Hello

      Chavittu Nadakam Canvas boots, pig-iron tacks. At midnight, the wooden platform groans like a hull. The raw earth shakes below the planks, cardboard stage-sets buckling under the stride. The Emperor wears a crown of tinsel, his beard fixed with...

      Roberto - Market Bird While children kneel at your cage in awe edge offerings of cashew nuts, chopped fruit, curse words into your magnificent beak, mums settle carrier bags at tired wet feet delay for flashes of Hulk Hogan yellow beneath that...

      My Name is My Name Ami never let anyone call my sister Sam – it always had to be Samina. She said she’d rather be waterboarded than let her daughter be whitewashed by whites too conservative to spare the extra syllables. Ami never let anyone call...

      Driving on Old Roads The coastline’s smile is sharp with blackened teeth, seabird shelters, scarps, cutaways, broken reefs: the bloody mouth of a boxer who can’t be dropped, punch drunk with the brain’s purple pounding; stopped glaciers, slipped...

      The Art of Walking Nowhere Terrestrial locomotion across concrete, the inverted pendulum, moving flesh and boot – the touchdown softened by slightly worn inner soles. Fascinated by gum stained slabs, I sidestep snails and ants and cut through the...

      Miles of Memory The passenger train along the Connecticut shoreline moves as if in a river of wooden ties and steel rails. It travels through the old industrial towns like Bridgeport, long ago a manufacturer of brass, and places settled in New...

      High Hopes There are blackbirds singing beautifully at dawn, Mozart and Shakespeare existed and that’s fine, but each morning, I pray a new miracle will find its way into existence; elephant birds discovered deep in Madagascar, a cure for six...

      Houseplant daughter (Non-melancholic depression) Tonight, my houseplant child asks about sunlight, brushes my arm as she stutters on the word, photosynthesis, raises her eyes to the bulb as if to say, Will that do? I keep the curtains shut all day...

      Liberty When she asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, my mother laughed when I said ‘free’ She’s been dead for more than thirty years – not much freedom in her kitchen-sink life She settled for snatching time out, pausing with that dreamy...

      At the End of the Class   The young woman in a hijab thanked/praised/appreciated me For all I had shown/ encouraged/ inspired in her Asked whether I observed/ took part in/ celebrated Rosh Hashanah? How did she find out/ realise/ discover...

      Bison I wrote the title of the lesson on the board and underlined it with a flourish. The class listened to my introduction. I could see that even Rachel’s eyes were waiting for what I would say next. I felt calm. The pile of marking on the desk...

      Masquerade I keep thinking I see you across the street, hurrying along, you’re too busy to see me. Strange, to think of the dead being busy, people to see, places to go, so many appointments in the calendar of eternity. I used to ‘see’ you when...

      Daughters of Rain    after Mijoda Dajomi’s Rain-harvesting Hats All summer the sun scorched the city and the sky held back its tears. Yesterday, in East London, a wildfire devoured nineteen homes, while the capital’s parks burnt to dust. Adrift in...

      28th April 2015 The night before, I paced London’s streets sparkling and fizzing with ideas the pills used to dull and destroy. I felt awake, alive. Thoughts popped like fireworks, I couldn’t sleep for flashes and Bang! I solved a Pure Maths...

      Blodeuwedd ensorcelled by Gwydion And so I went into the owl. Eyes, green as moss, darken to black. Oak tassels spell-woven to feathers. A blossom-soft body wrath-scorches to brown. Broom flowers harden to bone, curve into beak, curl into talons....

      Portrait You notice the nose: webbed veins spritzed with little flicks of red, purple blotches daubed with a palette-knife, broken ends where blood-vessels gave up the ghost. You see the waistcoat bristling Harris Tweed, the label peeking out just...