A Strange Case There’s something floating in the Brayford Pool. Two swans, raw recruits, investigate. As a sub-plot, one showboats the other. The pen ignores him. Two high-viz...

      To Essex Worn stones lean toward the train, where blue lichens graze on lost nouns, passengers stuck still waiting for a service. In Leyton, four men carry one bouquet, dark...

      Walking I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend four hours a day at least…sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields – Henry David...

      Check you, on my doorstep, loaded with one bam-on-the-glass headbanger wasp. You’re offering me sharp glimpses of glint, that dropped tumbler’s unswept-up chip. How it grins...

      His Mum Said He Liked Me Easter holidays 1998, puberty imminent his lips as dry as the grass we are trespassing on my cheek is sweaty though, makes it sweet. Mansell Junior...

      Sucker Let’s buy a house - a big one - big enough to hold old resentments and future fights. Let’s get an old one, one in the country, the kind that has a lock on each door and...

      letter to pluto in a parallel life, you were a dog in technicolor/ with meals & a kid to play ball with/ a family to mourn your death/ but here, you’re a change- ling child-...

    Crossing Points: The Last Hour It’s late, and he’s watching. Each rise of her chest is less tangible than a prayer. Now and then he presses an ear to her lips, his own breath held...

      The Orchard Down     past rough slivers of Cotswold stone wall was the lower garden     reaching from earth gnarled tendrils erupted     like arthritic hands     pear and...