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      Off colour 1946: a green rabbit and a grey giraffe, crafted by her uncle in hospital in Palestine, where making leather toys was therapy. Good solid toys, and wipeable, sturdy in a toddler’s hand. She wobbled round clutching the giraffe by its...

      Flashback One afternoon (in your next reincarnation) you’ll remember all this and laugh.     Zoe Broome is a Yorkshire poet whose first collection, Back To Yesterday was published by Three Drops Press. When not writing, Broome can be...

      Boy Goes Swimming Boy dives so deep his parents can’t see him, holds his breath pulling rucksacks of air into his lungs. Under the water, his belly scraping the bottom of the pool, Boy opens his eyes and just before the chlorine-sting he sees...

      The generosity of the dead cannot be reckoned in coin or note is peculiar to the moment is subject to whim for the dead are not beyond fancy varies with the season (you might think it greatest at Samhain Dia de Muertos All Hallows’ Eve no: then...

      The Kiso Road For WSW I Kiso: clear as a bell among the mountains. Write me, the river says. Witness the road beside me. II The clouds are still tonight. The sky is smoke-blackened but the fires are cold. Time claims the haiku. The children grow...

      M. Dubois’ Dreams Day is a blown clock, its last wisps ceding to horizon. Heron’s doppelgänger floats belly up on the lake; night, laid like a thousand year egg, breaks over her. The stir of wings whispers a prayer for earthly things; the quench...

      Malt I was a sickly child and for my health Ma fed me Malt from a big brown jar. Glass, big bellied with a silvery lid that we used afterwards to hold a candle to light the cellar. Malt was thick. More gloopy than syrup or treacle and folded back...

      Mamgu   In the coal-dark kitchen of Mamgu’s house above the fireplace scratched with coal-dust, brief sunlight reflects in the miner’s lamp. Every morning Mamgu would polish it with Brasso and a red cotton cloth. Her thin hands handled...

      Deco In the elevator with your mother The first floor an apparition Your awareness expands with a pang in your diaphragm. She clothes you in the stall The lipsticked attendants buzz and hiss Spit purple refractions Of waists sliced in halves many...

      Farmer’s Piano Shop Plate Glass Window, Luton, 20th July 1919 I will tell you that after the jet of water lifted me and before it threw me through the plate glass window, I had time to notice a number of things, namely: that the window looked...

      In the first days of lockdown At the edge of the tilled field two hares draw an arc towards the riverbank where long luxurious tongues of wild garlic are coated with thick frost. I can’t smell or taste a thing. I pledge myself to this field to the...

      Field Mouse He’d crouched and scragged loose aubrieta strands and flower-less leaves off the pond's low wall. Pause precedes recoil: for the thing is small and pretty, sleek as a conker. He jags back from it, stands. Some force lofts the spade...

      Clock At Carnac, lines of ancient stones stretch across fields, reach for the sun. I can almost hear them tick as they count the days to winter. I can almost hear them tock as they count the nights to summer. We take selfies among the stones....

      The new doctor With every new doctor, I start again. Trying to explain my condition to him, or her. Trying to explain my level of cognition; the drugs I’ve had; the therapists I’ve listened patiently to; the vocabulary acquired and absorbed, like...