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      The Road to Chalvington at Dusk Cast out from Eden he journeyed along the roads of dog-rose in the cloaky overcoat of good tweed and lit a cigarette cupped against the wind so that his fingers glowed and took that first best draught of it and...

      Descent Into Hades In order to discover what took place, I eventually made a descent by slow ratcheting, hard and easy, caught at last by the moment despite warnings and my own considerations. Your face appears before me and your will, unbent at...

      Her Future Husband Appears to Her in the Shape of a Hawk after Victoria Brookland She never knows by which door he enters, but suddenly he is inside her. Her red underdress of hoops and holes stands stiff as a lightning pole. In her ribs, the...

      No Easy Answer Raymond Chandler’s having a drink in his LA apartment. Light borrowed from an Edward Hopper painting; near-harsh reading lamp beacons on his desk where a trilby makes a salute to half-eaten shadows. Sitting on a stiff-backed chair...

      Butterfly Cage when I was pregnant, all of my dreams were about snakes. as much as I tried to dream only about baby kittens, baby puppies human babies, my nights would be filled with twisting pythons gathered in knots inside me, their slick skin...

      Almost   missing I am    those words words in shops and passing words   that are almost    not language a flex of the muscle      of the palate   a ruler on the tongue I miss sullen vowels sudden    consonants   words I hung...

      Jane Jane shapes the town to herself. Of the spire, the pond, the iron bridge and the bandstand, she is undoubted queen. She cooks and eats, she feeds and clothes the world, folding bodies and souls into comfortable communion. She is a ladle,...

      Social Distancing   March 2020 A lone kayaker skims through smooth waters of Belfast Lough. Yellow legged gulls circle his blue craft, their cries echo along the strand. I want to believe these streams of late morning sun will purify the sea...

      woof! You are a Rottweiler and the hand holding you back straining your voice and collared throat, wanting to rush into the long grass of desire. You are aware of ticks, the inevitable choice: do you love yourself enough to pay the vet’s bill? Or...

      Going without It’s only when I heave myself out of the bath that I begin to feel wet. It’s only when you come out of the biblical rain I see you’re crying. It’s being apart from you makes me see all the time I thought I was depressed I was...

      Picking Blackberries My grandfather told me to look under the leaves as many of them were hiding like fugitives. Protected from the spines wearing a coat or thick pullover, he'd nonchalantly part the brambles so that we could enter a channel; a...

      Pandemic The windscreen’s dusty, I forgot to turn off the lights and now the car won’t start. I won’t I assure the man by phone try to hug you when you come. My mother comes forward, I take a few steps back. She cuts the fish and chips in half...

      In My Dream You are Not Cold I’m not shrouded in a blanket of smog as the first of the winter’s heavy pollution hits the city schools don’t shut and there are no warnings for pregnant women (in my dream, there aren’t refineries and power plants to...

      Postcard from the Spring The place I write from Is small and quiet Minor key. It is a world of infinite beauty Copious possibility Mute exuberance. It is not me, but part of me, The words appear unhappy Crying for joy. I want to illustrate a world...

      Winter Weathers Rain, persistent rain, and the last leaves falling. Voices twittered feebly. What anxious shadows blue tits seemed then, fluttering through the bare trees’ foodbanks of branches. How I wished a luminous green bee-eater,...

      The Romance Languages My mother is learning French in stumbling little phrases. Bonjour, Julien. Bonsoir. Who is Julien? Merci, Julien. Salut, Julien. Bonne nuit. I imagine a man dressed all in blue, drinking a glass of Badoit. ~Bonjour~, Julien,...