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      The Day Of Un-Visitation ..there is a day of visitation given to all... Robert Barclay of Ury, 1678 I heard a calm, clear voice. But not with my ears. Not my outward ears. It wasn't madness. For a moment I was Lady Julian. For a moment I was...

        How the Wych-elm Once Reached tall as the absentee house. How the girl moored her hands and heart     charmed by riven bark.   How its name was thrilling     frightening as the adults     disguised witches. How the woman returns...

      Lovely Feet I dream I’m at the hospital massaging your feet, your tiny feet that I have freed from their tight white stockings and covered in aromatic oils, as your lover lies beside you stroking your lioness head which turns and gently purrs at...

      Rough Tor When fog falls over Rough Tor, the world creaks on the end of a string, its veils too flimsy, dancing like a threadbare kite on the wind, a farm here, there the trembling memories of a hill, the day coated all in white, its bright...

      Snow’s Reset The roofs blend with the snow-laden clouds, borders softened so it’s only memory that differentiates my space from my neighbour’s. The wet smell confuses pets whose footprints meander over territorial edges, leave crazed patterns like...

      Toughened Bark it takes a hefty blow sometimes to split you open a sharpened blade to split through years of tough old bark in the deeper channels feel how sap and resin thicken sap to carry nourishment keeping the woodiness supple resin to...

      A Space of Her Own A thirty-year-old woman walks into the wee sma’ hours of a December night. Snow is light on her hair and the back garden shrubs. It thickens. The sky turns white. She stands still. Her boots are coated, and the heels disappear....

      Cremation morning after your cremation   I wake no calls to make to stethoscopes or wreathes your bones no longer at any postcode watch black smoke clouds from neighbours’ chimneys   ghosts how can your blood now be this urn of ash to lick my...

    Siberian Larkspur     Jemma Walsh is an Irish poet based in London. She is currently doing an MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. Her work has been published in The Irish Times, Moth Magazine, HOWL Magazine, Crossways...

    Quiet Joy   Stay silent under eyes of stars quietly watching,   the cat slinks by my house, pads slow, wary,   a mouse like a dreamer’s sleep in her mouth.   Single light from a top window opens its shadows.   She leaps with...

    Dingo in a World Heritage Site     I won’t forget her on the beach – fur the colours of sand. We wouldn’t have spotted her were it not for the jiggle of her gait, the turn of her head with ears pricked, the spine’s taut bow and torque of her...

    ecotone     you         stoop         & shell your self   touch in gustgasp       gentle     now       hailsharp     you brave me    ...

      Answering my father   You stopped the car in the lane just before our driveway. I didn’t ask why. Chestnut trees leaned in on either side, the damp air breathed. You sat there, looking straight ahead and said there’s nothing worse than being...

      Gay Chicken This is how it starts. Champion of every round,                                                       player, Don’t care to cleanse                                                       yourself from the corridor rumours.             ...

      Virginities one for hurting / for loveless / for rinsing yourself off afterwards and meeting your eye in the bathroom mirror and saying firmly you have not made a mistake / for a mistake   for knowing who you are / for confirmation for otra...

      Shabby chic my body is a shipwreck blooming with coral I open my legs and out pour gold doubloons it is impossible to slam a door underwater there is an opening here fathoms deep I have made a mast of myself washed up on a beach somewhere once a...