He wore the night in his fur, sat on a rung between the rails, tail wisping like smoke as a distant train split the air along its seam. Its coming headlight laid down track and placed an opal into each black seed of the cat’s eyes, every blink slow as an eclipse. Soon the white […]
NPCFilmpoem
Last exit to Luton
He’s a real man, you can tell, all plushy skunk and a dog you’d do well to avoid. Aaron’s twenty-three; says he could wear my moony face as a pendant, calls me tweety-bird. I hang around his neck and Aaron drives. He’s taking me out to get buzzed at a club. I’m wearing white denim, spotless as […]
After the Calm
Our furniture is turning to nails’ ends and cows’ ears. We’ve stored no provisions for molassesless times. Like used-up, riled-up hives – our hearts. Like pancakes burning in old butter – our backs. On the bus ride after the geriatrician, we smell angels powdering the breezes with lavender and sit down to dream, and lie […]
Corkscrew Hill Photo
All afternoon she counts the sounds until the fly-specked room crackles with silence. Even the song thrush noteless. A thick drizzle trickles rivulets down the window pane, smears distance on fields, curtains-off hills and greens the sagged thatch, aches in the creaking gate and screws watering eye to misting glass: a hearse skids slowly up […]
For a Liturgy
location. Not done in a flat field. Or full view of roads. To be cold. The tufted frosted clumps of winter grass to have been less regularly topped. Where spent ragwort stubbornly and bronze bracken, desiccate stalks mostly, litter and untidy. Where fallen skew old fences trail […]
The Day the Deer Came
The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world. – J.G. Ballard Ivy ran wild in the airing cupboard; it filled our cavity walls, absorbed our tap water and strangled our systems. The boiler […]
Ber Lin
Dear S – I’m sorry I didn’t make it to Beijing this year. I know I promised. The thing is, I’m in Berlin instead. ‘Berlin’, pronounced in a Chinese accent, sounds something like Beijing. You must be celebrating the mid-autumn festival. How I miss my moon cakes! The leaves are turning. Right near where I […]
Day Trippin’
I’d ride horses if they’d let me – Will Oldham We talked all morning about the horse that, if we’re honest, none of us actually knew existed but it seemed worth it just to get you into the car, to stop shouting. We mentioned it so often you began to repeat it from your […]
Bees
I’d only set out that afternoon to scout for bees. Father kept an eye on the cows. With my two jam jars down a bendy trail I tramped through dunes, far from the houses. The broken hive had been empty my twelve years. Waves seemed set to run and run, finding the pools. Rocky upward […]
The Crab Man
Turn left, close the gate Enter Mariner’s Lane. The road to the shore Is all salt and tar. Go right down to Correction House Bank. Smell the fish guts, Feel it pull you. Push Gossip’s voice Far from your mind. Ignore the shudder Of trains, overhead. Down Tanner’s Bank Pick your way. Head held high, […]