Hello

Watching, January 2021 The new year slouches forward, unlovable, barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel. Pale moonlight streams through the blinds, watching the night in shiftless wakeful patterns, patience hardening...

Dehydration Never has there been so much interest in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth like the little man in a weather clock. The consultant’s quick look predicts storms in its fur. She keeps pouring water into my glass as fast as I can gulp it down –...

      weeks after being stabbed my brother saw his attacker at a petrol station my brother was alone & did not get out of the car even in the ambulance my brother said he wasn’t scared even when the white bathtowel we pressed against the stab wound...

The night before their wedding, Dad tells Mum two things   I. He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him twenty-eight years older, not eighteen. It’s a bad blow.  What’s done can’t be undone.  Mum’s only choice is a hostel for unmarried mothers. She puts on...

      Child's Innocence in Gaza We are the ones who see big crackers burst every day— still wondering why the adults hate crackers. While everyone loves simulation games, we live inside them— the most real simulation is the war around us. There are so...

      Tinkerbell on Queensway She barely glances at you when you chink your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls, making her patch by the station a land you try not to invade. Not that you never see men...

      Shedding Annamakerrig It begins high up the chestnut tree with leaves on the twigs on the tips of branches where sap has slowed. Turning amber carried by the breeze they touch the earth, rest on the grass where autumn begins   Tim...

      Triplet 1. From this far-side apartment you watch jarul leaves darkening with the seasons, progenies from the shoots’ threads. Footprints of your ancestors beckon to you, the assemblies of daisies are blooming on the balcony. Sunlight drizzles in...

      Drumbledrane Determined, you smash against the window I have to admire you in your striped suit All the worries of the world pass you by Just to keep the Queen and Pooh bear happy. Masking yourself between odd magic tricks The perfect worker,...

      The sea happens to me today not because I’m the woman in the bakers brusque turned rude or the peaches              still hard in the bowl skin-touched with mould I need a reassemble immersion my flamingo of balance is stuck on a slope of rough...

      My Little LeBron For my nephew Sunlight saunters in long, thin wires through the fallow field of my bedroom. You approach, a migrating heron in a runny yolk collar and suntanned shorts, a white-light emissary of hope. Your nimble night eyes bore...

      Dinosaur Footprints Tennyson Monument (The Needles), Isle of Wight I’m waiting for news I don’t want to talk about and scrolling through old photos to escape. After some swipes, I see you walking away. From my perspective, the path looks up – wide...

      Waking Up The night before we left we smoked opium for the first time and didn’t sleep. In Brindisi we lay down in a corridor and slept before the ferry took us to an island where there was a warehouse for the mad. (Now I know the mad are awake...

      What was Lost Something black is humped far ahead on the path. Perhaps some small creature fallen from where it should be. I am unsure whether I saw it move. Once I found a fledgling crow on the pavement, lifted it to a low branch on the tree...

      Awaiting Update We cannot update you yet, other than to say we are caught in a doldrums between stations and that your father can wait as he has been waiting these past two years, somewhere in the heat-bitten brickscapes of London, the memory of...

      Compline A woodpigeon calls his five-note matins. Petals ratchet wide as the sun rises. A butterfly’s haphazard wing beat. Reverberation of a gong, sandalled feet on tiles. Golden leaves in the gutter, the downpipe’s digestion of rainfall. Petals...