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      Sovereignty Taking on the role of battle goddess, I rush toward nightly war cries upstairs as offspring wrestle. I turn corvid, oil-slick wings hovering as laughter turns savage. Bruises blossom springlike; I can predict the outcome every time. A...

      The Memory Bank i. Rows of multi-coloured tallboys, tarnished brass drawer-pull-handles like the waning gibbous moon. Hardwood needing a rub with wire wool and beeswax. A dispensary of memories – the ones you mine your mind for. Make withdrawals...

      daily it’s translation & catching yourself & navigating polite surprise & over-explaining & the judicious use of partner & when they do the same it’s wondering & a pause while you consider how shocked they’ll be if you say...

      Elegy After the driest July since 1911, the earth is left bewildered. The soil cracks like paving stones and the trees sizzle in the heat. A sky, brazenly blue, leans closer to inspect brown parks, low rivers. Black birds circle above a shrinking...

      A Gentle Warning When, as a child, we had a visit from an angel my skin rippled into a silver shade of cold. She signalled her visit by dropping a young pigeon feather on the pavement that walked us home. I didn’t know what it meant but mum...

      Girls Smell Sweaty. Hyacinth-sprayed, nylon girls. Typing. Cats-eyeing you, their manager. Staring. Each other, full watery of last night’s bar/ argument. Boyfriends. They don’t understand. How to handle them? Surly at home and at the office. But...

      The Pleasure Club Stumbling towards the daytime party, the summer humid and loud in the pine wood, the quarry lake filled in with the reflection of trees —here is a cold beer bottle. Press it against your sunburned face. You have agreed to the...

      Skirting the banana skin Did you leave that for me to slip on, I ask. My daughter’s baking and we laugh because we both know since my stroke nine months ago she and her brother question why I’m wearing flip-flops, tell me to hold on when I’m...

      don’t watch your mouth you were cold so i moved closer hungry for more your hands under my striped jumper that still smells of my mum silently stripping for you dancing the outline of your broken voice call me when you need me but i dropped my...

      Archive of a friend’s tenderness For Luke You made red velvet cupcakes to mark some minor victory of mine. Without the egg and dairy, you compensated with sugar and I think I’m still high off it now. Though you find yourself too ill to practice...

      The Big Outside For Ellis b 1/2/21 In the beginning there is light and the soft rhythmic boom of the dark stops. I open my mouth and become hunger. I call out and create a mother. Wherever I look, I bring the world into being. I make a man and a...

      content warning: rape He wrote on the ground (John 8:8)   a finger in the dust      grit under nail grubby     sun-hardened skin little ridges in the soil     stones pushed aside an earthy writing slate curled or straight     I never knew my...

      Salvatrix Mundi It’s hard to be Jesus with the housework to do and the world to care for all on her own. She’s stopped going to bed. Once the ironing’s done she'll nod off in her chair. She wakes up about four alert for earthquakes or floods. She...

      Sometimes, a Man Could Cry Sometimes, I just hold my head, clasping its wreck of metal. It is just enough to keep the spine and chest upright, just enough to wire the jaw into a fixed smile and fuse and screw up bones; just enough to keep up. The...

      Roses Wielding secateurs on Saturday I hack at roses, urging the blackspot to be gone and setting the straggling thorns in check. My mind turns to you and how I trained you to eat the undergrowth, to chew meadowsweet, parade mushrooms like...