Barnabas had one eye. Upward-pointing, like a spoilt ballot in a Sea of cloned paper brothers. His lunchbox was tin and patterned with polka dots Worn away to crescent moons. Once he met Paddington at Namesake station, and we took pictures. I left my ticket on an underground bench but Barnabas remembered his lunchbox. It […]

The winter I discovered myself in a boy’s arms, I also found my other missing parts in an elevator. All that closed space makes a person a master of geometry, and I entered a shapeless silence in my head. I remembered the stuff I thought I had buried in the snow, how he said the […]

diphenyl oxalate (n.): a solid ester whose oxidation products are responsible for the chemiluminescence in a glowstick i. the drugstore glowstick curled around my knuckles and cracking in my palm gives off more light than i ever will ii. when i was seven i fell asleep with a pink one in my mouth and chewed […]

it was a yellow hairclip; josie knew it was childish but equally she hated the wisps of baby hair that ventured out of her temples like cow ears.   it flew straight through the crack in the floorboards. calmly she lay on her stomach with a torch and her eye between the planks and that […]

I’m watching you as I pull sand from my skin, tiny studs who balk at their fate – and I want you to move, sift your hands through mine as if we were easy that way. the sea ticks out a drumbeat and all my limbs stick in their sockets.   later we will climb […]

i’ve decided to live in the kitchen sink i think i’ll fit in better there and pretend I’m holidaying in st tropez i’ll float, with the spoon as my lilao the water’s lips making swollen foam bracelets on my thighs and tell my colleagues, all casual that I needed a change of scenery. i’ll have […]

The kitchen drips with steam and in it stands my mother whom I cannot recognize. She puts balls of sesame inside bigger folds of dough, white in her pale cracked palms. Under the acrylic my mother’s nails are short and small, bent as umbrella tops. Mine are naked almonds rife with milk spots. I think […]

February 14th, 1900 Flowers pressed and laced with postcards Roses are thrown down stepping stones A girl leans off the balcony Silhouette golden, face unshown O take us to the hanging rock, Oasis to the dead grass wastelands The haystacks and the dust clouds. If the Hanging Rock won’t come to you Then you must […]

Cataclysms 92 : 1-37 1 When meteor showers are omens of omniscience in a world where the legacy of Man is a calculation beyond the capacity a tower of transistors can provide, it is funny that our kind would revert to superstition. 2 Perhaps it is another cyclic mandate of the aether. 3 Formerly, the […]

hiding under the apple tree with broad branches and pink flowers;   when feeding the next door neighbours fish blibity blobity blu halves of dry fish food captured;   and taken   Under water;   stuck in the school toilet you know there is a queue but your pink face tells you to stay;   […]

Here we are. I’m half-sober and you’re stamping                 on a cigarette like it killed the last person you                                 kissed. Here we are. Outside the party. No stars. Only street lamps.                                 Talking about other people’s                                                 tragedies to avoid                                                                 our own truth.                                                 And you love me. In a push you up […]

Aisha! says my Columbian grandmother,   Aisha, your ears need piercing. She inspects the two pure ovals on the side of my head,   and I picture her among my disapproving aunts, needle like a sword, apple like a shield in her hands   and suddenly as if she had tapped a baton on a […]

In spring, when frost delays departure, the wooden pillars lock, speared into the sand. Snails creep across the rough bark, varnishing the rugged wood, seeking moonlight in the higher altitude. Tearful seals raise their sombre heads to the sky, smoothing the sharp rocks with their melancholy sighs. Moss-cloaked barriers restrain the sea as screaming winds […]

I spent two years banishing a ghost from my head. So now it sits in my back garden. And sometimes it stands by the kitchen window, watching us scramble breakfast eggs and burn toast.   And every now and then, whenever I’m not alone, it stands at the end of my bed. and it will […]