Artillery Unexplode the shell. Let its shrapnel rehome, let it fly six thousand yards - line, no man’s land, line - back into the hot muzzle of the eighteen pounder. Let the...

    Remembering the Trees Kauri Forest, New Zealand, 2013 It takes time to grow a continent of rock, rooted in ocean.  Time to grind and sift a handful of soil for a seed and two thousand...

      Break Time Remember the lumber of the teacher’s words buckling under the bell’s smash. Remember us kids blocking at the door to get out a bundle of smells: the nose fuss of...

    Dying at Midnight Two big attendants in white coats are here to remove my remains. My son called the mortuary after Murphy said I was gone. The doctor, a good neighbor, came over at...

      On Sickness Well what can I say; what can I say? I’ve been in the hotpot little under a month, nay; barely three weeks and a day; first crowded in excess; now shunted, wild...

      Living Room I saw the painting first, hung above the sofa, a pike smiled from a riverbed, water dripped. The walls, not as I remember, flock filigree. Mould creeping along the...

      Antonio’s Lament I’ll never understand why you Pursue These feeble imitations, which Themselves Combust like embers lost and found; They burn Upon a moonscape made of mud....

      Swollen River Suddenly bright, after mid-December murk, a shopping centre Saturday. Rhodri, writing a piece for his newspaper, Christmas Commercialised, notes first of all, and...

      In the Mind's Half Light of Dreaming I I dreamt of an over-exposed photograph of Town Hall And a past lover, undressed and atop of me   II Three worn golden keys, in an...

      Eating and Otherwise Snap out of it, crack open a beer, get on with it. Thinking of just a few of the dead - it happens sometimes. I know of no cause, nothing special; not...