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      My Precious Holding your cooling hand, bedside, they said I had better take your wedding ring or it might get “disappeared” its fading ghost now a mere shadow on my finger. So it hangs with mine – twin markers round my neck – chained together to...

      Ulster Museum (26th July 2025) After ‘The Supper at Emmaus’ by Caravaggio On the road to Belfast today, I failed to recognise my father. I saw a flamingo by the Tamnnamore turn off, but paid little regard as it took off, legs stretched out behind...

        The Piano The last thing cleared from my Late parents’ house Was the piano. At half a tonne in weight It was like the anchor - This thing that kept us all Together; Without it, the tide came And carried us away.     Mark O'Connor...

      A Map of Old Battles They lie deep in a forest, wounds unseen, unhealed. Further back, an escarpment with dark scars. Visiting, perhaps you expected something tactile, something to hold, markers of exact terrain, key sites on paper or cowhide. Who...

The Only Time I See My Father Swim There’s a hiss as he eases himself in to the green pool, steam in his smoky hair. Fish flicker around his feet, his legs lift, quiver like flames in the mountain river. Water spills over the plank dam to trickle across the rocks...

      It’s Forbidden to Call it War It’s forbidden to call it war. We’re here to liberate you; ignore the glide bombs as they roar. Missiles across the sky still soar as tanks advance in a long queue, it’s forbidden to call it war. We’re not here to...

      Off Limits you and I sit facing each other in dialogue across the table light between us or so we think how curious our words rebound before reaching the intended addressee kisses perhaps, next time we meet. bring me something from you know where...

        For the love of a fellside after The Lost Garden of Loughrigg – Penn Allen Imagine a spring day drawing out possibilities the newness of life, sisters in long skirts digging tangled ground, breaking bones and loam wild with bracken and rock on...

      Reimagination of Gravity Newton didn’t discover gravity The apple did. He had sat Under the tree for many Years, until the day the Apple fell. This is how we Betray nature. In this poem I plant a tree & sit under it For many years. The year Is...

    my friends are many-legged the silence is made up of the ticking of the clock that matches the slow drum of my heart. my sole companion is the empty-eyed stranger who seems to have gotten stuck inside the window, her hand always pressed against mine,...

      After the Storm With the completion of mindset my life is in order, two weeks after the day before. Anyone can aspire to cultural intelligence, feast on the corpse of public discourse but I've got the music to go with it. Despite feverish hype and...

      Venn diagram featuring working-class wages and lemons Those times my tongue becomes a lemon filling my mouth with bitter pith stoppering sound so it coagulates in my throat, becomes a stuck fruit; I must breathe through my nose in short, calm...

      Wah-Wah Pedal Poem I hide a knife amongst a bush longing to burn, days like these are plots from a heathen's bible. Broken glass, making noise on the skeleton-throne night becomes heartless stone, guilty as mathematics bleeding poetry from the...

      My Previous Life as a Swallow My second cousin twice removed arrived in May at her old nest in the eaves of the ruined barn. I see her and her partner flying in and out on the crest of breezes we used to surf together, joining dusk aerobatics at...

      Brigid’s Land Grab A white cloak that folds like a shopping bag, like a Pac-a-mac with pagan overtones, much larger when unfolded than a pocket, a TARDIS of a cloak. And when she threw it, opened it up, it kept unfurling, a flag for all the earth...

      Patience I grow shoots, acid green; climb the walls, surprise myself. I dream of the way I would fall, the axe’s half-diamond. In the greenhouse, light and water make me tall, and my tremulous leaves scrawl love-letters on the windowpane.  ...