Burial in Rub' al Khali Because she was a girl he sought to bury her. Under the open spaces between the hurting spaces where the moon hung fat. The cut of light between hills...

      Spider Patience On a narrow beach of flat grey stones a boy stands with his back to the long bend in the river estuary. A black rod and its forked rest, cut from a hazel...

    Savings All this the hedgerow saves from the underworld: a wire of blood-drops necklace of blisters and the dots of crabs pressed on the sky in yellow braille or stashed under...

      Shenanigans I play the fox; what else do you expect in this moony garden? You stand, alone at the window, tall, white as down, staring out as if I was will-o’-the-wisp, a...

      Grass Verge Near Soissons Under wheels, leaves flash a fallen sunlight in the lanes.  Cold farms are hung with hoarfrost and stiff sheets.  We stop for water by an orchard,...

    Amniocentesis As the receptionist studies our insurance details, the gynaecologist appears from behind a curtain; needle long and thick. I stroke your arm. The syringe angles into the...

      Before today, the last open smile in Russia was in a Yevtushenko Poem In Russia, a smile is like an invitation, for murder, or worse. Waiting for the bus with one hand in...

      Widow Thunder stumbles, rain blind as sleet litters the wind, and behind the door the dark where silence ticks and her face grief frail watching the sky’s tree of stars,...

  Bad  Dreams   I have found To be a mother is to fear all horrors. Served nightly on the television screen, the bruises, broken heads, and broken lives, stretched out to entertain, scene...