Each train is announced by its porcelain tinkle. The glow in the tunnel expands to a blue-white gleam. Inside the capsule, the seats are wet. The floor is slippy and dangerous. In some towns, guards throw buckets of sand in at every stop. Here, we pride ourselves on a pristine look and lower the temperature. […]
Poems
Another Agony in the Garden
The harshness in a human face adores its closeness to the bone. It glories in refusing to yield. It patrols its own numbed attitude sealed off from another’s despair, to guard its air of being strong. A fox that strolls in broad daylight has something shameful to disown: a half-buried relic he’s scraped up, worried […]
Word Clouds
The arguments of lovers condense in cars, then fall as windscreen tears. Speeches cause rainbows. Wedding guests spatter their chat like dew on the lawns of parsonages. It dampens marquees. All the words ever uttered cloud the sky, queueing to recycle the waters of Noah. Baby’s first word and all of our word-strings, float in […]
Deep Field
A moth’s wing stammered in the air vent I unzipped on one side of the bell tent. Tea lights spent their carbon in a lantern that panicked stars onto the canvas. Outside, deep field, you pointed at a moon so real your finger came back dusty. We stared like telescopes at our past – that […]
from I Become a Delight to My Enemies
Power Plant MY DARRYL DOESN’T LIKE TO EAT VEGETABLES one aunt, Jutta, said sternly to the other, Jude, and thus their estrangement began. They hated each other with perfect savagery, and so they presented each other with lavish gifts. First, Jude gave Jutta an enormous book of photographs of water: the ideal gift for the […]
Then I Found Harmony Brown
My father’s given name was James Brown. He had his surname legally changed to Holiday because he loved Billie Holiday, whose first name was Eleanora Fagan, and he hated the peculiar institution. Besides that another black James Brown, the King of Soul, already had a recording career when my dad was starting his in New […]
The posh mums are boxing in the square
roughing each other up in a nice way This is not the world into which I was born so I’m changing it I’m sinking deep into the past and dressing my own mum in their blue spandexes svelte black stripes from hip to hem and husbands with better dispositions toward kindness or at least […]
Do not indulge indigo
Saturday Collection Duty
When visiting the city I take envelopes. I keep them in the baggy pocket of my wax jacket. When someone passes on the high street I take up a few stones from their footstep and seal them away. Each person has their own envelope. I plan for eleven each visit, but I […]
I know you only invited me in for a coffee, but
I have eaten your house Our children were playing inside I say playing – actually your child Was ignoring my child in a meanish, unkind sort of way Anyway I have eaten them now So it is irrelevant that your child is not a kind person I ate your 4×4 too Even though I cannot […]
Fucking in Cornwall
The rain is thick and there’s half a rainbow over the damp beach; just put your hand up my top. I’ve walked around that local museum a hundred times and I’ve decided that the tiny, stuffed dog labelled: the smallest dog in the world, is a fake. Kiss me in a pasty shop with all […]
Talisman
Last summer they burnt down the thicket and everything here looks so sad. I’m sure I’ve told you the pills you prescribed flatten me and I don’t feel right. It’s now been two months since I stopped. I’ve resolved to determine how long I can hold out. I hope you don’t read this as grandiose, […]
Princess
the leaves crispy like bacon my yellow wellies all drooly because I once danced too close to the campfire poplar poplar oak pushpins holding the world poplar sweet chestnut Nick spots a creepy face in the bark broken t r e e up you […]
Namazu at the Physicist’s Funeral
“Technology may yet show that there is something to the old catfish legends.” – Motoji Ikeya, Earthquakes and Animals: From Folk Legends to Science The catfish pulls on a trenchcoat, slides a sweet-wrapper fin through each sleeve, turns up the collar. This is the first funeral Namazu has been to since being hatched by lightning […]
Polite Safety Notice
Somewhere near you, a man in late middle age will be sitting on a bench with his head on fire like a safety match. On buses and trains, other men will smoulder suddenly roaring into flame from the neck up. I’d be surprised if you haven’t seen them. They would scream but, without mouths, teeth […]
Near / Far Away
Find someone who looks at you the way a drone pilot would. People who live by the railway know a house is just an assembly of stones waiting for the right train to pass so close it shakes the walls and brings the roof inside. In your life you can be loved precisely seven times […]
Poem for a meme
have u seen that meme where the picture depicts a myosin protein dragging an endorphin to the inner part of the cortex which leads to the feeling of happiness in the human brain? just like sisyphus pushing his rock up the mountain. and i think, how apt, happiness is indeed a pursuit, something to be […]
you/me, an intellectual
you: daaaamn gorgeous / thicc baby / yummmayyyy me, an intellectual: daaaamn / & she eats kleenex tissues & protein bars / & she worships the bronzed billboard goddesses of ventura freeway / & she cuts her nails / inserts two fingers in her mouth / confesses to the toilet bowl & prays for absolution […]
The Inattentive Lover
The couple, side by side, do look to be, A picture of fresh love and youthful charm, One cannot question their fidelity, When one sees them strolling arm in arm. But woe betide! His hungry eyes do stray, To that young beauty just crossing their track, His greedy, whistling lips do now betray, His lust […]
Spooky Scary Skeletons
I can tell by the way my mother chews her toast that she is haunted. The faces in the fake Jackson Pollock painting in our living room are haunted. There is a dog that howls outside my room each morning at 3:06; that too is haunted. Empty spaces are haunted; train tracks in winter morning […]
it really do be like that sometimes
I think that the earth knows it really do be like that sometimes I think I can feel the water stagnating in the shower it’s hard and it isn’t doing my hair any favours but it’s all good I think that everyone who follows me knows that it really do be like that sometimes guys […]
Ode to Pepe the Frog
You were tiny. Green. Insignificant. You, always sad and stoic, contemplative, hissing, a symbol for something unnamed. Every line in your face spells out an incoherent joke, a teen’s rampant laughter, your black eyes the light of a webcam. You, miserably self-aware. Feels good man. God says you weren’t meant to exist like this. You […]
xu zhimo’s willow
on the bus ride to cambridge, the tour guide tries to tell us about peasant rebellions, chelsea buns, plague pits: the sky grew dusty with coughed prayers… some of the younger couples pay attention: young professionals from beijing, i think, they collect these kinds of stories like toy trains and action […]
Barkskin
The wood around the village edge greys in the distance like eyes do in time. The tree bark creases like crows’ feet arounds knots and branched shoulders. Craning my neck to write, the forest comes out from behind beeswax polish and I chase my classmates across the pine carpet. Looking past my pencils and papers, […]
Felling
Something happened and the evening turned into a bruise. The next day the bruise grew a tree. He walked around it all morning. Whispering, then yelling. Through the garden window I saw his lips, blue, and the mist leaving them to break upon the bark. He was back inside when I came home from work. […]
Looking at Trees
Looking at trees on the way home this evening, bent in the wind, leaning amicably like drinkers at a bar, I thought: I will stop resisting. I will lean with my friends, and let the wind agitate my hair.
I am the Tree
I drink Earth’s blood, Eat the light, Host the snow, Feel winds flow, Fledglings’ flight. I’ve heard the night owl’s hoots, Mushrooms balance on my roots Where flowers used to grow, They don’t know how far they go I’ve seen them all Between my leaves, In Autumn fall, In my bark sleeves. Some say I […]
parallel of a dead oak
a tree dissevered dissevered a tree roots worms clear in green water a deified root deified worms a tree dissevered translucent in green water a tree painted the reflection of hollow the landscape of woods holds its own […]
The White Trees
In time, leaves fall to become wings. Owls leave hunting for winter. Tree branches cocked in mid-air like flags; the December snow envelopes them like air — like breath — both visible and invisible. Children, in the now lost leafshade build a snowman, with twigs for hands, borrowed from a white tree. Someone in the […]
Dermatology for Trees
I recommend a dab of argan oil, bird-screech, honey water to soothe the complexion. Apply twice daily, no less. No song as tremulous as self-coronation. As body anointing every drip & seed. When you exfoliate, your roots may take flight, sing more sap than cratered underbelly. What I mean is this: the moss shall slick […]
Costa da Morte
He was surprised to find he’d lived to tell the tale. Now each spring he heaves his kayak from the shed, straps it to the roof rack and drives the half-mile to the canal – digs out a parking permit for the dashboard – doesn’t forget to lock the car – hoiks the boat down […]
Joy Gardner, 1993
“…I couldn’t believe that human beings could be so cruel to another human being, you know it makes you quinge to hear as a mother of what they did to my daughter in that sitting room… (they) tape up my daughter.” […]
Two Guns in the Sky for Daniel Harris
When Daniel Harris stepped out of his car the policeman was waiting. Gun raised. I use the past tense though this is irrelevant in Daniel’s language, which is sign. Sign has no future or past; it is a present language. You are never more present than when a gun is pointed at you. What language […]
I Miss the Slug Ooze of That Summer You Died
I put a slug on my knee and watched it crawl down my leg. A frenzy of night itching, blood, and waking to a constellation of scabs. And I walked in tall grass. And I stood so still under the sun. I got very sick for two weeks. I lay in bed thinking I might […]
Interrogation
How does the girl come to be? Talc at the back of her neck to stop the sweat from jeweling, to stop the black-eyed shine of the evil eye. Is the girl beholden? She is years of yeses in the making, her eyes button-shut against the world beyond her upstairs window, beyond the hundred jeweled […]
The stopper
lifted and all we did undoes, unfixes beneath this weight of days retuned to weightlessness in wilderness, each field or beach and every forest found, that late-night bath we ran, my fingers parting tangled strands, our tracks in crops or sand then every moon phase slowly foaming […]
Griglan (Heathland)
High above the serpent-rock, on any given summer/autumn day, your aptitude is mocked. No longer can it wander to the south or east in search of ghost-ships/sleeping saints. Intelligence has brought the livestock home to the cliff – to stand, with the blessed plants, oblique, and call back the chatter of choughs. Into the high […]
In the Timeless University
after W. S. Graham He lost a lifetime in the stacks and special collections, heard only the chafe of thumbs on that card index, the dry spine of an archive whose words made no voice in his head, dropped instead like pebbles into a mineshaft. But what was the work of the Chair of Silence? […]
Bi-polar
after Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples – Joseph Wright of Derby, oil on canvas, c. 1776 Yet something can be two things at once: fire and granite, moon and water, vision and pigment; oil and soul. Sulphur seas roil beneath our feet, a cloud’s mutability is […]
-.. .- -. -.-. .
it’s a dance. two girls trying not to stand on each other’s toes. two girls trying not to stand on the truth, circling each other in the dark. one wrong step: the air-raid sirens howl. there are secrets and there are secrets. the trick is knowing which ones to keep. the days run past like […]
Home of the Codebreakers
HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE CODEBREAKERS HOME OF THE […]
From Bletchley With Love
Germany’s war was waged, we had to make it ours. It began then, an almost park given to us: a façade of what it was not, Huts, a family of a hundred hundred people to trust secrets to; we began in quiet and voice never defied us in six – many – years; the […]
Codons
A t the start it felt like a clock. T he rhythm too steady. The tap (drip) you for G ot in the kitchen, or the key in the lock T urning over (and over). And still, we could no T work out the time, no rhythm to it, but still we T ried. The […]
Bi-när
I’m quite sightless Or tried to translate thes and wore that On this war we’re in en the snow wasn’t ash Or when I no longer got and none of it can be told until I’m blind with black ear nt with each other If I should die, tell him
I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire (There’ll Always Be an England)
ladies ladies gentlemen set on fire too much land love small lane field I don’t want to don’t want to dreaming of I know I’m dreaming of awry million marching wheel way down deep inside fire one desire baby I’ve ambition there’s surely don’t want to set a don’t want […]
< Vera >
We’ll meet again Don’t know where, don’t know when But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day. Keep smiling through, just like you always do, ‘Till the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away So will you please say hello to the folks that I know tell them I won’t be long. they’ll […]
When I tell you about my day
Shirley Cottrell’s diary extract, Tuesday 17th April 1945: “To see Fantasia in afternoon with Mummy”. Mother, we are firing silent rounds at the enemy, bullets they cannot see and don’t even know exist. Mother, we conceal weapons inside our skulls, fuel them with rations, save lives abroad. We are fighting just like the men, Mother, […]
Hidden Messages
It’s a collection of symbols we always use. Undeniable hate takes the passion out of our speech. They will help you with your words. Beginning at relations, it’s a family of 26 all into one house. We make them into words and speech. They are always there for us, making us happy with their dances. […]
Prism
after Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Blue veins thin silver scars white skin. Slice sharp glisten this bijection: emptiness to fill with snow blitzeis fractal twigs smoky sky sunset breaks fire from ice.
The Beast in Cyberspace
Log off. Delete. There’s no worth here. To search for reason within the Cloud through high-speed Fibre, honestly don’t waste your time. That wail announcing entitled arrogant self-destructing fanboys’ latest hill to die on. If you crave freedom of speech I’d mute the beast then block his mates through curation, less grief associates. The beast […]
Her Flowers
Just before she died, my grandmother glanced out of her bedroom window and saw her garden bloom one last time – with white chrysanthemums, lavender peonies, prize dahlias, cascades of red-hot pokers, delphinium sparks. Did the fireworks wake her? Muzzy from sleeping pills, my grandmother got out of bed and started to go downstairs, missed […]
[episode]
Bite the tape and have it wrapped around the wound, by sundown, buddy. Carvings; white shirts. You have seen so many things, etc. Hello, switchboard? Get me the engineer. These toy soldiers are covered in dust. There is a weight that will not budge. Switchboard switchboard, the tap in the basin won’t stop dripping. I […]
from The white jumper
1 Running and jumping from one grassy platform to another I stop. On the next patch of grass. Branches so arranged as to focus a beam of light on it. White and gleaming against the green of the grass. The white jumper. The white jumper. The white 4 We were sitting […]
Past Name Days
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 […]
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 […]