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      Lochan In the circle of its trees the lochan shines midnight silk. I could be a lily printed on its sheen but silt would fill my hair if I floated so I dip only my body as I swim and when I scramble out naked, every spike of peach fuzz is coated....

      symptoms she is aggregate concrete and grit held together in a human shape lying on her side knees drawn up flesh tensing to stone and tendons in flames the weight of her body pressed into the mattress leaves a shallow hollow once she’s gone a...

      crow’s landing glimmer blades the field’s lightly fogged grass green struggles through autumnal vague chill flop a crow drops in black flurry sky-fall awkward hops forward eye-dark clever     Martin Potter...

      Riddles Outside the Berber tent the poet and I contemplate the boundless Sahara sky. And I wonder how I got here. No bedtime stories, children’s classics neglected, just weekly comics I learned to read myself. My curiosity deemed dangerous in...

      Elegy for the Caught Fish I Over the Salem highway flies A bald eagle carrying a fish like a weed out of the Willamette. We totem our empires with the raptor, weave into flags, fix on coins but what of the victims? How come no one ever glories the...

      Venerate Her Husband’s Image As A God Think what it must have been like for her fasting from sunrise to moonrise, to wake up three hours before dawn, bathe, apply sindoor on the parting of her hair line, decorate her hands with henna, dress in a...

      Bob & Moses Zerihun drove him over the dead-cow hills and Bob’s long hair stood up with shock at what he saw. Every time they stopped, a volley of shepherd boys attacked the Landcruiser with stinging hands and their weightless voices echoed...

      The Cloud Driving into low cloud everything fades to a blur, all colour and definition leached so that trees and buildings become vague shapes. The glimpse of a house light is a spark, a blink like the flicker of the broadband router and it seems...

      Lifeboat Two calls this morning – flood of tears… She cannot eat a single thing they give her. Instead it’s up to us to ship it in like cargo: bananas, sandwiches, pork pies and now consommé soup – remember that? These are the things that bind us...

      Skunk Cabbage A long way from the quags of Nova Scotia, stowaway beneath the cherry laurel thicket, more triffid than cabbage, your skunk mustard and garlic to some, rotting meat to beetles. I’ve stumbled across your invasion, trespassers to the...

      Falling in love with a moment I fall in love with the way the sea lays salted glass, garlic cooks in its own skin. I fall in love with the way new badges sit on my hat and cardigan wars. I fall in love with sheltering from rain in pottery shop...

      see the light 1 in the beginning, there was light. and light said: let there be god. and god meant: everything touched by light. 2 and light so loved, light bled. bled so much, god bathed. bathed so much, light spilled. spilled so much, so much...

      The Abbot of Kosljun Monastery Considers the Cyclopean Lamb He suppresses a shudder as he summons the brothers from the library; shows how extensive are notes they will take of the specimen the farmers brought to the island that morning, their...

      Travel essentials A rucksack isn’t a kitchen dresser, or a view, or a whirl of Christmas Market cinnamon, sweet almonds, or the comfort of the bells of Beata Maria leading safe home through the restless stammer of a lonely night; a rucksack...

      Water Damage Noted 06/24 An old lady enters, soak-dizzy, puts her returned book on the trolley. She’d not bothered to carry it in her bag, barely shielded it with her coat. The pages are wobbled, warped, thin skin wrinkling in fast-forward. Yes,...

      Should You Wish to Imagine Poetry in Ventricular Ectopy False starts, I’m aching to roll with you, though you catch me stumbling off beat latches, stomatic downturns spoken improvised snatches of punk, hybrid bongo systole, freeze-frame lunar...