I grew up in the shadow of Anna days. Kinga left unmarked. The Anna-fest already in swing. I stand in a cloak. An Anna and an Anna and an Anna. I exist too! No sound comes. No words in my mouth. I’m swallowed up. Quickly forgotten. Corrupted by the memories. My pieces are transported over […]
Poems
Rain Born under a Leo Sign
Tonight a high north wind blows off my cumulonimbus clouds. (Let it escort my love away.) Wet fallen leaves scatter over the autumn earth. (Let it nestle against my heart!) The calmest heartbeat is the transient silence before a storm. A knife piercing through life comes from a dove’s sad tears. Against the backdrop of […]
Assemblage des Beautés
Bone monkey has set up shop in the airing cupboard. It’s warm in there. Silverfish take refuge in his skull and slide around his ribs. Worn sheets have ruched between his bones like the petals of old roses – Assemblage des Beautés for instance – so cherry red and full it almost seems there is […]
Look into My Lights
Look into my lights. My memory buds with a song of sunlight, a stretching of roots. A shoot-tip sigh as I part the earthen sky. Look into my lights. My memory branches into arctic cold nights, and a kaleidoscope of days. I am born in every forest’s heart, a guiding light out of the dark. […]
Untitled / Villanelle
I have often longed to see my mother in the doorway. – Grace Paley Because having a father made me want a father. – Sandra Newman I have often longed to see my mother tap-dance in a top hat like she did before he died – having (had) a father made me want a father. […]
That Night
The hands that night one-on-one that night pain and suffering that night. I can tell you firsthand the devastating impact. Life has been deeply altered forever. Every waking minute is consumed with worry anxiety fear and depression. He walks. I hide. He consumes. Broken shattered in so many ways. […]
Stages of Grief
It began with a hole. It took fifteen years to construct a man: working day and night To make time to overcome The difficulties of functioning On his own. The prize? Tomorrow. Somewhere in the past, he completely changed And never told anyone.
Void
Between oceans lies the deserted Land of Decoration. The book thief wanders these tomeless shores and resigns to the forgetting time. A life discarded, a dismantled bike crumpled at the bottom of a cliff. No trigger warning present. They are all alone here. Untouched by urban lights, the night rainbow is as expressive as smoke […]
THINGS YOU SAID IN THE SEASONAL CYCLE WHEN WE WERE BOTH IN LOVE
Star
The voice beamed into space a message of peace and hope. died earlier this year, set to music ordinary orange dwarf star.
Different Roads
On a Friday night late in November the Road had come to a stop, falling to pieces. Brought to a stand. And everything upon it followed and overspread one another. That Friday night, an unwholesome sea shut out the light from the eyes of the mind; a beautiful nature to wither away by the setting […]
Side Effects
(Olanzapine: a choice I chose to not make, take from this what you will) do not be worried about this. it will cause more sleepiness to help stop (mainly used) *addictive* other conditions. it may slow down your reactions. it may make you feel more sleepy. “short-acting” – as soon as you remember, whilst […]
youth realisation through conversation
i’m scared -of? what is going to happen to us this is our lives, i suppose -have you eaten? i’m very confused i love you i am so jealous i’m sorry it’s all my fault you’re going to call an ambulance – yes, i am i’ve tried so hard to be numb, but i can’t […]
jook-sing
jook-sing is a word more esophagus than aorta. no glamour in the tremoring, no prideful blood-ink except as condemnation. price-match for the least expensive brand of bleach they sell here and apologize, afterwards, to the ruined silk. mama says the only words we have for beautiful are mere derivatives of the original. this too […]
Tranny Slag
Take an Eastenders drag on a cheap cigarette fag called across the street as fag in my lips bleeds a cherry red ring and the dirty Spoons purses its door to my purse – predrinks alone. Stumble to Bound down back alley hobo grins take the grope for safe passage – speak friend and enter, […]
bone apple tea
bone apple tea boneless feet bonus amp in cheese boney kerosine blonde amputee bone atrophy phone apple jeans A B C D toe tap the fleas i want to see disorder, destruction, chaos. i’ve put a delicious razor blade to my tongue, madly bruised, teeming, wild— like the raving […]
ends
just outside the city so we’re slaves to the district line but it’s okay because everything we want is right here, in my ends. the night bus to take us to fantastic parties where the boys are pinging and the girls are taking blurry pics and rumour has it that Dan is on the pull. […]
Vernacular
‘Sayang’ in Malay is sweetheart, darling to be loving the way clouds sleep with the sky or the shadows nestle in the moon’s crescent curves ‘Sayang’ caresses my bruises, my cuts, glass tears sear my face stitching nerve endings together in silk a wave of reassurance whispering of the waters they’ll return soon. A word […]
Wyoming
“Y’know, you oughta get home,” he said, turning back towards the scythed mountains, coulees flowing terribly, beautifully, with gold sediment, diamonds of his sun-flecked hair. That summer I had fallen in love. A warm chinook blew down from the Rockies, rustling his starched shirt, and he pointed towards the clouds hammered above the scree. Though […]
My Mother’s Return
At last / she turned around / into the Arrivals gate / at Terminal 5 / and I counted the seconds it took / for her eyes to find us / the time / I took to recognise her myself / browned / new smells hugging to flesh. / Only a week / but she […]
Splash
o fist of cold / o glass green skin of the world / o shivering splinters glittering / i’m the chandelier that hit the marble floor / atoms pulsing / the water dissolving the page I stained with a dark blue bloom / this is home / this Milky Way of algae strokes / far-off […]
Journey
We always go where there are graves. / When she dies of pneumonia / they drop three coins in her mouth / bury her under the house in Xiamen. / For days after / her son kisses the floor / prays for new palms to pray with / searches for an eyelash / a used […]
No Ears
Stop. Start. Stop. Start. You stumble over your words, like how the startled buffalo used to stumble over their stocky legs. Or how quickly you used to turn your horse with just the pressure of your calves. But you’ve been told to share a story. And this is something that’s in your blood. It flows […]
Fading Women
The women in my family have learned how to thread silence into the mercurial sky, how to press rust onto the heart-skin hemorrhage of their larynx. They have learned that their mouths were not built to speak, so they yell silently & pulverize their words into salt for the afternoon meal. The women in my […]
Tickover Speed
‘Tickover Speed Only Past Moored Boats’ – Signboard on South Oxford Canal, Thrupp, Oxfordshire. It’s the plosive thud of a vintage Lister, the skitter and splash of the sculler’s oars; it’s the zig-zag track of the day-hire kayak, the wind-borne meander of an angler’s float. It’s the bankside chatter of the dawn dog-walkers, the drilling […]
Gomorrah
All the trees were on fire. The asphalt roads bubbled, tarmac quick sand greedily swallowing matchstick people. Tumbling they went, flakes of a city dissolving in a shot glass of Armageddon. Horses ran from the Hertz hauling business with incandescent manes as all the oxygen vanished and candles in air raid shelters flickered out. Firestorm […]
After they throw eggs at your house
you reflect on how they tried to bury us, our bodies blurred beneath layers of scum. You say, England makes me feel like a red ant in a freezer. This place has never been ours. Your children look at you for an explanation. You hide them behind piles of dictionaries and Buddhist prayers on tape, […]
To Lev Gumilyov
O Lev, love, your broken eyes— I’ve kissed your wan lips goodnight from miles away. Don’t you see I’m fighting for you, for us? Hunger clings to love as skin to bone. Lev, forgive my words. I could tell you how I’ve cried for you, how I’ve starved for you, but I won’t. Instead, I […]
Boys in the Sky
This was just like school. All those boys and bright eyes and dimpled faces. Sometimes the tedium came close to killing him. Perhaps this was just the disappointment that came with being ripped from emerald Winchester, its winnowing wind, its ceaseless warm summer evenings. Perhaps one can only cope with adolescent boys for so long, […]
Anna
1. I can. It is terrible, terrible, To view the dead bloodless animal that hides between the silences, To meet its eyes and stare and stay alive. I have been waiting until my fingers grow tired Of holding my voice, fluttering like a half torn flag, In the lines of my palms, I have been […]
Me Sitting at Home Having Suffered Next to Nothing
contains strong language I. For me you bring two darknesses One an eclipse of language And the other an eclipse of horror And it’s sad, even insipid, to hope My semi-distracted, beguiled imagination Could have taken in one erroneous smile Before it slipped into your poems. II. I let the two darknesses enter swollen Like […]
The Journey Home
An oak leaf took flight with his petiole up, lobes swilling the fresh air, arms wide open. A gentle wind drove him through the country, made him fall in love with firs, beeches, maples. They too, belong to one home, they too, fall down on their own. No shapes, no colours can outwit the time. […]
To Kill a Spider
apologise first to reduce the chance of bad luck catch its eye make sure it has heard you know that if you kill a spider you risk losing money and that the cobwebs in the house are a sign of good luck know that your mother was misguided or just plain wrong that a spider […]
To bring me luck
I stop the bridal carriage at an old people’s home pick out the wisest, oldest woman pretend that she’s my mother wear her like a new stole. Lent an abundance of thoughts and warnings I borrow it all, tucking wisdom and foolishness under my mother, draped comfortably around me. She discards everything but knowledge and […]
Folklore from 35,000 Feet
In Greenland most of which is white in winter, and crazed with ice blue in summer, people build towers on floating foundations and lie on top counting jets flying over. They like to watch jet farts criss-crossing, dissipating in the winds. Greenlanders do not wear green. They have an aversion to verdure. For them it […]
North of all countries
and for tradition, he walks on rainfall the density of stone, archetypal bear, no fur-lined pocket to conceal his claws, sapphires or believable treasure maps. Spiraling raptors search for more prey, flying past uneaten clouds and windmills. Seeing for miles, unhampered by the boy, the shabby leather of ruby-studded jessies. One place you find a […]
Let’s Burn the Lot
Let’s get in the habit of burning all the clothes we’ve worn whenever we had bad luck or got grim news. Your trousers would go up very quickly, a man-made mix we’d suppose. My long black redundancy coat, moth holes and hopefully a few still-nibbling moths, could meet their ravaging match on that cleansing pyre. […]
Appleland
Here the county lies in an old skin shedding hops, apples, sweetened air blowing blossom and spores, the scents of earth turned from season to season. In the county archives maps unroll their old boundaries, parish by parish tithe by tithe, where orchards are named in hundreds for the conservator to explore inch by inch. […]
against a wolf at the door
Summer’s end you traipse Red Riding Hood style into the wood, off the path to be bloodied and purpled picking blackberries. Child of the Grandmothers Sugar Roll & Preserving Pan Collective. It is in your DNA to weave hand and arm through aggressive laces of briar. Your fingers pluck a season of weather encoded in […]
Trawlermen
“I had a white ‘un once: there were that many pockets I could never find my loose change.” Hull trawlerman Three weeks at sea then seventy-two hours for the ‘three-day millionaires’ to put on their suits (sewn to order by a Hessle Road tailor – a jacket in sky blue with belt or double-breasted […]
The Cake Mixture
After Edip Cansever a woman searching for emptiness of being creams butter and sugar in a mixing bowl one, two, three yolks and a tiny piece of shell she leaves the shell a moth enters the room she adds the coldness of milk and evening air echoes of mothers calling their children the darkness […]
Landfall at daybreak
Fetch a saucepan – the small even-handed one with a lip on either side, find the flat wooden stirrer, or better still, use the spurtle Granddad made, take the rolled oats from the cupboard – the nearest stout paper packet – marvel at the pale yellow elephant on the front, outlined in bright blue, look […]
A Traditional Cure
To hold her down, that mother’s tongue, you need an iron plate to stop her scolding – a man-made tongue rigid and silent in its strength. Language can be tamed and tongues be taught. All she can do is dribble now, around that held-firm tongue and utter baby sounds – no scolding words. Her head […]
In the Nude
While on holiday on a Greek island we stayed in a small village, and at the bottom of the road was a nudist resort. This was amusing to us but I think for most people it would have been embarrassing. Driving down past it on our way to the sea, some of us shut our […]
God in 80s Movies
This baby is born in pink mood lighting, synths shimmering as her tiny raw hands claw at the vinyl ceiling. This baby is born in a three storey house – powder blue and Victorian. This baby has Coca Cola and Chicago running through her veins. This baby cries prettily, and her screams fade out when […]
Elephantsong
“Do you think red is my colour?” I ask with softest teeth. “What?” She watches the mattress, how it languidly sinks beneath my thighs. “It’s just that that’s the whole Indian wedding motif; always red.” She wipes away dark chunks of kajal, small streaks of black smeared down beneath her […]
small print
if this product does not reach you in perfect condition, please return the packet and contents, stating when and where purchased. your statutory rights are not affected. well i’d like to return myself. mum will you pack me up in your stomach again. and tape shut the slit in your middle: the bit that opened […]
When my uncle stood at the top of the office block roof
he swayed from side to side, half-glugged bottle locked in his burning fingers, his silhouette framed by the black hole of night, flecks of scornful planets blinked behind his back. The whole world stretched out in front of him like the sides of a fallen-down box, and his eyes had been opened, and stared open […]
Nature’s diagnosis
i’m afraid to say i’ve swallowed an apple seed and now it’s growing its roots in my belly. i believe that the trunk will run straight up through me until i have a wooden spine and ribs of solid oak. i think the seed will grow, and make branches in my lungs till it pokes […]
The Beauty of Right Now
I grew up in a town decorated with honeysuckle and sunflowers. I was not born there, nor did I move there – I woke up one morning and the town came to me. The ground was paved with cobblestones, and majestic oak trees lined the main road (the road the travellers would walk with their […]
At the Funeral
Brother and sister take polar bears. Brother parks his between two F-150s but sister’s won’t stay, instead follows her to the front row of fold-out seats and licks her wrists when hungry, so she digs through her pockets for bits of raw seal. After the ceremony, she feeds brother’s bear too. Family members say nothing […]
Talking to my car
I once went over to talk to my dream car, and I complimented it, even when it was sleepy and still I climbed inside, and touched the steering wheel, snuggled down in the cosseting seat, told it about its engine, how big, how many this, how many that, I looked in my pocket and found […]
Of All Colours
Parading down the streets of Russia in silence, it’s 1993 and to be or not to be is whispered from balcony to balcony, corner shop to corner shop and the husky has chewed the newspaper. He’s ripped the headlines to shreds and the woman, in a multi-coloured bobble hat, she sits on a bench. Fingers […]
House with Missing Teeth
Imagine you are faceless and double-bodied, and your mother doesn’t look at you until the moon tinfoils you both, because you are only loved when in the dark and half-forgotten. This is a law of the universe, everything most beautiful when leaving. Your mother has taught you to love a body less body and more […]
Snakes and Ladders
There’s a house in America full of children Who like to play games Like Snakes and Ladders in their white Walled rooms. If they lose they act Up. But they’re children, what do you expect? Winning makes you feel powerful. Their parents are powerful People. They are expecting A work call right now, they can’t […]
Mr Sigiriya’s Weird and Wonderful Talents
My dad always told me Never to speak to strangers, So I always ended up Just speaking to my friends. I heard about him first from Tommy. We were walking home from school, Our backpacks heavy, Sweat dripping from our spring brows. “Mr Sigiriya can tie himself in knots you know!” I didn’t believe him. […]
Mrs Richards’ Year
The chairs – They were blue and curved and scratched your legs in the morning chill. But they were snug; A familiar, unchangeable presence, Despite the fact you would swap them like secrets. So really, it was a new chair every week. Then there was that odd sensation when you found your very first one […]
Recipe for a Towpath Garden
for SAFE Regeneration, Bootle Lift the old canoe from the canal, set down its keel on the dry grass. Fill it with soil and broken tiles heavy enough to thwart its restive spirit. Plant it bow to stern with medicinals: a small lemon tree grown from a pip, lollipop verbena, lavender, juniper and hops to […]
Lobster Shift
i want to mummify your flesh you’re ablaze beside my bag of bones so i can’t sleep you’re so still and i want to burn your gold wreathed limbs for slipping so swift into the dripping deep i want to kick in your soft brinks if you breathe so loud one more time lining your […]
Recipe for a Towpath Garden
for SAFE Regeneration, Bootle Lift the old canoe from the canal, set down its keel on the dry grass. Fill it with soil and broken tiles heavy enough to thwart its restive spirit. Plant it bow to stern with medicinals: a small lemon tree grown from a pip, lollipop verbena, lavender, juniper and hops to […]
Newly in love, distracted neuroscientists ♥
Polar Bear
A bear, formed from ice, darkens the window like drapes drawn on the outside. Out from buckled willow a mile further from polynya than it naturally hunts it stares, a furry doubting Thomas, into a translucent lounge as if this could be the place where seals are made. Melting sea ice confines the polar bear’s […]
On the conservation of mass
What in the world were they before, those specks of pollen smoking in the sunlight, shaken from lamb’s-tail catkins, seeking a home elsewhere and otherwise, as did his tipped ash wispy as silverpoint, rising and departing on the air? What becomes now of the boy he was, held all those years in the grainy lightprints […]
I am drinking yellow flowers
After ‘At the Quinte Hotel’ – Al Purdy daffodils forsythia marsh marigolds the mellow meadow vetchling last year’s dandelion wine yesterday I unfriended Facebook Twitter LinkedIn quit www.youtube.com cached the laptop […]
The Nature of Glass
What is a hand? A tender rake with which to claw your way out of sleep’s thick fleece, to crawl back from the landslip’s brink, to mark the track of your wracked body over the hot sand, so hot it could crack your heart and you still dreaming of the row of lives and loves […]
Collapsible deer
Collapsible deer. Sturdy beech. Nervy deer. Inscrutable beech. Dun deer. Dun beech. Warm deer. Cool beech. Portable deer. Pillar beech. Impelled deer. Impelled beech. Hoofed deer. Strong-rooted beech. Sweet-toothed deer. Sweet beech. Sugared deer. Sugared beech. Ring-ripping deer. Ring-ripped beech. Sturdy deer. Collapsible beech.
from Thomas Hobbes (1588–) Works Motherhood
1. Generation it takes a man to generate a man – Aristotle Hobbes considers the species reproducing itself through his cunt. He considers a horse chestnut tree in late April: lamblit green pushing against its own brown ability to reason – spineless pre-foliage anxious to make more of itself. He considers loins; jet-lagged adrenaline, their […]
During the Recent Thunder & Lightning
I There was the prandial-comfort of entertaining a few old cronies. The assurance, when the power went, each friend round the table was entertaining thoughts as infantile and forbidden as my own. One friend is convinced we’re players in a computer game. She and I argued the toss. Now happily I entertain the thought I […]
Self-Portrait without Stitches
after Tarfia Faizullah i was hurt i wasn’t i saw it on the internet licked yogurt from a spoon while the girls described their blood hot seizing the cotton of a sheet i am speaking from the cut place from my other mouths do not believe me for i was never cut or i was hurt but never sewn or i wasn’t i want -ed it i didn’t i screamed i […]
Three Qualities
“Three qualities make us adults: to give things their proper names, not to use another’s suffering like a baby uses that of its mother, third, to approach the end serenely.” You say the end and not death – that’s what people say when they’re halfway there – but I don’t want to end. The proper […]
In July
the days are long enough to travel three hours by train to walk with you from Top Lock to Bottom Lock: a descent of sixteen locks should give us time to talk. The noon sun is hot on the cobblestones, already, and I’m so happy to be here with you after all you’ve been through. […]
Forgotten Holst
I am Diana, moonstrider, goddess of the Hunt; The closest celestial body to Earth. I have gone by many names, Selene, Artemis, Chang’e… Wrapped in my triste grey cloak I dance to the sides of the main procession Sweeping my chariot in a lentando diminuendo to the dewy grass where I sleep forgotten in the […]
(Into)national Anthem
Ancient fourteen-bar meadow, please forgive how words mowed you down. How they murdered you plainchant margins of Queen Anne’s lace, your hushed lutes in hedges, in woods, and in fields that became guns, killing at a flag, learnt by rote, chanted back by cowerers afraid of death, bereft of life. To be pumped around our […]
ode to oud
sliced like a pear. pips pop between the strings and frets and slide like incensed sand into my hair. stone-walled and mortar-bared, black, dusty, spare, breeze-borne, like a rhythm running through a shadow, then ensnared. mouth closed, the breaths of agar trees remember the strip of bark and splay […]
Sea Interlude, Blackpool 1987
Every pylon we pass is the Tower and the Tower is a tram made of lightbulbs, the sea is shipping containers and the seafront is a slot machine sliding on 2ps. The pier is the glass giraffe we bought for grandma, the tide is going out between the floorboards, all the dogs are made of […]
Bwbachod’s lament
Mother told me I had to keep my virtue safe said it was something to be kept, a shut purse. I pictured it instead as cold liquid in cupped hands, such a small well of water dripping through my fingers. Mother warned me of thirsty boys, late-night girls who idled by streams, up to their […]
Grass Like His Mother
After Brahms’ Requiem Den alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras though not the brittle shiftings of a parched field, those stiff yellows scorched to desiccation, but the grass that leans, restive, into crosswinds and that beckons winter sun to touch it gold. Grass like his mother praying at her sickroom window, palms against the pane, […]
A Young Man’s Song
A young man should be faithful, keep company with chivalrous men – a jade brooch on his waist, his midnight-blue coat, emblazoned with kirin. In the morning, an audience with the King, then a ride to the village, Long Pleasure. He buys and drinks the most succulent wine, sitting among pretty flowers at sunset. The […]
Don’t
Day Forty-nine The warm buoyant breaths don’t miss you The winds that have left for reincarnation before you, that brush against the lips of your childhood don’t miss you The winter, the woman’s ice heart, dead from sickness, drifting away in the infinite blue sky with thin needles stuck all over it doesn’t miss you […]
Emerging from Matter
Psalms 22:14: ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels.’ I GIVE THANKS For the following, as listed: fragment of a god (unnamed); fragment of a frieze; a sketch of […]
how to catch a god
It’s all about desire, you have to get that, you have to find a way to push it into the stone – make it big because there’s so much of it and it keeps moving and flowing like the river. There’s his, to pull […]
soundwaves
i. swimming, eyes closed. i want to see how far i’ll get before my breath runs out and all i am is ripples. the sea feels impossibly shoreless, here in the middle where the waves twist my body into a question mark: can the ocean exist without us trying to cross it? ii. if water […]
[the space within]
Listen. Put on lightbreak like the loafers that don’t quite fit but will in time. Wipe the sands of shame and other people’s expectations from your eyes and waken into miracle. The audience has faded with the stars. Walk soundlessly through the forest that breathes and dreams with you. […]
listen to the middle voice.
i will take you now, let me have your hand (i heard there’s an artery straight to the heart from your wrist), let me hold it, and i will take you now. listen. shut your eyes, […]
Take a Deep Breath
(After ‘The Beast in the Space’ by W.S. Graham.) Keep to the edge! To be sure, the shore is your friend. Look at how she wends, sharp black forked tongue, up and over the horizon lines, lashing, thrashing, serpent, siren, tale as old as ink. Don’t turn the page! Her fossils are here, but overleaf […]
ECHO
I shall have the last word, snatch it as it loops to its full self, newt-like, belly oiled with vowels, only to flip it back; a thin ghost of itself, now tadpole, pond skater, to flit from lobe to drum, drown, as new sounds bubble from your lips. If I’m quick, I’ll catch a full […]
synesthetic translations
tur·quoise noun 1. pale wooden beads in your mouth. 2. tangling bracelet string around your tongue. french adjective eggy bread with raspberry jam. cap·tain noun 1. paper dissolving in your mouth – 2. fibres clamping your taste buds as though you spit ink. i·rrit·ate verb a mosquito laps orange juice from the crook of your […]
Romeo & her alphabet
I’m sorry. Romeo isn’t cooperating today. She’s sleeping. Listen to her drumming heart sighing up and down my sticky couch. Watch her twitching paws flying in the jalousie-filtered sun-lagoon of my living room. Here, tuna-shaped mice hide in wispy coral yarn. But alas, her dreams do nothing to close the Silence between us. Yes, I’ve […]
Untitled
In between the sprinklings of a summer sun let off for a new kind of yellow, an ocean of open vibrates within faces, closes and widens in tidal conversation, remembering and what are we? […]
Tangerines
Before the war was once-upon-a-time In 1947. I had to peer through cigarette smoke To see my parents in black and white, Lounging on zebra skins, while doormen Stood by doors in blue-grey uniforms. Nightclubs were darkened rooms, like mine, Where my parents stayed up so late It was light outside when Tony and Mike […]
A Dream of Langland
Mist over Malvern hills, a death cloud drowning in the sun, A shifting uncertain season, a truth tower toppling. Hob, harrowing his heart out, certain of nothing but hunger. A long lean man, a patched man, a godsboy dreamer, Shivering and babbling by a brook in winter, Anguish of injustice flowing from his frozen fingers, […]
In The Mortuary
Like soft cheeses they bulge sideways on marble slabs, helpless, waiting to be washed. Cotton wool clings in wisps to the orderly’s tongs, its creaking purpose done… He calls the woman, ‘Missus’, an abacus of perspiration on his brow despite the cold. And she is the usual woman – two terra cotta nipples like patches […]
das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilisation and Its Discontents)
Das Unbehagen sat with us at tables of cracked wood as we twisted palms of calloused leather soles years of labour in a plastic shine. “we are threatened with suffering…” It smiled at us as we sweated prayers into polyester sheets words and empty tins of beans a coupon-code G-d. “our body…” It watched us […]
new york, 1984
everything was a conflation of love and mortality, always had been, always has been how everyone lives, but we hadn’t expected it like this. […]
arrochar alps
my calves still ache from traversing that gorgeous, ballooning pregnant munro beinn narnain with her tufts of sheep opal curls slick from rain running from the threat of water breaking beneath that storm cruach nam miseag and we were all alone bitten and bruised vowing to never return to the […]
the civilised man
dips his spoon into a bowl of cornflakes but his heart isn’t in it. this is what society has done to us. he reads a newspaper about a war somewhere else, probably in the east. they don’t do that sort of thing here. here the war is internal. the newspaper says: he had become a […]
Blood clots in egg
a blur of walls and days then a jug, from the cupboard with its smears, splinter of shell with the sunny glob of orange and a search for debris amongst the jelly. forced to inspect, I find fragments of the freckled brittle, and then (mortified) gliding over the sphere of yolk – the guilty pink […]
Temper
There’s a girl over there With wonky teeth and a stare And she’s looking right at me, What does she want? The motley, Slack jaw open, intact, With one smack it would hang… But no, no– We mustn’t do that. There’s a kid in the stairwell, Ratty thing of just twelve, And by God, it […]
Civilisation
Daisies in her hair – barefoot and wilded Living on the edge of comfortable. I let her run across the open plain. But she cannot climb the trees Not when I’m not there. I have to watch her. I would like her to run and leap And graze her soft white knees On old bark […]
Inevitable
My friends and I, we are waiting for you to give in like the others before as there will come a time where there is no more of us who were crushed and burnt. Soon you will get tired and exhausted by the endless daily slog that will only contribute to the fog sinking in […]