Little gas flame sparking in the mulch Cog-tooth of a Scandinavian iris Micro-totem to a god of shyness Petrol bubble birthed from earthy belch Tree kingfisher chink, shorn off mid-brawl Driblet-beast from thirty fathoms down Half-exploded teardrop of a clown Alien seedling, sown amidst a squall Blot made by a buggered cartridge pen Bubblegum in […]
NPC 2011
Our Lady of the Pylons
When she is re-designed, will we still know she stands for us – that repeated shape potato-printed, lino-cut, repeated through the hills? She gives herself away and away, the aching weight of power hung from each shoulder: her prayers hung to each light switch. Grey paint elides her figure to a burr of cloud. She […]
Springtime of the Nations
A sympathiser advises a friend The lilacs were in flower, heavy, drowsy, boulevards suddenly pleasant. And I suspect the sun was out. You must understand there was nothing we could do. In the square hung the conspirators, dangling effigies—the partying over— how they caroused our masters, the hubbub was like the explosions of military battle […]
How to Furnish an American House
How to furnish old American houses (Pellegrini & Cudahy, 1949) Our first problem is how to hide as much as possible. We want nothing distressed. Snakes on walls create a restless feeling. Red is rarely suitable in large doses. After dark, a panelled room seems to close in upon us, but it is not an […]
Photograph
This is my daughter asleep in the morning, one hand between the silvery poles of her cot, that remind me of birch trees. She’s going to theatre soon: the surgeon will snap her ribs to reach a heart which can’t wake itself properly inside its blue forest. She mustn’t eat. So when she stirs and […]
In Vitro
We found a moment’s break between champagne and seating-plan to bolt into the dark and dusty mop-cupboard we’d clocked before and though it had no lock you turned your back then lifted up your dress and suffered me to thumb your nicest pants aside and pop the needle through your skin and push it in. […]
Birmingham Roller
We spent our lives down in the blackness… those birds brought us up to the light. – Jim Showell, Tumbling Pigeons and the Black Country Wench, yowm the colour of ower town: concrete, steel, oily rainbow of the cut. Ower streets am in yer wings, ower factory chimdeys plumes on yer chest, yer heart’s the […]
White Basin
It came to the point that she was weak past climbing stairs and in the mornings had to wash using the kitchen sink. I went down Castle Street to Wallace Hughes, Electrical and Hardware, to buy a bowl. The dark shop smelled as always of paraffin and bare boards. The bowl was cheap; a simple […]
Hill Speak
There is no dictionary for my father’s language. His dialect, for a start, is difficult to name. Even this taxi driver, who talks it, lacks the knowledge. Some say it’s Pahari – ‘hill speak’ – others, Potwari, or Pahari-Potwari – too earthy and scriptless to find a home in books. This mountain speech is a […]
Ponting
In the end we turned him into a verb: to pont meaning to pose in ice and snow until frozen. On the voyage south he’d be tilting plates in the darkroom, in one hand the developing dish, in the other a basin of vomit. One minute he’d arrange us in groups for the cinematograph, then […]
To The Lighthouse
i The Window It was Virginia’s charcoaled stare that put me off: her disappointment in me, the reader, before I even started. So I walked into the exam without her: without the easel, the skull or the shawl, the well-turned stocking, Minta’s missing brooch. In the hall I watched the future show its pulse and […]