Joan of Arc and I lay head-to-head in the wash of a meadow frothing Queen Anne’s lace like a corrupted lung. Her fingers dabbling my palms like water, that martyr and I speak of our own voices: mine, stolen; hers given like a sack of entrails. Did the voices twitch, I ask, did they wriggle […]

For Wilfred Owen Contains strong language our bodies ache    on the streets where we rattle plastic cans for change    we watch the flocks of low drooping eyes scuttle by    like brambles in the north wind we have become part of the scene    patient    hopeful    crying out         but nothing happens on the corner a preacher […]

I saw Humphrey Bogart in a train station, Crewe, three o’clock in the morning, and he looked as faded and grey as I felt stumbling half asleep off the late service.   When I was ushered out the doors, he was just there by the taxi rank, leant up on a pillar, smoking, lit up […]

You may know Jesus. That preacher/teacher/healer/magic man with the clear silt skin. You may have seen him around town, raising the dead and making friends. Maybe he cleaned up your acne, maybe he showed you the gold humming of God. Take a look at his Tumblr: @carpentryqween. 1/? Jesus is a rebel leader/activist/socialist/pacifist and last […]

“Do you not know I am a woman?”(Act III, scene ii, As You Like It) My lover and I no longer speak. We leave notes in the mist on one another’s eyes. Once, he carried me through fields of sheep when I began to doubt that softness could be born. My lover doesn’t see the […]

                 Delhi, 2020 Delhi today is like a dried-out battleground / after one final revolution. Sentries in khaki thrash / young men on peculiar vehicles / for something I don’t understand. I hide my sewed-up face / in dark alleys; people look at me from the other side of their windows / scared. I’d have […]

Show me your teeth, God. Tonight, at the Apple Store under the unshut moon. Visit me tonight, God. Fog this spirit mirror with your Word — blind me with this new handheld eclipse. Oh, but my head sings with standing so long as the marrow of this sun-bleached bone. Church as mirage. Along its aisles […]

Ferenc II Rákóczi was a Hungarian aristocrat who led rebellions against the Habsburg empire in the early 18th century. He is widely considered a national hero in Hungary.”Rákóczi” is also the name of a popular Hungarian breakfast salami. Dear, kind Ferenc: I am in love with your meat-printed face. I fan this last pious slice, […]