Odds had been against us ever meeting. We found ourselves drifting in the same circles, then gently bumping into one another. I learned to feel you; a tiny thigh, a heel a toe, we learned to dance,   went about life at the same pace until you took the lead out into the bright light. […]

I took a photo of a woman in a film, she was sitting at a lamp-lit table drawing on a paper pad angled 45 degrees from her knees to the table edge sipping white wine and put a photograph of my face over hers   to see what it would be like if I was […]

He placed us carefully as peaches in a bowl of fruit,we stood where he had marked the floor with chalk; except for the infanta, too young to understand how not to move, or so her parents said, although we knew she could not be commanded to keep still by a mere artist, so we spread […]

Tangled hair, charcoal-socket eyes, mouth slack after one more long night restless on my back; this body’s fenscape – manscaped, hills removed – the meaty joints still livid, tight shut mouths where distant territories were stitched   in touch. Blood seeps in deltas over ribs, yellow and purple track to the waist. You’re even more […]

A sudden apparition, veiled in smears from tired dishcloths, tracked with limescale tears and tannin freckles, imperfections healed by condensation, turned by curving steel to pale ellipsis set with eyes that stare brewing darkness in a frame of hair. I don’t like mirrors; why should they be  truth? I choose the chance reflections that appear […]

To be the drop that ricochets from a snag of rock, pits its kick and spit, its one-time trick, against that instinct of all things to fall. Below, the rest of my body swarms and clatters down the hillside leaves me naked and glistening, a muscle slicked with oil – intact. Cold beats from me, […]

How you peered into the weave of your pants, sitting on the metal C of the school toilet, spreading the gusset, searching for bright red dots, splodges, Rorschach faces, unequivocal as poppies.   How, when it came, it came slowly, confusingly, brown as silt, thick and viscous, a smear like a mark of mud on […]

Why I chose riding the cable car as the moment I’m still unsure. We were hanging there,   above the Alameda Gardens, all that beautiful flora  below, with no exit until the journey completed.   The car juddered upwards, we pretended we were on solid ground, stepped lightly around the metal floor,   swaying around […]

Black-red succulents, like a child’s drawing of a flower, all petals. And now she comes, anxious, polite, have I seen: a 12-year-old boy in a red fleece jacket? I say I haven’t.   On these steps to the timber-framed house, daisies hide the malignant stains of lichen, among other marks. The cacti should have been […]

Early evening – the Ukrainians spin on their heels and their groupies involve us all in the long bare grace of their legs as they cross the Plaza, arms folded.   “Not enough meat on ‘em,” says the retired sergeant major as Normandina buys a wooden doll – ¡De Rusia! ¡De Rusia! she says to the […]

They see through you, land like peculiar fish on their monitor the soft dark pad of blood, the fracture’s delicate fin.   Waiting is an ocean at night. I find you in its depths, as below an x-ray moon: gutted, truthful, all your bones turned silver.

I throw a few crumbs, then feel your weight as you snatch at my barbarous line.   You mouth and mouth as if trying to explain. All I get is maggoty river-breath. The gilt   of your scales dull in the air. A thumbnail could easily split your soft underbelly, spill your guts.   I […]