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      A tour of Dachau concentration camp Our tour guide knows all this – it is embedded in him it seems. I watch his face, when he’s asked a question. I see his pause, as if he is checking himself for accuracy before speaking. I notice how he wears the...

      International Swimming Pool Rules 1. No ducking, bombing or diving, unless on command from the Pentagon. 2. Lifeguards are there to guard. Please obey their orders respectfully and promptly. The guns are (mostly) only there for show. 3. Maximum...

      A few things cunning women do “…the virtue of word, herb, & stone: which is used by unlawful charms, without natural causes.” – King James VI & I, Daemonologie Accessorise dirt-scuffed jeans with bramble-stain lips – three hares away from...

      In the shower with Gerard Manley Hopkins Bless me father for I have sinned again Rejoice in soapy foam-fleece fountain furled For I have lied and cursed and fucked with men Flashing quenching sing-shower curtain-curled In hurting self and friend...

      A Factory of Feelings Your biog is your own, wash it with as many adjectives. Entitlement and empathy are opposites. Dissimulation is elementary to past lovers, like dissemble to ex bosses. Facebook and Twitter are placeboes for amour proper....

      The moon is a cannibal: she consumes her own body. Flat-footed in her fatness, she sweats and lumbers, ashamed, in the pure of night, of her vast heft. She nibbles her flesh: the taste is oily, repellant, but she swallows it down: the gulps rise...

      Princess Alexandra and the Glass Piano I was a child when I swallowed the piano. My jaw unhinged and down it slid: keys, strings, pins. A dream, I imagined, until a crunch punctuated my footsteps and hammers chinked holes in my thoughts. Rules to...

      Ghost I was outside in the square dull of garden when I realised I couldn't draw a ghost. The page waited patiently like the future and my eye held what was supposed to fill it. The narrow path which didn't deserve its name was an appropriate...

      Eliza Traill All her names The hare. A long way from blue. What is the third thing? Twelve snow buntings in a shadow house. What she sees A large stone lintel. A hollow enclosed in a curved wall. Small white bones. A now completed circle. The...

      Meditation on Your Bare Feet In the fruit-apple crimp of glamour and fizzing pressures I found your feet, your painted nails, So Much Fawn, a rose-colored soul, flagrance of motions, though you were miles away; the image of a small rose on the...

      Dinner in the Fields I remember you arriving to the fields when we saved the hay, bringing the sweet taste of dinners, encased in Tupperware, sitting sheltered under haycocks, in the warm sun. We rested our young bodies from sweating our work,...

      Pied Piper Your voice echoes through my body rumbling into veins and curves. Turns me into wood; stiff and tied to your tongue - your lungs - your vibrating throat - every hum is a drum beating me into your shadow, copying every movement,...

      Firewood They tell us that we are grown from the same soil our hands will all bleed in the right place a hidden resonance behind wry smiles placed inside dormitories and suitcases. If we are from the same soil and root why is one hand much older...

      Open Love Letter I'm ready for love now, now that I'm falling apart, now that it's hard to find a centre where resistance can collect. I'm ready for love now, now that the handful who loved me have gone; more ready than I've ever been, as I clutch...

      Magpie Lawn There they are the two magpie brothers strutting their message across the lawn. Inside she watched from the high wide window halfway up the stairs. Halfway. Standing on the stairs. Watching as the magpies spread their lonely black...