Summerlands Willow man farms the summerlands, tends black maul in its bed of clay. At leaf fall he harvests young stems by machine. His father’s billhook rusts unused. At home...

      We should have cleaned-up sooner   Leave. Take your rust speckled distance with you. I won’t pull your crumbling hand and plead for you to stay. I’ll ignore the broken holes you...

      Crabbing The technique for the life skill my father taught me, like shaving correctly or changing a tire quickly, ran through my mind. ‘Don’t go too close to the rocks’ I stood...

      Fashioned I have been made and fashioned out of old drapes and spit and polish, out of daddy's booth leather and the stuff at the bottom of whiskey glasses after a long evening...

      Fiscal Policy Grandma’s cat sat on the shelf above the bread and biscuit tin, black and sleek and hollow. On my birthday Gran would pour its innards on the kitchen table. I’d...

    Sacrifice after Genesis 22.2: Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I...

      Demophobia From one microbe in a Petri dish to another let me tell you of the pathology hereabouts. For want of some pre-conceptual rubber, we are rubbing along in diluted...

      The Incredible Zapriskie Ponders His Retirement Plan Dawn returns with half-remembered dreams of levitation and yet more spidered scribbles on the ceiling: ‘Check your flies’...