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BIG BLISS i was standing very still my mind on the mundane when a bee hit me smashed right into my chest oh! immediately i got a burst of bush fragrance musk & sweet & slightly eucalypt & delicate & wild sense jumped off the sprocket / turned inside...

Taxi I took shelter under a tree, where you also sheltered. You looked at me awkwardly, as if to say Excuse me before shaking your feathers – a tiny droplet landed on my cheek. Suspended, we held each other responsible for the silence. We listened to the rain landing...

Roses Sad how things expire before you work out what they mean. Like earlier I was noticing the rose petals on the path, all damp and slick, and thinking how I will never be truly happy for a thousand uncontested reasons. But now, things are clearing up. I look at the...

For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm. You - indelicate gobber all gape and gum-pink circled in the beach white like a mouth stuck in wonder. O spit-shrieker coming back for yourself, tearing fur so diligently, never...

Give Me Some Sparkle, and I’ll Pay You What You Ask For The cat puts his paw on my hair, and I think about where we could go if we weren't here. Maybe the nail salon, which seems like a good destination for kill time Saturdays. Except that the proprietor always up...

      Dear Fish, Forgive Me Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me. In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight; like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea. Factory-ripe, hooked...

When I Met God for the First Time The God I know works as a baker in a local shop. From time to time, I see him feeding the kittens bread crumbs soaked in milk. He is not as huge as the religious men tell us; his hand is small, a normal size like all of ours. He even...

Rhubarb after Norman MacCaig And another thing: stop looking like embarrassed celery. It doesn’t suit. How can you stand there, glittery in pink, some of you rigid, some all over the shop? Deep down you’re marooned, a sour forest spilling out beneath a harmful canopy....

      Hair Cut (Everything You Know About Me I Grew Myself) You stand behind me / catch my eye / take the snatch of silver / to this softness of hair / and steal me strand by strand. / How did I get to a stage where / a stranger could coax me / with a...

      Frida's corset after the accident the plaster held her still pasted her straight She reached out her arms for brushes with colour plumed birds and sickles streetcars to live inside with a knife she carved a skylight for her heart    ...

    Clinical Waste For Bev At boarding school, I had no idea what to do with myself.  Most of the time, I hid myself in a paper bag, under my bed, amongst my wash things, beneath my towel and a clean nightie. There were no bins provided and we were given...

      Entropy The margin of the world is blurred – a pale band of light, where sky fades into sea. I arrange my books in order of height, on a bank of cow parsley, amid the random oscillations of a cool breeze and one bee, among the buttercups and...

      HG I know others blossom but I vomit ectoplasm, and squaring the corners of my bed, the nurse reminds me I’m not dying. I’m just expecting an alien that feeds on my nerves because I’m not even exaggerating how much her old school air is grating on...

      Matred After the medieval “Noah plays” of Chester, York and Towneley. Noah’s wife is traditionally not named in religious texts. The name Matred comes from a novel by Madeleine L’Engle. It is known: a woman like that brings evil on board. Look at...

      In the Café Did anybody actually (most of all, me) think I could write here? At a trestle table, notebook blotting crumbs (fast hardening to glue), leftovers of a cartoon transfer, vermilion-tipped cactus tramping down the radio. Heat on the...

      Wrapping Up You have buried your mother and put a memorial bench on a high hillside where the wind blows sunsets straight through and it’s always better to wear something warm. A great walker, your mother. Cities, holloways, rugs by cradles. As...

      Ritual You used to wind yourself in curtain turning taut, look down at your feet, pirouette as the fabric hugged you in. I’d idle as you called me from your hide, and draw the other curtain. And unspooling the fabric as I called your name, you’d...