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      April again and wet what did she say about the         moon?         a whisper to wane rotting into feathers                     didn’t want to play the game where one fucks           bereft       to a       repeated tune night brims              ...

      Containment I drive your lemon yellow Smart ForTwo six hundred miles home from your flat— stuffed to the roof, my suitcase crammed on top, your miniature car swells to welcome a pile of your leavings, rescued from Junk-It Ltd. house clearance:...

      A Parishioner Complains at a Parish Church Council When We Move the Time of Evensong  You have changed the Bible you have changed the words in the service you have brought in girls to serve at the altar and women can now be sidesmen and any minute...

    A dental technician rips up a postcard of dental puns Have you known the suffering wrought by damaged mouths? Or the solemn joy of healing? Have you reckoned with the uses of dental records? Think through the murdered and the long dead; think of things...

      coffee and the interconnectedness of all things i like the darkness of it, the bitterness, the ring of light reflected on the surface. i like the story. the crushed beans. the crop growing on the side of a mountain. i like the journey, but in...

      Escape from the Novinskaya Women’s Prison, Moscow, 1909 Let’s imagine the doors that scraped the freshly cemented floors as a gaggle of raindrops escaped from a gutter, the timetabled chores in the crypts for their needles and cradles, the chapels...

      The Woods The teacher sighed, as the snow piled up outside, mountain after mountain. The children listened, as the North wind howled, winter after winter. ‘That will be all for today, children,’ the teacher said. The students rushed over to pegs,...

      February 6th  You are naked when I meet you, but then, so am I. I’d been waiting months for this occasion, after a delay we meet a week later. Dark hair is slathered on your forehead unruly with gross pomade. Your voice is a gurgle like creaking...

      Meditation on Shape I’ve been seeing breasts today. In the park, lavender is shorn into tidy humps and the lawn undulates creating two perfect peaks between some trees. A road sign, tipped over, nestles in leaves, warning that bumps lie ahead, its...

      Dressmaker at the market I stop at the dressmaker's stall to ask what she does with leftovers. We discuss bunting - it's a slow day. I buy a £10 bag of scraps, swatches, snippets, interrupted patterns and borders. The bag taps a morse of promises...

      A Murder of Crows I feed the crows that loiter in my back garden. The young ones know no manners and fail to bring me gifts like their older kin. They bring glittery things, discarded wishbones, rusted metal, random objects no doubt each with a...

      Snowlight A window glowing with snowlight and we’re running. Take care not to make me your caretaker. I’m just that tube you suddenly share a tunnel with before we charge into our own darknesses or are whisked into them. Stop the whistle, the...

      Weeds   Needs must and so they do. Without hesitation or regret. Maslow at least got that right. Love is not a need per se. The need for love (real or imagined) is the need. Like hunger or thirst. Flowers are beautiful. Most flowers. Weeds...

      paradise farm don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining the for sale by auction sign says paradise farm but i know this is the yard of the house i grew up in i’m an adult tourist in my fen-poor childhood where the past crunches beneath me like...

      Every time the doctor sighs looks me in the face, a faint smile playing around his lips eyes sketching scars into my cheeks as if I am    nothing more than a shrunken pea another idiotic woman  a googler a giver-upper a hypochondriac who loves the...

      Placenta in the beginning spiral arteries unwound a river thundered to the site where the capsule was buried, flesh into flesh, bathing the villi in blood: our first exchange within days a structure sprang up along the outermost wall, a trading...