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      The Lean-to Glasshouse Its timber frame held together by the waste of its own decay The rot a kind of glue undisturbed Cracked panes of glass hold their fractures still Hearts tongue ferns grow beneath the dripping tap And at the end in the damp...

      I Am Trying to Love Frank O’Hara More   I really am! I am trying not to see his exclamation marks as cheap melodrama and his endless conjunctions as some kind of separation anxiety or fear of mortality for what do full stops signify except dying...

      Tardigrades A leaky drainpipe drips creating damp patches on uneven paving, slime green algae blossoms forming viridescent ripples like growth rings and soft spongy textured moss gently squeezed produces droplets of moisture; Adam’s ale, an elixir...

      Samsara if samsara’s concrete please don’t come back as black jackal for I live in Norwich nor spineless worm as I don’t have a lawn ditto poppy fields with my hay fever nor breeze I don’t open those windows now so I might not hear you nor beige...

      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...