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      Leaf On the new-mown playing field, summer-yellowed and ragged, but glistening in the autumn morning, a horse-dung gobbet amid the straw slithered grassily into his glance which focused uncertainties of glancing smoky as rainfall and caught in the...

      One for sorrow St Valentine’s Day and now it is we who are falling one by one all around in spring sunshine is the glitter of a magpie’s eye he fixes me from his perch on the half-wrecked shed auguring this week’s sorrow fresh in black and white...

      The Non-Banjo Player If I had a father who was a virtuoso on the banjo, I’d be playing bluegrass now. But he died before he had a chance to teach me anything. So, instead, I learned from this dark hole in my life. Wrote poetry. Plunkety plunk...

      Skunk I am a creature of urges that longs/ to sidle underside tail to nose/ press into you/ cup chin in my paws pierce sharp eyes through nuzzling my snout flat to merge/ our foreheads/ together/ as a bone heart/ I want to tilt your head/ run my...

      Fun in the Sun   He found himself watching the sun on the wall. The sun on the wall.  He remembered people saying that when he was young, meaning that whatever movement that happened to be taking place at that time was moving so terribly...

      Angus anhinga in my hang-glider, my ambit, my angler, the lips’ full opposite. Hungus - two gulps. Sirloin tang for my hunger, stirling catch, my one choice. A stone thrown into a silent land, the arsenal of your arrival. The headlong clang of...

      Outpatient   Take a half-shower Sit at the edge of the bath, feet wet Shower head unscrewed, hose lying flaccid in the bath Belching out lukewarm water over overgrown toenails   Walk around the house bumping into things Giggle like a...

      Island Fiction I could murder a cuppa mutters a knitting voice, her claws purling patterns the Fair Isle way. The kettle whistles, the brew as warming as a jumper - outside gulls rock n' roll drunk on a burgundy sky. The winged ways gleam in those...

      The Opposite of Pygmalion She’s breaching the limits climbing the scaffolding hauling herself up poles rolling over the lip of the kick-board. My hands race like a card sharp trying to confuse the eye not wanting to let her off the plinth. I don’t...

      Gift Dark from four, because of the rawness I buy plain chicken and some chocolate, turn back the way I’ve come to the pavement shrine of himself beside an alcove where drunks piss, fumble the sandwich handing it to him, “Here, have this.” One...

      Bus Stop Etiquette We roll up piecemeal, shuffled rush-hour pack in all weathers; fix envious glares into underoccupied kerbcrawl cars blaring rock, pop, classical, duh-duh-duh dance and dumbass ads. It’s Britain so we queue; eyecontactless, heads...

      Snowdrift From solitude to servitude I went: a stepmother’s bane, to maid-of-all-work for grubby curmudgeons. dust     sweep     scrub     sleep How the chores call to me, a broom-brush song that bristles at my hearing’s edge. How grudgingly I...

      A Sudden Shaft of Light My demented mother who doesn’t know me anymore, looks up as I come into the room. Ach - there’s my wee darling Moyra she says, such love in her voice that everything falls away but love. The slate is clean, and I, new born...

      Lullaby for the Child I Will Never Have Sometimes, in my dreams, I sing to you of mice running up the clock, of four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. I love you too much for fledglings severed by magpies: I found a chick once – feathers...

      heal with careful fingers i fashion unraveling blood vessels into nets that haul life to the surface over and over again     Aaliyah Cassim is a twenty-one year old university student who enjoys writing poetry and...