Hello

      I have never dined out with my father Not once. Not just the two of us. Not even a trip to a greasy spoon, a chat over coffee and a slice of cake. And so this is novel, him nearing eighty, me approaching fifty, our first Sunday lunch,...

      The Tidy i.m. Ann Drysdale Hi-Vised volunteers swarm the place, jacket-backs labelled Friends of the Park. They carry rakes, secateurs, black bags to flutter and snap in the wind. A man pulls strands of ivy from their creep across a path, a woman...

      Happiness after Raymond Carver What can I tell you about how it feels - apart from when an old dog has plodded slowly across the room, lumbered up the short jump onto the ancient beige couch that's covered in years' worth of dog hairs no vacuum...

      The Last Olive I offer you the last olive. Have it yourself, you say. Don’t be ridiculous, I reply – just take it. I saved it for you. You bite into the olive, your teeth working their way around the hard interior. You eat half of it and hand the...

      Munitionettes   Yes I was a canary girl who survived the accidents the explosions, even the chemicals didn’t poison me. For two pounds per week, no health and safety no goggles as we watched the slow discoloration of hair and skin. Long days, so...

      After the Fall The dead flies collected on the windowsill like punctuation. Black corpses against flaking white gloss, dotted like bombs falling over London or Berlin. Tiny UXBs lying waiting wanting to explode back into life.     Kevin...

      Pillar saint Crammed onto his high stone square, he cranes to see the whole number of eternity as it unwinds its relentless gilded length, trailed by bi-plane cherubim and their seraphic cousins – but he is granted only a raw bald pate horned...

      The first time we knew you weren’t of us The magic people are coming, you said. You took us outside and pointed at the sky. You were two, long dark lashes like your dad’s that brushed your cheeks when you closed your eyes, your head full of stars...

      Human Across the road stands a woman wearing a child on her heart, her breast- milk stained t-shirt plays peek-a-boo with the infant's bobbing head, toothless grin scattering in all directions. The baby raises her hands like a conductor readying...

      Inflammation My mum always says, I get where water wouldn’t. When he drank me, I left myself somewhere sunken living beside a leopard seal. I’m happiest after I’ve gotten wet an ocean, a bath, a puddle, a bottle of Costco’s finest mineral. Without...

      Flying over Desert Mountains behind us, the land spreads out, flat and brittle, like a discarded snakeskin. And yet the snake is down there somewhere. For here and there, the earth twitches, the sand seems to slither. And the landscape is...

      Finistère June 23rd - 24th, 2016 Two table’s worth of no-longer strangers at dusk on a lane of nautical miles, basket of bread, bottles of wine, talk of home and places called home; watching the beams of the continent’s light, see a lava-red sun...

      Conversations My father and I skim the surface of conversations something like those swallows do down at the lake instantaneous precision of withheld effort brief furrows of beak and wing on water’s brows. But sometimes we forget ourselves the pub...

      Beyond The Territory of Water (In Response to The Territory of Water by Clare Crossman) On Neptune Street you may dream of the tide, its drag and lure but your feet walk on solid pavement. The bag weighted on your shoulder, in cahoots with...

      Circulation Crouched above the stream he dug, known by his kid-along brother as the dry gulch, its circulation pump rarely switched on, I’m not just weeding but digging wormy compost into the banks, pruning the hebe and dredging winter’s detritus,...

      Watching my grandmother view ‘The Song of the Lark’ ‘89/‘26: a Snám Suad   Peach skin wrists, Watch persists Her through time Suffusing. Scythe in hand, Walk the land- Heart commands Amusing. Lark in song Sings along, Mind made of Believing....