A photograph, still upon a white window Gathers the curls and the smile of a girl, Strong and awakening in a plated frame. She watches, at dawn, the shining east And the sleeping form of her sister; In summer, in winter, she stays all the same. Through the starlit glass, I hear her laugh, Gentle […]

You told me once that growing up was like walking up a downwards escalator. I think I was too young to understand back then: I thought of time as a steadily growing tree that I hadn’t yet started climbing. I remember playing hide-and-seek; climbing up thin branches, or crouching in the undergrowth. Once, you saw […]

On the verge of the lake, he stands alone without speaking or moving, his emaciated frame lost amid gorse bushes, their needles tipped with yellow buds, spines hooking onto his baggy brown coat. The landscape recedes, each mountain like the stony back of a sea monster in hibernation. Ashen clouds slide over the weakening sun, […]

It was a gift for an international girl; a book of hard-hitting photographs on glossy paper. Something to leave about to complement her framed intellect. She presses pansies between the pages, for the thank-you card. One night she examines it by phone-light, nestled under the duvet her grandmother made when she was ten. A distraction […]

Smells of baking remind me of you. Your red apron, my small striped one with the torn pocket. Your soft stretched skin, fingers kneading dough into a ball. My fat floury hands grasped for your amber necklace, Quick, Phoebe, the oven! You played with flavours, made little blobs of buttery dough on the tray Your […]

She is the class of crazy that inspires adoration. She stacks vices like bracelets, works herself into hysterics, Don’t give her matches she will pinch them till her fingers scorch. I know she is gorgeous like a thunderstorm, but stop trying to hold her hand. Her heart is too heavy for you to lift. Her […]

The wheels got caught on the broken slabs of the drive, as they always did. And the shed we told you to pull down still remained, broken and proud. A dark place of mystery where, as toddlers, we often hid. And you, with stamping feet and a gentle chuckle, would call for us aloud. That […]

Small Pleasures Like opening a can, putting pressure down And pulling back the rounded metal tag, Forefinger slipped under, braced against the hiss Of hydrogen, the give of metal against the thumb And the kick as the seal passes out. Even like the low crunch as the speckled, Porcelain egg shell collides with the thick […]

You forget you have a cold for five minutes, and your long earrings seem to spin in orbits around you. The only magazine headline you can read says the “hot mess” look is in again, so you feel accomplished because your hair is unwashed, black heels dangling over your shoulder, red blisters hitting the sidewalk. […]

In remembrance to all those who lived, died, and worked in Auschwitz and Birkenau They come off the train as humans. Bloodied, muddied, sweat and tear-caked humans. I look at them, and think – I have to kill them. Animals, we’re taught, they’re just animals! Disgusting, stealing animals, But they stink of pure humanity. Hope, […]

Fire knows the wood’s secrets as they hold their heated deliberations Fire knows how to warm chilled hands, chilled feet, chilled faces Fire knows how to dance and sway to the sounds of the night Fire knows how to belch and cackle exactly when you don’t want it to Last, but not least, fire knows […]

I remember sitting on my father’s shoulders watching the millenium fireworks from one unknown bridge or another. I remember being wrapped up in a pram with my brother, a plastic cover keeping away the rain and the deep rumbles of summer fireworks as they unleashed their burning colours and showered down their embers on those […]

The black of its coat was oozing now like pitch and spilling along the hoof racked rills of sand. The writer sat, doped by the bloody ditch, enjoying the raw art so “very fine, yet very sad”. He knew from the moment it started this was tragedy more profound than the stage. Blood, another drink […]

The National Geographic cover of the woman with green eyes, or the storybook wallpaper in the first floor bathroom, the waxy crayons in the boiler room and the rusted key collection on the green-matted desk, the telephone which still had a twirling, winding cord latched solidly into the wall, and you, sitting in your chair, […]

1. The lake is no slave to fashion, but she is proud of her frothy skirt of trees. Her dark, svelte figure. 2. She doesn’t want to talk. The air rushes over her, whistling how have you been? – and she responds with a glassy stare. 3. The lake raises an eyebrow when she is […]