Hello

      First Funeral Fascinated by the priest’s teeth I don’t realise I’m kicking the pew in front with a restless foot until someone taps me sharply on the knee. I’m near the coffin on its trestles and a plaster Jesus whose wounds shed drops of hard...

      Beginner's Italian In Italian I have no inner life. With no past or future tense My needs are immediate. I have hunger. I eat. I have thirst. I drink. I have the name for wine not peas.   The heat is good. I want. Yes, I sleep well, thank you. But...

      I sit on the grass and listen to the earth purring   rose is thirsty rose senses water rose root rummages in the earth rose root punctures lung and frontal lobe rose stem is a green straw sucking rose stem sways like a tail rose thorn is a...

      Pigeon Politics   Pigeons have invaded the garden, two then four, then a flock. They roost in the apple tree to nest, reconnoitre or mate ignore my sorties to deter them and shit without stint on patio and herb bed, foul lovely hyssop and...

      Glory of the Blacker Berry Today. Let us forget the blunt-edged sorrows. Remember the black joys, my darker brother— the high laughter of women, the bright, unbothered stride of boys. We have died more times than the days have names, yet here is...

      the sky and the water and the birds and the fish (Inspired by Sky and Water I. 1938. Maurits Cornelis Escher) the sky met the water where the birds met the fish the sky met the water where the fish met the birds the sky met the birds where the...

      Going Nowhere Fast Impotent in family life and ineffectual at work, sometimes he would spend a full quarter-hour just circulating the mini-roundabout on his moped, dizzy from the power of blocking everyone else.   Gordon Vells is a writer and...

    Endings after the soil exhibition at Somerset House first i go to finitude     while you favour plenitude & birth     the source beneath our feet      i recoil at the abject     the never-ending cycle of leaves under loam     a seedbed for eggs  or...

      O is the Mother Letter   My baby is hungry. Grabs me with both hands. I am an apple, apparently no will. I give in to his teeth and hate it. Him I love! I can’t say No and even when I do I go back On my word. It must be that consent is...

      Portrait   Oh London. U useless city. Map to                                                                         nowhere land. Tight stretch                                                                          open eye. The...

      STEMs When I was 12, I knew the weight of a human head. 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (a bit of dark comedy). It grew from there. The curiosity. The calculations. But, perhaps, that’s not true. 4 years before that, The Magic School Bus taught me the...

      Broad-blotch Drill (a.k.a. Orange-spot Daisy Moth) By what rough science were you given this migraine of a name, which starts as a spillage on the workshop floor and ends so gratingly?     Alison Pritchard is from Derbyshire and mostly...

      A Rat Decides to Change its Place   Disgust springs up from the guts to meet a sprinting lump of furry muscle. Only to be ambushed by a brilliance of nose, a skittering perfection of racing claws, Sleek brown legs, pumping from the stewed-tea...

      Doppelgänger I’ve seen dozens of you about the Fylde, face all vape, fatigue, some wild sense of beard, black hair to border it all. Oiled up Kieran, out cold in the ring; pensive Kieran, pacing the promenade; I’ll have spent my own self in this...

      The Bird The bird crept up on him, threw its voice into an empty tree, he started to notice the aliveness of things, wondered how he had slept through his adult life without ever having inhabited a bush. The bird followed him into a glade,...

      Girl Awaits the Psychic Investigators They’re late. The table is laid with a clean cloth, all normal and neat. Our visitors, city men, may find it hard to navigate the path but we can wait. They hope to gather evidence of a haunting; whether he’ll...

      Love is… …inconvenient. Love is untidy. Love is relentless, ruthless and rapacious. Done well, it's hilarious, playful and redemptive – Gina Barreca (for Carrie) We don’t decide who we love. Who we hate, yes, who we’re jealous of, but never who we...