Hello

      Autumn A sea of firecrackers on spindly fingertips. The wind sails through harmonious foundations. A thunderclap, a secondment of wings, embossed leaves fall like burning fossils. It's the hour for nightingales.     Emma Jones is a...

      muted tethered i let her touch me without touching me (tears before bedtime) but (listening to the deep ache keeping the things that hurt close closed making space for kinder smotherings) i could never tell you friendship isn’t a consolation prize...

      Do you remember how we danced in the dark, the sky was still, the earth was breathing. After the guests left, after the wake, you stayed, and we stood close but not quite touching, until you took my arms and we swayed in time with the music of the...

      Pond life Take this pond, for example. Goldfish blow ellipses… you pause, breathe. The pond counts the beats: in for four, hold for seven. Lily pads float like Pac-men in a plant-based alternative to the game you wasted hours on as a kid. The pond...

      Thrift In the shadow of Drumadoon the pink bobble headed Thrift stitch the bones of basalt scree summer's wreath for the cold stone that once rose angry red hot columns pastry cut pressed into the science of my camera.     John G. Hall...

      A PELICAN IS DANCING ON THE PATIO And there is a disco very deep in the woods. The pelican is tapping out its rhythm and no one can quite name the tune even though it is right there on the tip of tongues. And the people that know about the disco...

      TOSCANINI In later life, he will profess to dislike it, this symphony from a besieged city, this masterwork of human resilience its score smuggled to the States on microfiche, spy-story tradecraft the order of the day. Still, it is his the...

      Waking Memory Whether the documents, separated by type, format and function are easily accessed depends on the amount and the quality of the oil applied to the filing cabinet. There are nights when the metal doesn't glide, nights when the rollers...

      Action Man When he was a kid, he crucified Action Man He enjoyed that the rubber hands submitted perfectly to the hammer, nails passing easily into the wooden cross. As Action Man hung in the garden he reflected upon how unhelpful the trappings of...

      Freight Train For Elizabeth Cotten (1893 -1987) American blues and folk musician, singer, and songwriter. At a gas station in Malta, Angelo fingerpicks that song as the boys eat ricotta pastizzi and Ruth restrings her banjo and Romey plays at...

      The Sorry Letter I’m nine years old & it’s 6pm & I’ve been sent to my room. I open a new pack of felt tips & grab some Victoria Plum paper. It’s time for The Sorry Letter. I want to be in the laughing living room, watching Knight Rider...

      Sephardi Legend When Susona ben Susòn betrayed her father did she beg for her head to be severed from her body and nailed to the door or did she hide in the cloisters of a convent an orphaned Conversa enduring her days in penitent contemplation or...

      This is about violence This is about the surprise you felt as you lay on the kitchen floor at your friend’s house, his hands round your throat their dog barking and whining. This is about the way you thought you were strong (and you were strong)...

      Polyamory Did you mean me to hear this you in a lift loving her, both of you yawning in the foreign morning light, tired after clubbing all night in modisch Berlin? I speak, screech really, try to alert you to the concealed me in your pocket but...

      Noor’s Song His heart sings with each song of Noor until the day she loses her voice. Six-year-old with no speech only mime at a time before endoscopes reach Karbala. Noor skips, plays with her dolls as before whispers unlettered air. Her parents...

      Don't Tell Once, in the confinement, word went round of a gathering, that night, in the ruined Auberge du Roi. Twenty minutes, the woodland way, a half moon in two minds, but what the heck? And then, spilling from unglazed openings, the thudthud...