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    Marianne North transports the tropics to Kew She packs the globe in a wooden box, ships it to London, shrinking each place she visits to the space between her hands then draws them apart like a conjuror nectaring sunbirds out of sable hair, butterfly...

      Willow Woman After ‘The Huntress of Skipton Castle Woods’ by Anna & the Willow Pliant yet unyielding—there’s steel at my core— I’m fixed in the flex of blown breeze, leaf ripple. Hems besom discarded leaves, gathering them in as kin, and I’m...

        Tetris We’re there on the midnight pavement with the amps and the guitars, the kit and the cables, remember, you and Drew and Tom and James and me, after that gig— instead of the bus the taxi driver turns up in this car like your mum’s and...

      A very small thing. I found your fingernail creased inside the poetry I read to you.  A dry paring, thin crescent, white as a hospital tag, cut when you could still fight me, with your vowels and yelping, with the stricture of your hands. I...

      Fumes Everyone goes to the harvest – men, women, and children leave at dawn, as soon as the fog changes colour. It’s safer then, but beyond the stockade, they still wear masks and gloves. Except for the woman at the front – her mouth is free. She...

      Bear Bear, you’re a mouth that breathes while it chews and you spray your wisdom on bits of bread Bear you’re a man who lives fast and loose with a loneliness cavernous inside your head Bear can I ask you to eat your own tongue when you spy bought...

    a solitary word when i feel lonely, i let hot water melt my iceberg body and disappear into the drain. it meets all kinds of ruined creatures there; we sit together by the fire, holding our flared up hands, and see that void is not so empty after all,...

    Floodgate The first sight was a sound from a high valley it didn’t know itself it curled around corners a tree swayed gently and the water touched the low branches  first a gentle flow then faster a double wave but no crest no breaking surf it passed...

      Tree of Jesse for Durgesh Born here that street with the hole in the middle was it I or you digging finds on a bombsite on my knees hands buried in roots Surrounded by grave goods suppress in yourself the idea of merit head of the great warrior in...

      Manual For Bereavement Clearances There’ll be Bibles. Multiple Bibles. Mementoes of a porcelain era: plates and china, knives and forks in Sheffield-stickered boxes. Decide if the dead are at rest. Talk to them, the previous inhabitants, justify...

      Stocktaking In Scots law, the foreshore is defined as the area between the high and low water marks of ordinary spring tides… and is presumed to be owned by ancient right by the Crown. - Fifth Report of the Scottish Affairs Committee, 2014 Head...

      The Picture A bird made a sound like a fist on our window. Mum tiptoed towards it as if it was sleeping then cupped it in her hand. Just a baby warm and silent. She stroked it talked to it wandered around with it still in her hand – still, in her...

    Chris Kinsey grew up in rural Herefordshire but always wanted to head for the hills  in Shropshire and Wales. After a degree in Yorkshire, she settled in Mid-Wales. She’s had five collections of poetry published. Her most recent: From Rowan Ridge was...

      Gilestone Standing Stone the map tells me not much (there are so many megaliths hereabouts) on the point of giving up there it is three metres tall girthy like a pollarded oak its reason now lost in depopulation maybe it was erected here for its...

      A child’s coat There’s tiny me on a strip of concrete. There’s the tiny coat I’m wearing, fluffy white: the brightest spot in the image, this coat my mother says she loved, this coat my mother says was so well made, a gift from someone who had...

      Speaking in code I once heard a man speak in tongues, just sounds like words, but not words. He told us he was filled with the spirit. I once heard remuterations in the air, cirvivulating on the breeze, uncanny in their lisonulance; breathless...

      Ghost, Moth They want you out of this House of forgotten tea in which you are floating Like a calcium slip This house in which you yield As a sweep of onion skin In old dishwater Disgusted by yourself hollowed out In the flesh of an armchair An...

      On the Hill No-one has seen me outside the bungalow. I am a rumour behind windows that reflect the sky and reveal nothing of an indoor life. I could pretend there is an extensive lawn in front of me, leading down a gentle slope to a pleached hedge...