got tired of carnivals and ran away – couldn’t figure if it was the night or the day, or the balls missing targets in a blonging-sort way, but she simply decided she just couldn’t stay and the Ferris wheel saw her go. The Sunheaded Lay met a quizzical […]
The Gift
with thoughts and images dreamt up by London schoolchildren I walk through Winter’s city, my footsteps stain the snow. The darkness shuts like curtains. It’s later than I know. Dark is a heart that’s breaking, Dark is a dream you lose. Dark is a pounding headache that makes the world a maze and then a […]
In a New Light
O sisters too, how may we do / for to preserve this day This poor youngling for whom we sing / “Bye bye, lully, lullay”? – from The Coventry Carol, 14th Century. Lay down a blue thread of river and make here a city, weave a busy tapestry of trades and guilds and merchants. […]
From the Log Book
Wednesday 16 April, 1941 ‘5am: Report very bad night, everyone behaved splendidly’ This building, dressed in a collar of smoke, at whose feet only fog and ash flower, whose bricked heart hides Wellington’s monument, prepared for the inevitable blasts. Unsleeping structure, lit by the Thames’ glow, building of contradiction, vulnerable, and yet, still, imposing in […]
[Zeus] Anatomical Dolls
It’s hard to explain. Let me show you with the anatomical dolls. They have buttons for eyes and details under their pants you wouldn’t believe – look underneath at the girl’s folded labia, vagina, the tucked-in silk-and-string umbilical of a pull-down, poppet foetus, or the male’s miniature penis, his cotton-bag scrotum, his sphincter ringed in […]
Make Abstinence Great Again
Seventeen magazine – tell me; is he flirty or friendly? you must not condemn me; male decency is so alien. is it the chick-flicks? we’ve been pumped since kindergarten; if he pulls my hair – interested (rape culture is coded within our moms’ advice). is it the fan fiction consumption? or about the way we […]
Grief Counselling
After Caroline Bird Have you changed the way you write your soft letters, like m and c and s? Made them harsher, perhaps, to offer no hiding spaces? When you wake up, do you have to weed your eyelashes? At dinner do you see a thatch of hands writhing in the vomit of your lamb […]
Hound
WHAT IS YOUR NAME? My name was spat out of a laughing river. It is lips of salt, it is soaked in sunlight, it is without god. HOW OLD ARE YOU? I am old enough. You can count the tree-rings on my torso if you cut me in half. HOW IS YOUR HEART? I wish […]
allegiance
Based on questions from the civics portion of the naturalization test for United States citizenship. What is the supreme law of the land? ask me where I’m from // go on / ask me // don’t / be afraid // I’m harmless What does the Constitution do? ask me where I’m really from // go […]
How do you freeze time?
Is this something that humans can do? I guess you could drop your iPhone X but that wouldn’t give me more time with you. How do you freeze time? Is that something that we could achieve? You could always send a photo to the wrong person but maybe I’m just being naive. How do you […]
Best Left Unanswered
Why is there dissonance within music? Must a pianist’s chords clash and release, like tide shattering a hermit crab’s home? Why do trees fall? Are their roots too fine in holding their dignity of years? Or do our axes force gravity upon them? Must a story always end? Should pages be written in indelible ink […]
Whispers Carried By The 3AM Winds
Should I seal my singing lips so as to not wake others’ demons? Should I lock my rattling voice box and let all my unexpressed opinions choke me? Should I remain a ventriloquist’s puppet and speak others’ words? Should I hold my breath and stay under water, lest the free air liberates me? Should I […]
The other
do I remain when I leave for good, huddled in the corner of your brain, unwanted, chained, quick, quick lock her up get rid am I embraced do you have a synapse dedicated to my name that sparks heady glutamate when I am mentioned casually in conversation, do you […]
pssssssssssssst
pssssssssssssst. pssssst. hey i heard maybe you wanted to talk. no no its okay im not busy whats up man im sorry to hear it. you need space? wanting words? wanting poems that know what is up? how about even at night in the garden the birds fly. the stars are incapable of grief, and […]
To the reader (from a poet, with love)
Leave the poem where you found it. It was never yours, and besides, it has a dangerous song. Can you not hear the blade in that soft, serrated edge where you casually scrape your thumb? Listen to the way the light screams when it comes to rest on these bands of black and white. A […]
The page is also the night where i climb out of
after Ocean Vuong i restart this sen tence, i edit edit my life off these fingers these words they ask me how do i do i feel […]
being just a poem
being just a poem & not a body on the operating table, I never expected you to cut me open & tear me to pieces—never thought you would take your scalpel & carve my abdomen up like the last virgin forest & twist my organs into knots in your quest to cure me (I was […]
Brazil sends army to tackle Amazon Fires (BBC News, 24th August 2019)
Today, I wrote a poem. I let a wasp outside. I made a coffee, set out sugar. When the wasp returned, I gave it sugarwater. I invited you in, changed outfits to make a statement. I made us dinner, made conversation. I suggested a walk. You taught me the words for how sun is filtered by a […]
Raising a Poem-Baby
So, here we are: you, you’re sitting in your highchair, looking all smug. God, you’re so cute that I could just eat you. Right. Here comes the aeroplane? Remember that one? That’s what we’re going to do. See? Mummy’s got the food. Dinner, din dins. Din sure does. You had existed for a handful of […]
My poem sits next to fifteen poems at the workshop table
stares at its feet/ my poem is an orphan/ is a stray kid that went missing from the science class/ doesn’t have a birth certificate/ residence permit/ didn’t grow around books/ or other kids that looked like it/ my poem hid behind the broad shoulders of prose/ it has no permanent postcode/ sounds like three […]
Promise it’ll be my last
we are on the beach and my mother is telling me how poetry isn’t practical anymore. that my writing has to be an act of violence, a way to earn in a world that wants to eat me alive. I am sure that she is right this poem, like those before it, is useless: an […]
be poetic:
1. sit on a clear summer night on the roof of a ford, or an acura, or even a dodge grand caravan. pop open a beer which runs down the sides of the car and puddles into the lush grass. reminisce on how your life overflows the boundaries of summer. 2a. […]
How to Be a Dementia Friend
How-to guides contain illustrations. A guy bent over a chair. You can see his wife in the background wringing her hair. Cursing their choice to not use IKEA. ‘I told you you couldn’t do it!’ How-to guides have multiple rules that end up merging like rivers. Screw A lives next to Screw D, but not […]
how to make dolmeh with your mother
1. drizzle oil onto the pan until the specks of heat feel like the blisters on your mother’s feet after a long day at the cash register greeting customers in a profuse thank you thank you thank you while handing out plastic bags with yellow smiles. 2. saute the rice & ground beef & five-spice […]
ten floridian commandments
i. say ponderosa out loud. it tastes like fresh lemonade and froot loops. ii. multicoloured jellies for breakfast. yellow jello. the american dream. iii. when eating sausages slumped next to your m&m pancakes, remember your father saying: they put something in the food, you know. something that makes them fat and tall. iv. eat cold […]
How To Be Punched
Be punch-worthy Be a boxer Be a punching bag Be someone with a lot of big promises who doesn’t follow through Be with your clumsiest friends at all time Be in a group of actors who do stage fighting Be that person behind someone about to be punched who ducks at the last minute Be […]
How To Write Me, Your Personal Statement
[Intro: why you want to study your chosen subject] Firstly, stop longing / for the figure at the bus stop You have been interested in Love since that girl, I know, but stop & focus on me / for once / don’t linger Your eyes must be blind / to the flutterings / of winged […]
Penning My Thoughts
Take it from a cup, or bag, or maybe from behind your ear. Press down the rounded edge, not the opening. Watch the spring compress then relax, ink building up at the metal tip. Let it fall onto the fall white surface, scrape it across the page, fill the troughs with feeling. There, now you’ve […]
How to be Remembered
It is 20,000 BC, though, of course, you, hardy and paleolithic, do not know it. And you do not wonder how to be remembered. You are, I think, still grappling with phonemes and the complexity of light on water. In thousands of years, your DNA, woven and unraveled countless times in time’s nervous hands, will […]
Baby
I never understood the fingernails as moons depiction, but when you g rabbed my finger suddenly I […]
A poem for a moment with you
Sat in your arms, listening to the sound of you breathing A park bench, a rainy Thursday afternoon Nervous to turn my head to face you, to look into your eyes I don’t want to let myself believe that this moment is real I tell you that this feels like a dream, you laugh But […]
The funeral of half a stranger
It was January, there was no snow, and the sky was baptised in smoky grey. I went to a funeral in my school uniform, in a creased blazer that smelled like pencils and sweat and cheap perfume. I remember that the coffin was flooded with flowers; stars of butter and pearl and blood and hoarfrost. […]
Eating Pringles on the beach, alone
Salt rests on my tongue, my eyes, my ears, the nostril where I got the piercing just so everyone could hate it. The other people on the beach mine the sand for treasures like a parent should for nits in hair. Their bodies combs, their smiles jagged. I sit still. The waves lick me with […]
Moments Like These
Let’s go back to the moments you get four-ish times a year, when you’re laughing and you’re sugar-filled, and suddenly your life has turned from semi-skimmed to full-fat milk, the ones where you wonder how the melodies of worry could survive in this beautiful orchestra of joy and companionship, consciousness sitting behind your laughter-filled ears, […]
Grandma
My heart begs for you To come back to me Oh, how I see you In my dreams Standing in front of me. A smile painted on your face. I see you cooking, The crackle of the oil, The smell, Ah, lovely. Perfect. I walk toward you, To see what magic you’re creating, You swat […]
Warriors
A heartbeat before the cold hits all breath is knocked away. We clutch hands with white knuckles and sharing strength through intertwined fingers we step from warm sand straight into the icicle grasp of a surreally blue unknown. Today we are warriors. We edge deeper into the gently writhing pool that fills the space between […]
Defining Moments
There’s a scar on my arm, preserved by the craters of tiny follicles. The exteriors’ carved jaggedly by the needles that once punctured my veins. Like the probes on the moons surface, they sought for life. I am a world of exploratory discoveries, Yet you are my light. a reflection of you’re appearance, we are […]
mégy egyet kérnék szépen (one more please)
what I want to say is that I met a boy called Bence in a bar on kertész street. in the bar you weren’t able to see a square inch of unpainted wall and I sat there trying to decipher the different flavours on the menu: körte cseresznye szőlő and something that […]
dead language
“How cuneiforms cut by suffering show their harsh unyielding texts impressed on cheeks.” —Requiem, Akhmatova tr. Nancy Anderson “How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep quiet? My friend whom I love has turned to clay.” —The Epic of Gilgamesh tr. Stephanie Dalley i she can describe this, but not […]
Pacify – If Alun Lewis had a Daughter
Daddy was a pacifist From soft kisses and smooth Soon roughened callouses, Mummy said he never strayed. Knew his pen more than the pistol Brought warm sunlight to those Drowning in mud, in rain. Daddy was a pacifist Mummy said he never raised A single hand; yet his words Survive while his body lies abandoned […]
Tapestry of War
for Miklós Radnóti The child of a textiles man, Your fingers burnt to stitch, To weave your words with threads of gore, From shattered sky to ditch. Your needle scarred the burning flesh, Of Europe’s sickened skin. As white and sheer as jagged bone, As bright and sharp as sin. You tore up strips of […]
this notch of time
after John Jarmain what does it matter now if flowers bloom in the minefields? what does it matter to the unnamed bodies laid in unmapped graves? what does it matter if we take the garlands & crush them? if we pluck the leaves out one by one like soldiers picked off in battle? if we […]
vergissmeinnicht
your name became a dandelion clock haemorrhaging time. seeds in my teeth I spit out centuries, let them blossom in cracked concrete. this is what it means to bleed, to burst into flower / explode colour, the way a poppy seed knows it will one day be red. torn from sleep. each wish […]
Alluvion
I dream up an excess of horses. That night on the beach, an ear carves open the ocean’s avian, elides this dull stampede. Waterlogged, the mare sinks her trampled neck into atonal static: pith, to make love/to ash. Someday, you kneel, brook your hand through the deluge. The water parses […]
Cambridge 1941
We have blackout here Just like we did at home. Curtained windows, no smoke. When the fire’s out and the curtains closed We all clamber up in the slow dusk— George, Mother and me— to watch, From the stone roof All the lights switch off. This new city turned to grey. If I squint, here […]
Gold Beach
after Keith Douglas The landers spat us to the sand like seeds, and the Germans – secure in concrete barrows – watched an army grow towards them. When shells hit, I saw limbs attached to nothing but the memory of movement. We walked on whatever was underfoot. Soon we were flame through red phosphorus, consuming […]
Aria for the Dead Ones
Berlin A soldier, impressionist as he dies. Then he’s perpendicular to death: a simple rosebud in the hair of a painted daughter who will die later that night. In the backdrop, the moon galloping like a prayer might—feral horse, immortal patch of sky in its wake. Though most aren’t queer, I watch the soldiers […]
speak out
i am going to speak out. i am going to fight. i will not stay silent. you think that just because i am frightened i will shut my mouth? my fear makes me burn brighter my entire being has been doused in the very gasoline that you sell my future out for you think that […]
A Morning Person
What a beautiful day for a wedding! It was raining when we buried my mum, she loved lilacs and here they are, the lilac lilacs like pendulous large breasts dripping with dew, I am enjoying them alone with my mug of coffee, which I also enjoy with the intensity of a remark made in a […]
Blakeney, moonlight
When the timpani, when the violins, mine is one body among many prone in the gallery. Still as seals on a wet beach in moonlight, waves of sound lap at the exposed summer night. We enter the music as we enter a sea, wishing to be transformed in some small, elemental way, eyes-closed-drifting through all […]
They Came From Somewhere Else
The Mask
i.m. Major Brodie ***, MC, DSO, 1882 – 1923 You must have discovered it early. Perhaps you felt your heart unfold, your breath quicken, when the men stripped off their shirts at harvest, and guilt was a sudden aftertaste. You put the mask on, like we all did, fearing the truth of nakedness. You learnt […]
Sloes
We’ve left sloe-picking late. Now white yeast clouds the surface of their bruised moons. I wasn’t there when she needed me; a difficult birth, that led her to the edge. And now she rolls her eyes as my clumsy hands knock and scatter sloes onto the grass, and when we have filled each stale box […]
On Draining the St Martin Canal
I had thought that I preferred its placid waters that trade a Lethe forgetfulness for our reflections in soft focus, encourage a belief in the metaphysical, a fantasy of fish dancing beneath sun-speckled mirrorballs to the Gauloises wheeze of an accordion; but when they drained the St Martin Canal, what they found, along with the […]
The second lie
Start by telling them about that night I was lost, adrift, a skinny ghost tripping through Shinjuku’s dirty streets, hob-nobbing with yakuza, dizzy on shochu, face shiny in the city’s thick wet heat. Or that morning my legs dangled free from the helicopter door, Vietnam’s canopy flattening like moss beneath my feet; cold hands toying […]
On reading Professor McGrath
‘We must be prepared to be surprised at those whom we meet in the kingdom of God.’* They made him smile at first, those hope-laced words which appear to dent predestination, intoxicant as gaudy hummingbirds in hovered flight. McGrath’s bold suggestion hints salvation might be for one and all, not the preserve of a self-selecting […]
Being Swedish in Pontlottyn Rugby Club
Word goes around: Maria’s friend is Swedish. Boys in stripy tops line up across the dance floor curious to know if my life is all sex and cigarettes. They tie themselves in knots to get close to me. I make space between my lips to let out the nonsense of pretend Swedish. I tell them […]
The Dub Artist
I’ve been learning about dub-engineers and the tricks they play: marrying up their own footsteps to the character’s gait; slamming the studio door at just the right moment; rustling leaves in synchronicity with the screen. They replace those little things lost beneath dialogue or tense music or laughter. Some things don’t sound like themselves, and […]
Sp/lit
Whitewash
Cyprien told me in confidence, and I promised his secret was safe. I remember the bar, the tarnished walls, the termites sucking the whitewash, their exuberant, tenacious persistence upturning the earth underneath. We were sucking Fanta through straws. He was the one neighbour I knew didn’t drink. He leaned forward to utter the words. I […]
Home County
There is a village coiled in the Chilterns, all catflaps and thatch, black beams and whitewash, cradled in hills and cosseted by trees where bellringers reel out handstroke and backstroke the way the red kites loop the sky while we walk the dog or jog round the park. But stay awhile and it’s not so […]
When Ursula Tyrwhitt was Gladstone’s Lover
Dear Gwen, Today’s vase holds mustard-yellow chrysanthemums, yesterday’s were rainbow-paper anemones. This evening we spoke about the economy, I hold our balance in orchid asymmetry. His hands, after a day deep in stately missions, turn our passion, the blue-deep of delphiniums. He scribes such love scenes I’m losing my faculties, his ink, tattooed on my […]