Hello

      Flock In the charity shop I try on a coat flocked with fake shearling, shaved-soft almost: fibres fired onto plastic to fool the wrist. At home I snap it. A dust of fur lifts, hangs, then drifts onto the draining board, the bulb, the bruised...

      Letter to L You’re a character, a Roman numeral, an internet meme. Descendant from a peasant’s crook or cattle prod, you’re the twelfth letter of the alphabet, but missing from a baker’s dozen. You’re in every email I ever wrote, appearing in...

      Comfort Queens "As usual, we are joined today by about nine or ten gay men who follow me, and a legion of young queer women with anxiety who find me comforting." Trixie Mattel, via a Livestream Being quiet and easily tired by being alive among...

      A Prayer for Rima With echoes of the Arabic lullaby ‘yalla tnam’ Maybe after your bath— you will sit for a moment, the towel will hold you close like a quiet prayer— يا رب، نامت الطفلة، يا رب خلّيها تنام Ya Rab, the child sleeps, oh Lord, help her...

TThe mirror in your apartment where I saw you praying through the angle of the door Now hangs only in my mind             I breathe on its glass wipe away fly specks Tsyotsya but there is only the empty kitchen          in the tower block in Volodymyr The rhomboids of...

      Wight Sirens Sing silver times, shimmering columns of light on the wine-dark, temple to moon-eyed Hecate, the insatiable. Sing treachery, dizzy with stars, sudden squalls, sting of our stink, pianissimo of sighing, undying, true-to-only-you-oo...

      Seven Sisters Road We rolled out on Seven Sisters Road, two crates of Tyskie empty in my stairwell. We were talking from the chest, walking backwards crackling air above our heads like streetlights beatboxing, spitting Maccies adverts at us sounds...

      Blood and Ash But look here, I turned my head and discovered the Denver Museum waiting, a ghost that stood out in my sight, telling me that their land was spring— grass above flowers. Today, they lay in an Indian exhibition, silent； Their faces...

      Finely balanced He’s a house of cards, a delicately balanced pyramid held together by hearing aids and dusty bifocals and wobbling dentures and ageing pacemaker and shirt with three buttons missing in action and tea-stained cardigan with more...

      Unexploded Bombs You became obsessed with nucleated red blood cells when you peeked through an aperture window at your liquid, viscous nature. You became obsessed with maps after an unexploded bomb exposed a Second World War timeline fault...

      Window of tolerance we’re trying to construct a frame for this highly reactive impulsive emotion the nurse is looking into it     meanwhile we must find something cold to hold    lick it we’re trying to expand the tolerance – think of a moth...

    Strange Brew Anne dances to the beat of my childish heart, sings to cobwebbed spiders. She is nanny number five, my own Mary Poppins. By the light of a wolf moon, my father turns mad. Anne whispers to a girl in the wind, and a friend blows into my life....

      Revenge Squirrels dream of a cougar, a cougar given permission to crouch like an assassin awaiting its prey, its target; a cougar concealed in the squirrel tree. Squirrels scowl, chitter at the woman who once fed them corn and bread until she met...

      Three Jackdaws Three jackdaws walked widdershins around the birdfeeding station. A fat woodpigeon, pompous, hieratic, tried to undo their magic by walking from four to six. For a moment, the two birdfeeders, full of seeds and nuts, were the...

    take this I see how you see us in meetings: merchandise to slip off the shelf. Your eyes on the cameras overhead as you turn sideways to hide pilfering your deposits into your many pockets. Monday, Henderson talked about how to energize our sales team...