Hello

      Mother Leaves Post-it Notes on my Pillow and Signs with a Smiley I grew up on a farm so I should know all about expensive cows and free milk. You’re taking being a debutante much too literally. We only meant to give permission for you to make a...

      Deeper Than After Maggie Nelson’s Bluets There is the green that birthed all pine trees. I had a green turtle necklace just like that once, I lost it, not in a pocket, not under my bed, not down a drain, just lost. The shell wasn’t turquoise not...

      After Gaston Bachelard and Sabrina Carpenter We were the housing and the housed, meaning nothing except that we were always occupied, or to put it simply never out. After a while we walked like we were on stilts made from string and sweetcorn...

      May long weekend   Coming home to days of heat trapped beyond the door, to time skewed by time away, the house bigger and smaller than before. As if magnified, a hornet lies dead by the baffling window ridiculously detailed and weightless in the...

      Motherly misery I don’t know why I look to my mother for her shadow never stays. promises are whispered soft as fur, then shed. I grow between hunger and shame, guilty for wanting warmth, from her body. she is not cruel. only miserable. the...

    Patterned with cows I want to tell my mother, I made a successful loaf in the bread machine you didn’t know you were leaving me which has sat untouched on the benchtop since you went as Dad sat untouched on the couch I used your stick mixer, too I made...

      How to become two-dimensional Die. You’re soon reduced to a photograph. Lugubrious Co-op undertakers will zip you in a bag and keep you cold, until you’re moved care of Michael, with curly grey locks like Frodo, who has dropped too much acid in...

      a grief of ghosts atlas bear black-footed ferret cape lion dire wolf eastern lowland gorilla foothill frog galápagos penguin heath hen irish elk japanese otter kākāpo laughing owl maui dolphin north atlantic right whale one-stripe opossum painted...

      Messages, Signs, Codes This morning – Blackstar, Bowie, those jazz swan songs sputtering from the CD player, wild trumpets that convulse through negative space. Funny, coincidences like that; awoke to a bonewrong feeling, my senses pricked like...

      skin the pool holds my face my breath ripples the water creases my skin settles still again my skin water skin sky skin all that holds us in     Jane Pearn's poems and short stories have appeared in several print and online magazines....

      Miss Betina Wauchope Disappears From the 1927 painting ‘Interior: Orange Blind’ by FCB Cadell. The single crimson rose she wears in her lapel, to test his imperfections, draws him into detail; pointing a thinner brush at her wintery cheeks, the...

      Stop When the half-light drops below the horizon the birth of darkness comes and I can see myself in the mirror of the moon madness shining in the moonlight The birdsong gone The hedges silent The world edges to a place of no return and I’m trying...

      How to master the air walk dance craze My mother died seven years ago, but last night she had a message for me. The mechanics are irrelevant, what she gave stays with me: the word: dancing. It makes sense, I always pictured her released back into...

      Rosary  peas Girls under the tree, one with hands clasped as in worship, the others picking the scarlet fallen seeds, so they could string them, those necklace beads. They’ve played this game since sun-up, and even now, all through this windswept...

      Outsider What is the ancient curse they know that you don’t Moving along their mouth-lines and their eyebrows Lowering their lids, tensing their nods or shrugs No spell has locked their lips but they are silent Watching you try, watching you fall...

      Short-lived After his baby son died he strapped a tumble dryer to his back and ran the roads around the village. Stocky, shaved head, blue shorts and vest, white socks in black Nike trainers. Transformed into Tumble Dryer Man he raised thousands...