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      Office Workers Against Sewage Some days I must immerse myself in the waters These days are more than others Monday 09.06 - a sewage overflow has activated Some days on the shore silence as we change snuggle mugs, pass biscuits around Tuesday...

      The Cartographer He does not shout. He charts. Where treaty lines once hung like old nets, he inks the deep, the dark, the yet-unmade. The map bleeds where his stylus rests. Tested: the pipeline’s buried nerve, the cable’s woven thought, the...

      03:41 Downstairs    a poem for insomniacs Huddled on the cat’s blanket, hyenas crying through the night. Scribbled notes regretting tea, the need for light. Time passes, shoulders settle the hyenas to a quiet shout. Everything goes cold as energy,...

      Scavengers I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers, and the sacrifices they made following their hearts. Philip K Dick eating dog food. Bukowski’s candy bars. A forgotten Fitzgerald’s writing How are you? postcards to himself in the...

      At the Barbers She has a way of tilting your head as if lining up a thought. Neither rough nor tender—decisive, like someone used to responsibility. She remembers names, gently enquires after sick wives, errant sons, daughters who never phone,...

      Faith … without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.   John Keats I try not to think about my daughter’s condition when I hug her as all I have to do is think about how I walk down the stairs to lose my feet.     Tristan Moss...

      If It’s Really Love, Then You Have To Accept This, Too I tell you my heart is breaking but the heart has four chambers and is not shaped like a heart at all so unless the fist squeezing my chest is a heart attack, my heart is not actually breaking...

      Changes No, no one is who they think they are, nor what we think they are, either: the demon inside is thinking it and you can’t tell him. Being lion or crab, how did you imagine how your life started , what it became, reinterpreted as a pig,...

      Attraction Like one of those horses on the carousel going round and round in circles sliding up and down a pole for three minutes then stopping a while then starting again for three minutes sliding up and down a pole in circles going round and...

      Sea Lily after Alison McWhirter Everything is moving. I have to remind myself it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid as I am. Although three quarters of my heart, and one third of my bones, are water. Which explains a lot. Appearance...

      Anorexia Nervosa A vixen or a reason. A rave. No air, no sex, nor ovaries. An axe. A raven axe? O! No, sir! Arson, via an ex. Ore. A ravine. A rose. Nox.     Melanie Branton is a spoken word artist from Redfield in Bristol with three...

      Repeat On a bench outside Next, a punctured woman traces circles in the air with a pale finger while her thoughts leak out in a rill of mutterings. Nobody sees her in the busy emptiness of lunchtime. Inside my pocket two small shells – they are...

      Father He is sulphur, he is fire and brimstone, he is deep shame, the colour of night, sound of slamming doors. He is bitterest regrets, dark chocolate, olives and kale, The Telegraph and Magritte's pipe, the treachery of images. Moments replayed...

      Self-Portrait as an Old Schoolhouse Restless two-hundred-year-old village elder, a ragged playground of words, or is it weeds – fragments of chant to slaps of skipping rope. Sash windows, shoothered open, once shed ample light through dreich...

      Mausoleum A house is a machine for living in.- Le Corbusier I have never climbed a tree, never broken a bone and will never walk on water. I open my little window and worry about possibilities: imprudent intruders of bird or cat, the wind, the...

      The House Keeps Score The house keeps score in places no one checks any longer. A hairline crack behind the fridge. The soft dip in the hallway floor where grief learned how to pace. We didn’t mark the days after you left. We measured time by...

      Windless Day Night’s white noise is over. Day arises to stillness. Light crouches behind windows, presses through chinks. Dawn’s chorus conceals a speck of silence that casts a shadow stretching vast across the floor. Double-checking in the cereal...