Hello

      Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...

      Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...

      John Clare on the Tube Frit by the crankling train that storms the brigs of Harrow clock-a-clays & woven twigs are soodling passengers - theyre sleeping tight clothéd in rawky natures faded light & younkers maul & lease their mothers...

      Professional Crier My sister’s a professional crier. She cries on cue, lilting, soft cries or wails as anguished as a cantor’s song. She makes money too. They hire her to cry at the ballet, at dinner parties, Episcopal Eucharists, even at...

      An Early Lesson in Fake News One paper said that my mother, The Venus of Vodka, was blonde; another that The Russian Doll was a sexy redhead. A third was certain that the nude model, From Russia With Love, was brunette. She planned world...

      Tenant Tides rise as I sleep. I wake up to a desert mouth and the sound of drilling. Panic shooting up spine. The scaffolding holding the building together usually blocks out the feeble Berlin, February sun. But a ray reaches my forehead today....

      Each Rock is A Potala Palace The sunshine is mellow wine and there are golden palaces inside the sun. Where a giant is its master, he told me that I was his shadow on the earth. I will still be much greater, like a mountain, each rock is a Potala...

      Weak Core I have hauled laundry, sucker-punched Tuesday, bent, switched and twisted, and my spine despises me. You have a weak core, she says. Should be pulling up and in, she says. Imagine a stuffed burlap sack half-hanging from a squealing...

      Bellissimo at the Garden Party Spiked second-cousin to a daisy, All the joy and twice the size. I like your pincushion roundness and the plump solar illusion at your centre while all around you clump ragged rays of deepest pink, close packed as a...

      Six weeks after I could taste it for weeks after the birth - the metal rust, wet earth, smell of the birth I bled mountains of glistening rubies so the walls of our house swelled with the birth I waited in bare blue hospital rooms to see if I was...

      She goes to Germany I go to Germany and spend time with Klaus but he doesn’t tell Sue. We sit outside and play cards, we take out old photographs. It’s the time of insects, like wasps, which persist and make me nervous. Picture his older sisters...

      Something Sometimes Waking up I remember Exactly nothing Forget who And what I am, Forget why And when I look out the window See a blue sky A few clouds Go about doing Little of much And it's good Great even But slowly Memory Starts to crawl over...

      Gethsemane You tell me that the Vicar had said that God wanted your child for his garden, as I sit making careful notes in your wife’s chair. I always sit in the chair of the deceased like a macabre party game, though the music never stops for me....

      New English Phrasebook My psychiatrist suffers from low self-esteem. I only cut my forearms on Saturdays. I have no friends, just followers. We offer a mindfulness approach to social status readjustment. Your kiss tastes of micro-plastics. We have...

      First Proving A puffball lump of dough kneaded warm like flesh swells in the bowl, drugs our lungs with yeast, pops little bubbles to keep us hooked promises a feast of crust parcelling a whiteness that fluffs against our tongues, then trails a...