Hello

      Ode to My New Lens Fake you may be, but like the bonafide thing you replaced, you accommodate, put up with pressure, withstand contraction, flex and unflex, bend without breaking. You become, as my eyes converge to focus on the words of this page,...

      Running on Sand I want to tell you / I’ve learned how to shorten my stride / a lengthy gait could never work on this shivery terrain / do you remember it was you / who first brought me here? / I make my own trail / stay in my own lane / I let the...

      A study in vertical perspective During the lockdown we flattened our gaze, drew the alter of our days medieval style. Icons front and centre. Importance indicated by size. Pets grew vast. Nurses loomed like cloudbanks, hands raised in benediction...

  Join us for a live zoom reading from Tim Turnbull, Jessica Mookherjee with John Mills in our new occasional ‘Live from the Butchery’ series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from their home.  The reading will take place on Sunday 4th October, 4pm GMT,...

    To those who don’t want poetry in GCSE It would be nice If you didn’t spend all that time Writing poetry. He could be blunt When he wanted to. All that time. What about reading it? Yes, reading too. Why read something you can’t use? I sipped my tea...

      In a Home When he sits in his chair by the window my father’s head shines in the sun like a hard-boiled egg. There’s even a dip in his skull where someone’s put a spoon to open his cranium. This was the surgeon who broke through to the yolk...

      The Anatomy of Boys Boys are cold birds Boys are carrying broken wings Boys are burning oceans Boys are drizzling ashes Boys are not the thorny rose Boys are petals of hibiscus Boys are rainbow Boys are not cloaks for a deluge Boys are glass...

      Walled In After Banksy: Rats, My Wife Hates It When I Work From Home Rats are on the loose climbing up the walls, their agility well-known, ingenuity to the fore. They’re hardly noticeable as you peer into the mirror asking yourself what exists...

      Folly A jagged edge of sunset gold cuts the hillside. Was it folly to build this land a tower, that it might fold its heavenly green over and over, peer through a monocle of window to meet the curious and fanciful? Remember the night we tested its...

      Summer Holiday   Belgrade is a //    ‘kaleidoscopic cityscape’     //     it is also    //  burning,   it is  //    burning  // and I only just understood what that meant  //   Stay indoors   //   don’t eat sushi     //   there are tanks on...

      Number One She wore a flowered dress and the Autumn sun came through the glass so light chalk dust was a mist between me, the window and the path to the churchyard where in a flint wall coins were left for me to find. Was it the first day? We...

      Your body is small as a folded receipt in a pocket and he clings to it like drowning in a downy nightgown. he believes he is wrapping you in silk so smooth you can forget his rutting crotch like a hog come to water. you are impassive; you look at...

      Sea Triptych Caught at the cusp just as the tide starts to ebb fingers of dark rock, orthogonal to the waterline reach out towards the setting sun. The sun, covered by thin cloud, casts silver light right up to where the sea’s foam hits the darker...

      Winter Road I after Georgia O’Keeffe It’s not exactly a road, more the idea of one and maybe not even that, a symbol, a cedilla, this mirror-written C that sweeps across the canvas, kinking at the top, where Route 84 mounts the crest of a rise,...

      Mother to daughter Rejection tastes like stale beer, stinks like old carpets, cup- a soup. Other people’s grime greases the corners of a rented flat, floating, unmoored in some Midlands town where the rain is unrelenting. The cream immobile phone...

      Ignitor propellant In a gun the main propellant charge needs energy supplied as heat, before it will react and burn.  The heat is supplied by the ignitor system that consists of a type of propellant that requires little energy to burn, but is...

      Opting For Happiness She puts her child in the car seat on the right side of the pickup. It is a ripe Indian summer day. The smoke-like dust from the dry dirt road swirls in the slight breeze and then is no more.     R. Gerry Fabian is a...

      Pink Pink lips came over to our table while we ate dinner said hello to her friend in front of me leaned on the table with one hand the other on her hip she told us about her son, job, salad, her tipple and her very old pink vintage bottle.  ...