Hello

      Red wine fruit flies You came for the pear molasses on my kitchen shelf three tummies full of fruity goodness recklessly rolling around in this deep lagoon without any thought of how you might get out.     Claire Aster has always been a...

      Ask to know your people better When my father goes to Edinburgh, the hilly streets and crowds of tourists make him grouchy. This is his mother’s country. She is not there, he cannot touch the things she touched but he sees and hears what made the...

      Cheating At Cards She slaps down her three shadows on the table and runs off with my shadow.     Robert Hirschfield's poems have appeared in Salamander, Grasslimb, Noon (Japan), The Moth (Ireland), Pamplemousse and other magazines. More...

    Join us for a live zoom reading from Sophie Herxheimer and Rishi Dastidar with Support from Kevin Reid 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...

      My unromantic poem for this unromantic time as the world is asleep like a spiral shell or like the maddening stairs It takes time and effort to unfurl It happens naturally though, for most, Through nature's imperative Once we are old, though, we...

      Last Act It felt like the finale: the magic cloak skit bunglingly executed, given the ultimate twist, the audience killing themselves laughing – the master of mistiming surpasses himself. But it lingered on a shade too long: the gurn, the...

      Clocking on at the Sawmill After a successful breakfast of flapjacks and black coffee the Buddhist clocking on at the sawmill 250,000 board feet to cut and trim the moon still bright in the sky the sun rising wearing his big red shirt and his...

      Distress call A red tractor hovers     over its white rims scalping     around small splinted trees and I suppress a sneeze     at the green over rust fence     as the beast grumbles Under amber pulse flashes     in glass skull neon skinned     a...

      Your other name The river, fat and glistening green, slithers through the city through the church yard, covered in windflowers Their petal confetti tore up winter so that spring arrived empty and unwritten with a naked, confessing light Only oval...

      Starlings Dusk, on a winter’s evening, overcast, cold, a stiff offshore wind blowing in from the Irish sea as people emerge from town streets, in twos or threes or solitary, to see this miracle. Small figures muffled to the ears all eyes as the...

      Of Change and Collaboration Here in the Valley The sun each day Rises over the mountains At a different time in a different place In the East, some say But others see each day is unique And, flexible, cobble a self to suit And so they grow and...

      Crisps with Robin Hood I almost missed him, with those camouflage trousers on. He was, naturally, in the woods. I had shorts. ‘Are you Robin Hood?’ I asked. He stared for a spell, then nodded. ‘Where’s Merlin?’ I said. ‘And Little Elton?’ He...

      Sunspot I watched her. Persephone. Sunflowers on her dungarees. Breathing in the blackened syrup. London air. She’s trying not to talk about it but she remembers. Winter. There’s Parsley on the windowsill. Planted in a little mug. The only spot in...

      Appearance and Apparition He pirouetted into the room, the lonely dancer With moon-blown hair. Along the way he brushed the sea Gathering it up like dust. Each morning seated on my porch I welcomed his unseen arrival A coffee in one hand a smile...

      Clematis My mother loved wild things like clematis, she had respect for anything that disregarded perimeters, to hell with the neighbours and their territorial claims. Maybe that’s more me than her. Oh, you’re a brat she’d say like clematis; an...

      To a Father I Never Knew Go on, be mostly unexamined. Excuse yourself from history.  Hang there on the periphery of consciousness. If you’re okay with that, then fine. But I rate you more important than you do yourself.  And I’ll legitimize you...

      Not Anywhere We did not rollerblade. We did not keep secrets. He was not still in love. I did not bring my telescope and did not know the names of stars. He did not pretend to like the sound of my book. We did not order these. The bones did not...

      Dust I have become my mother, always sweeping through the corners of our corners, her broom in search of imperfection to eviscerate. Life is so untidy, but she has found ways to be neat. She picks up all the scattered things left lying,...

      Familiar Tissue "My father is given to me and I dissect his body. I study him carefully. You ask me where I learn anatomy?" - Stanislaw Szukalski As every sinew, tendon, lies apart   I reflect that only, in these loving scrapes will he be at all...