Hello

      The Bee and the Lemon Tree like a lover the bee visits the tree every day on the window ledge the little tree is sky goddess the breeze speaks to the bee-wasp love circles in the air the hider in the lemon leaves a thought hums a tune scent dances...

      After a Stillbirth He had been told the trolley would be in the corridor at noon. He could get sandwiches. It was normally for mothers only but they’d make an exception. His wife won’t eat anything. He has to do something. He cannot sit and be...

      Fish and Chips When I went round the next day with a bottle of wine, his wife said he was bruised down both sides from squeezing through our upstairs bathroom window. He’d been on his way to get more fish from the freezer at the end of their...

      Poison Takes the Place of Food   There’s no one in the flat when I come home from school, my dinner in the fridge – poison on a flowered plate, covered with tin foil, surrounded by full shelves of poison. I warm mine up, dust with salt but it...

      A mouthful of stones The sister I don’t have has pockets bulging with silver-foiled chocolate and popping candy, rustling- wrapped strawberry surprises and infinite packets of unopened love hearts. She leaves me the pocket full of stones, ones my...

      Cine Reels On screen, Dad was the radical – the introverted pen-and-notepad kind, donkey jacket, beard, betrayed. Another time he played a photographer eyeballing Liverpool – statutes, pigeons, couples out to lunch. Thieves snapped in the act. Our...

      Some of This Is True Sun comes out, my body opens all its folding doors, its windows. Sun comes out, my body floats – like feather, cirrus, floats across the grass. Sun comes out. Under the apple tree in the hammock, my body lays me down. Sun...

      Monocle remember when we lived in the shrubs? stewed in a shared room. its stench. our own ripeness torturing lungs scored elastic. remember as well as thieving, together we hauled the laundry of our bodies pretty-with-dumb into a service kitchen...

      Flintinge When my dad was a boy, his parents brought him into the fields. As the whole town picked sugar beets, their breath hugged furrows in pre-dawn darkness. I think of the tug he was taught, the sound of roots wrested from the earth cold in a...

      minding eggs a line of hanging hooks bent us into the dining hall where we ate like birds all girls minding eggs a school project for cracking up blue girl brown tray beige egg empty locker room jumper stretched over knees navy wool egg...

    My Dead He reads aloud about visiting the Underworld in dreams, seeing his dead again. Through the big window behind him there's a flowerbed and some long grass; a road with not much traffic; and on the far side a strip of whins and conifer trees - the...

      Magic Pennies My dad was a magician. He could make a penny disappear with a twist of his wrist just vanish in thin air to pluck it later from your ear or nose. People laughed when dad did that. He’d put a matchstick in the centre of a clean white...

      Shared Attic A key on a short string unlocks a metal door to an unlit stair, steep wooden steps, a turn at the top where you can’t see back. We’re in The Gods. A warren on the right, murk-bound filaments of light strike coal briquettes, a broom...

      Grandfather/Grandson A hot, dry day in an already arid season. I stumble through stands of age-misshapen oaks, leaves blistering brown as they beckon me into the shade. From time to time, I glimpse a clearing to one side of the path, or a view...

      Samaras Having earned their wings through evolution it is almost as though they are loth to use them preferring familiar earth, the old tree’s broad shadow. Everywhere you look these whips of sycamore, living where they fell, rooting out some well...

      Clerking notes So, what has brought you in today Mrs…? Owens. Mrs Owens. Ahh, nice to meet you Mrs Owens. What brings you in today? Worry mostly, I worry, I’m a worrier. But I’m particularly worried about this. Worry not, Mrs Owens. Is your worry...