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    Wallpaper I swear I felt the swirly patterned paper rip from the walls of my childhood bedroom. It was the same stained cream shade as my skin – pockmarked, cut and scabbed, dry and peeling – and I felt it tearing, dragging pieces of my grey flesh with...

    Starry Night Over the Rhône Vincent van Gogh. Oil on canvas, Arles 1888. A quay on the riverbank. Lovers dissolve in a sheen of violet and mauve — enveloped by a forget-me-not cold glow. The man’s harsh words are crests and troughs of Prussian blue...

    The Birds A bird skirts across the fence & I rush to the window to behold its flapping wings— It’s been ages since I last saw a bird. My only link to nature here is my landlady’s dog, locked in its cage, barking furiously at all but no one. I see the...

    Without Blood I used to think that suffering, although injurious, makes a good story. You know how it goes. The more tortured the artist, the closer the body is to brilliance. I still do not know if this is a myth. But mostly, I do not care now. I still...

    palm trees on the edge of farewell they are gathering seashells. the boy is shirtless and the girl is wearing a black dress that exposes broad shoulders soaking up the morning light. her hair tumbles a fiery orange down the length of her back. the same...

    Truer Knowing nothing of him now except this: a log of sickness upon sickness embarrassing to dream. The boatyards west of reasonable shipping. The wars guessed at out beside the jetty – he abstains from something, shining buttons. But the rains keep...

    Creators Where your ancestor collected bottles amber dark as bog-steeped river water swaddling them in peachy doll flesh putty studding them with countless periwinkles gorse yellow, sorrel orange, figwort brown lamp stands to cast a circle of low light...

      St Ann’s Square Manchester, 23rd May 2017 Because I cannot show you what is at the centre of all this I will lay language up to its edge, walk its edges the way I moved through the back of the crowd too afraid to go in. I had to shade my eyes from...

    What Might Have Been There is a small white house high on a green hill just south of Scotland, an office bright with books and a window overlooking Magdalene, and somewhere on a dirt road between endless pastures of strong red fescue, is a man on a...

      / on the days / blood rushes at the corner of a nail / you cannot keep your jumper off the door handle / table tackles leg / expect the bruise in two days’ time / pansies nodding in speckles of rain / dish en route from dishwasher to shelf thinks...

      Then tragedy makes children of us all and in that last moment the dead shrug, shake off their boots, shuffle off jackets and shirts, watch astounded as their dresses grow and drop to their feet. Their bags, their glasses, car keys and phones...

  This poem was sparked by my own care experience and more recent indirect involvement. The poem itself does not require analysis, beyond what lay behind me writing it. Two years ago I was invited by Lemn Sissay to be part of a feature in The Observer at the...

      You Ask Me if I’ve Had a Nice Day Are these the words you want me to say about how my day became a raging river crashing through my bones? Its giant stones thumped my body like the fall of a hammer. Does that terrify you? Have you managed a day...

      Living Flashback My room is infested with bedbugs I'm covered in bites, not love bites I have to spend the night on the low secure unit That I've only just been discharged from. The paranoid nurse who signs me in thinks I've been tricked And that...