Hello

      Starve O’clock The sharpness of hunger shadows the downs. Kite quarters with an opportunist’s moon-pale eye. The woman threw food – sky dog, it came to her whistle. Afraid for their barbecues, next door complain. Woman desist or be afraid. Lost on...

      All the World I come home early to the clatter of pans Loud music Kitchen smells A smile on your face The scene is so warmly lit that I’m almost taken in but Your eyes are red I say something about the pollen count and you don’t look at me as I...

      That Night   Why did the swans hiss that night? He comes from the river, he comes from the lake Why did the wind howl that night? He heaves it down, he hauls it in Why did the moon glow red that night? He seeks her out, he hunts her down Why did...

      Here Come the Crows I drew a sudden dark line under it all. Emphatically, and with the fulsome flourish of a full stop dot. Knowing that this was not what I wanted: the rows of chimney pots, red-rouged and boring in the dreich, mossed and...

      The Survivalist’s Guide to Love The personals sounded survivalist, after. We were still searching, but we offered love like an island someone may wind up stranded on. I have fish fingers, but no bread…There are eggs in my fridge I’ve painted with...

      Mars is bright tonight  These are my new cordless eyeballs: no gloopy strings attached untethered, loosed from my skull compact, lightly veined, two floating globes raring to take on the big globe – except instead they lose GPS won’t take...

      The Vision came at night into where she dreamed, in through the nets it blew, to send her serene. Each weighty step had no burden now, the dark was all light about her in a glow. Just…there. She’d motion, showing us the place, where He came and...

      We stayed up all night and it was mental Umeboshi made our heads go fizzy like we’d opened eyes and ears and mouths and fed in packs of pink space candy. Then it was light. I walked across the Backs with Chris who knew the way and fancied me. The...

      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...