Larkin was thumbing through the papers, by the library when he found it buried half-way down a list of the deceased: S. Keyes. The student-poet that stuck-up bloke from Queens’ the one who hadn’t let him in to that anthology. They used to watch each other cross the room at parties, all while they both […]

We spent the hour before this, fishing the celestial sea for swallows and swifts; deciphering their differences, a mark, we found none made. But now, rigor-mortised angels collect in our skies, piloted by lads whose fear has been fermented to drink in their blood. The war is over – and we are under our friends, […]

Sometimes I feel Hamburg beat against my English tongue. Tonsillitis every Summer shrapnel in my throat. (My Grandfather shelled meinen Opa from the sky in ’43) More than ein Haufen ashes, Mehr als a heap of Asche. Mehr als Staub, mehr als dust. On my birthday, 25.07 Löwenstraße crumbled. Seagulls circled, cawed. Und das ‘in […]

Hovering ghosts in Himalayan foothills skin beautifully cool, eyes hollow as spent cartridges we exhale smoke from Victorys by the side of a road that passes the convalescence hospital. Rough cut layers of mountain above march in sturdy sequence to a towering crescendo of white summits. Geology softens in morning light transforms to crumpled piles […]

‘A shadow is a man when the mosquito death approaches.’ it is impossible to breathe underwater yet somehow i grow gills drinking all this rain; it listens to our thoughts, unspoken, our child under the dinner table. we glue our fingers round triggers with cold sticky air and dead birds that cannot even survive here. […]