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PNSpring2006

Tuesday, April, 1800

Missing C. Poor C. How I worry about his bowels. I sobbed when he left. ‘Nervous blubbing’ W. called it. Baked small loaves, giblet pie, sat on wall and sewed shifts. W. up by sheepfold, then wasted his mind on the magazines. Mary H. rode over. She looked very fat and well. Fed her parkin. […]

Fabliau (or Loony Tunes at the Beijing Opera)

If a man make a better mousetrap than his neighbour, the world will beat a path to his door – Emerson   Our neighbourhood cook Lao Wang was a kind of saint – arriving every morning on his bicycle at the moon-gate, with soft felt slippers and brows arched like the Monkey King, bringing the […]

The Farm

Waking up to a sticking-out horse head happily. The closeness of his animal body, the neighing and whole brown beauty of him framed against the barn yard wall. I cannot tell you the colour of his eyes and when I do think shepherd he is but a vague shadow beneath a darkened window standing guard […]

HD 188753 Ab

A new word for a new world, for once avoiding dead gods or anything safely curled cosily in on itself. Perhaps an everyday noun at random, like ‘machine’, ‘shelf’, ‘window’? Even that won’t stop the word worriers. What we need is a clean name that’ll drop on us like new kinds of rain. I leave […]

The Gift

Why? We don’t know you, though we hear the rapid knocking of your voice through the wall,   and see you walking silently up the High Road ushering a gaggle of grandchildren before you,   Maharani on an elephant swaying through the jungle. Sometimes, you even raise an enigmatic smile,   then carry on, your […]

The Sore Thumb

When the water in the bay is flat, and clouds        come off the Table     like chimney smoke, we walk along the shore and up through fields of grasses, and find ourselves        near his place,     so white it seems the stone is newly cut. The breeze there drives the midges away,        and the outer isles,     dark […]

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