All other birds are silent when the football season meets the Sunday morning summer. A lone cow descants to raucous shouts, the herd loll in a dappled circle. Halftime. You perch upon the hawthorn hedge, head bouncing sunshine. A little bit of bread and no cheese. You deserve more— bring out the Stilton, ruffle your […]

The skylark and I have traded places, I reel and churr all day and she’s great with paperwork, a natural shredder. It was difficult, at first to master a voice that pulses so close to the heart, where each lung draws its song independent from the other, holding air and refrain in the same breath, […]

When I first heard you sing, my heart turned over, not knowing, then, how long I’d be your lover, nor what sense it made to speak of forever. But here you are today: wife, mother, grandmother. Fortune, hard work and love held us together. I hear you singing, and my heart turns over.

Stook griiind, stook griiind:                                   the pulse extends waves to thrust air                                   down her throat into wizened lungs.                                   Her brain sucks oxygen for its miserly self                                   storing it for her last memory of                                   Shang-A-Lang. It robs muscle                                   so she is still, it thieves liver                                   so she pees brown, it purloins kidneys                                   so toxins thrive. Her mobile […]

I can’t remember a time there wasn’t the constant plop, plop from the demijohns fermenting against the far wall. Or the TV so loud – even louder when the ads come on – hammering Mrs Hall’s ears till her hearing-aids screech; fingernails on a blackboard, and Mr Hall eating his packet of cheese and onion […]

The beap The scream The beep The heat The heart The drip The breath The beat The air The hour The light The blue The line The pause –

I cannot keep you, but I can carve you a wooden box, engrave it with your name; I will not smother it in gold, cobalt blue enamel, set it with rubies, pearls; I’ll make an aperture of rock crystal to let the light in. Inside this box, I’ll place no giant knuckle bone, no vial […]

The tundish is a trickling lantern valve once ignored, now a vital sign as a city of pipes holds its breath, air stacks compressing as water expands to fill the cylinder tower. One lock releases, another blocks. Aim your phone at the hidden underside and answers appear in the camera flash etched on silver labels, […]

Your voiceover delivers instructions for the correct use of industrial-sized 3-D printers, one last record of your speaking aloud. We picture a white-coated technician watching your coded animations jolt to the tempo as you explain how to smooth the flow of layers shaping liquid into solid form, how inside these glass walls hours of programming […]

Morning has Broken, said the hymn like the first morning; and (for me) was unreadable even when pounded out with heavy hammers mor- / -ning / has / bro- / -ken Teacher would perform the trick of lifting a sound and a sherbet lemon from a high shelf – mor, he would say – cracking […]

I can’t hear them coming up behind me whether a vehicle or bicycle without a bell. If I tried to turn or look over my shoulder I’d tumble to tarmac or cobble so I keep going yard by yard until I can side-step out of the way, let them pass. The danger is they may […]

I remember how sunny the day was pretending to be, how bright it was in the kitchen how the water I was pouring from the blue mug to the red mug, to the blue mug, to the red mug was whispering it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright how it dragged my sleeves how the conversation […]

When the timpani, when the violins, mine is one body among many prone in the gallery. Still as seals on a wet beach in moonlight, waves of sound lap at the exposed summer night. We enter the music as we enter a sea, wishing to be transformed in some small, elemental way, eyes-closed-drifting through all […]

i.m. Major Brodie ***, MC, DSO, 1882 – 1923 You must have discovered it early. Perhaps you felt your heart unfold, your breath quicken, when the men stripped off their shirts at harvest, and guilt was a sudden aftertaste. You put the mask on, like we all did, fearing the truth of nakedness. You learnt […]

We’ve left sloe-picking late. Now white yeast clouds the surface of their bruised moons. I wasn’t there when she needed me; a difficult birth, that led her to the edge. And now she rolls her eyes as my clumsy hands knock and scatter sloes onto the grass, and when we have filled each stale box […]

I had thought that I preferred its placid waters that trade a Lethe forgetfulness for our reflections in soft focus, encourage a belief in the metaphysical, a fantasy of fish dancing beneath sun-speckled mirrorballs to the Gauloises wheeze of an accordion; but when they drained the St Martin Canal, what they found, along with the […]

Start by telling them about that night I was lost, adrift, a skinny ghost tripping through Shinjuku’s dirty streets, hob-nobbing with yakuza, dizzy on shochu, face shiny in the city’s thick wet heat. Or that morning my legs dangled free from the helicopter door, Vietnam’s canopy flattening like moss beneath my feet; cold hands toying […]

Word goes around: Maria’s friend is Swedish. Boys in stripy tops line up across the dance floor curious to know if my life is all sex and cigarettes. They tie themselves in knots to get close to me. I make space between my lips to let out the nonsense of pretend Swedish. I tell them […]

I’ve been learning about dub-engineers and the tricks they play: marrying up their own footsteps to the character’s gait; slamming the studio door at just the right moment; rustling leaves in synchronicity with the screen. They replace those little things lost beneath dialogue or tense music or laughter. Some things don’t sound like themselves, and […]

Cyprien told me in confidence, and I promised his secret was safe. I remember the bar, the tarnished walls, the termites sucking the whitewash, their exuberant, tenacious persistence upturning the earth underneath. We were sucking Fanta through straws. He was the one neighbour I knew didn’t drink. He leaned forward to utter the words. I […]

There is a village coiled in the Chilterns, all catflaps and thatch, black beams and whitewash, cradled in hills and cosseted by trees where bellringers reel out handstroke and backstroke the way the red kites loop the sky while we walk the dog or jog round the park. But stay awhile and it’s not so […]

Dear Gwen, Today’s vase holds mustard-yellow chrysanthemums, yesterday’s were rainbow-paper anemones. This evening we spoke about the economy, I hold our balance in orchid asymmetry. His hands, after a day deep in stately missions, turn our passion, the blue-deep of delphiniums. He scribes such love scenes I’m losing my faculties, his ink, tattooed on my […]