Contains strong language. The first doctor insists that my relationship with food is to my self what a seed is to a fruit, that my eating habits are the moon and all my life’s catastrophes are the tide. The second doctor makes a diagnosis I can’t pronounce. My father tells me I will fuck up […]

They named me after a sweet tree As if to hide my spirit They named me after a gentle tree As if to hide my strength They named me after a small tree As if I would not grow They named me after an old tree As if I was not young They named me […]

When she’s sat in the dark I light myself like a candle Burn away the shadows Til she’s sitting in the sunshine The only problem with candles Is that in order to glow They must burn themselves away But when she’s sat in the dark I swear, It takes everything in me Not to set […]

And Li Po also died drunk. He tried to embrace a moon In the Yellow River.                      – Ezra Pound, ‘Epitaphs’ the river is drunk; reeling, it tosses the sad poet’s prow to the white moon which bathes gently in the dark water of heaven. the moon, enraged by this sot’s trespass, casts his prow […]

on the podium, mid assembly, so my presence will be so overbearing no one can look away. I want their eyes to burn into my skin, examine its ripples and folds and the scar that digs it up like a trench in Ypres. I’d watch a few hundred jaws slowly unhinge, drop down into a […]

eyns My grandfather sat at the foot of my bed At six years old, my tongue bumbled over my anglicized versions of the Yiddish that he tried to teach me He was six when he learned his second tongue and I can barely see the first now I fell asleep to it tsvey My grandmother […]

there’s a green chair that sits in my living room. i’m pretty sure that it stands taller and older than me; for years it’s housed the bodies of my family and friends and it still smells like the wet fur of our first dog. i’ve never felt more ashamed than when sitting on the chair […]

our clocks forgot to go back this year or maybe their hands have become stubborn in old age, so we live an hour ahead now, flowers drooping before their petals fall plates dropping when the guests have not yet arrived when I sit on bridges and watch water sleep walk, the people on boats are […]

woman wants to loop herself like a spool of thread into the cupped arms of a mug woman wants to use up all her thoughts considering the brown heart of coffee woman wants a man with a beard and a dog to lift a mug to his winded lips and swallow her chapped laughter woman […]

“So you see,” I say slowly, “It’s a little engine of remembering, recalling, reverberating in the mind, like rhyme.” “So, it can never die?” he replies. I avert my eyes. “It will, with time.”

snooze hit snooze again wake up pull on some dirty clothes run to the bathroom prep a shot cold shower shrapnel digging into flesh later dry hair wringing out dregs of the banal then abyssopelagic ecstasy when i feel like that i often feel what i feel * inventory:                70 mg valium […]

after Jack Underwood your hair continues to surprise me in its texture after every single wash / like the shock of a photocopier lid realising the other side when it beams white light / I could listen to you listing your banned foods for days / and tell you bad jokes about music as the […]

I sit with them at lunch Fried chicken on my plate I eat with a knife and fork “You’re not black, if you don’t use your hands to eat” Yet I know that hands tied up the strange fruit on the trees in the south The fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain […]

And you, you will be sat there surrounded by crackling, yellowed pages with a wad of fifties stuffed in your mouth. And me, I’ll be sat here all picturesque, swathed in marble carvings and oil paintings older than my childhood home. And I’ll silently seethe, let the blood bubble out of my tear ducts, let […]

Stop falling in love with people you could write poems about. Stop tripping over and drowning yourself in metaphors And obsessing over similes Like your silly white shirt is clouding your judgement. Resist those with whom you can be Radcliffian, Fall in love with no one in any way Byronic, Or those who may resemble, […]

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 […]

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 […]

           “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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]