Hello

      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...

      Lions in Translation We, at the International Lion Translation Centre, do not believe: If a lion could speak we would not understand him.   Through our outreach programme our dedicated team of translators, at considerable personal risk, have found...

    Paper Doll The woman practised control on paper dolls, renditions of perfection in children seen but not heard. She bound their chests in liberty bodices attached with tabs, displayed them in dioramas of salvaged boxes. She wished they had more...

      From The Jazz Age The man in the high castle In his elegant turret attic, Tycho Brahe turns the page, turns it back, then back again. No matter how closely he peers at the drawings, or how intently he attempts to recreate in his mind’s eye every...

      Dog In the dog days of this dog’s breakfast world, you remain dogged in your doggy ways; face licker, arse sniffer, purveyor of fetid breath, oblivious to squalor, fantastically lavish with  affection. Incapable of guile or guilt, your...

      A Slice of Sonnet Go out with your fishing-net, and sit by the brook, the brook which holds a whisper of moon. Tell them that you’re going out to catch some stray salmon. Then, they won’t smell a rat. Ensure that it isn’t the complete, full moon...

      (Untitled) just for now (and I doubt persistence) the rubble of my mind is whipped up draftily in a flurry quivers with new direction with something like optimism     Jack McGrath is a 23 year old writer living in Manchester. He tends to...

      Rest Assured You won’t be there tonight sagged upon the stool of an emptying bar the same corner where you and Frank used to sit as weekends blurred by. Nor will you stumble into a club after hours to mumble your age, name and how this isn’t your...

      Always and Everywhere after Wislawa Szymborska God may have been abolished but politics is everywhere and always. Your arrival on and departure from Earth are political. Even if you don’t die of it, though many do, politics is present at your last...

      Nude, smoking, in the dawn doorway he stands, or leans against the door frame, light spills around him, haloing as he moons me. The husband, inhales smoke, exhales smoke, takes deep breaths surveys his terraced territory: newly-cut trees, soil...

      The Wine of the Rainbow The sunshine wrote a line of words in the snow told you that the door of the vault of heaven was opening new interstellar cities would come illuminate human eyes submerged by the sea. When the giants returns from outer...

      Pine Sun-consuming needle- Leaf cluster crowned A sheath of rough wrinkle Bark that treasures red Pushing light wooded Works resinous squeeze Out of adverse climate Clenched fist of a tree     Martin Potter...

      Aftermath Dark as ink this fig on your outstretched hand what kind of offering is it please verify I can’t figure out what to do with the slumped weight of it though your voice is persuasive enough to return me to blossom could I place it with...

      Echo Chamber Women are bleeding in the back alleys, alcoves, covering their breasts and babies’ heads, working extra shifts for taxed Tampax and school vests. They smoke to forget, smoke for an excuse to leave the room, they are laughing, weeping...

      Looking An easy work of love taking minds to new vistas, easy work and simple things -- say "you are beautiful" then remixing it to a new medium -- a thing more plastic. My language is mostly verbs; it's liberal, and easy to work into its moulds...

      How to Escape and Other Theories For Mary My sister sings me to sleep from half a world beyond, and I sink into the pool of night with an earful of song. Outside, this foreign city closes and I travel to Dundalk – the Green Church, Castletown Road...