Hello

      Ceres in the garden You wring yourself from me a sort of ripening a size-of-fist fruit pome trailing smashed seed juice you slip from my palms, lovelike my plum pudding prismatised in the light in your soft proto-placental such brilliant viscera...

      peter lacy you beg me to saturate you    like oxygen in a hyperbaric chamber    just a whiff of torso a lungful of animalic notes    my bones smell smoky & powdery against yours    don’t magnetise yourself    I prefer you smaller than a nail...

      When an albatross crash-lands in a dream Long ago I saw an albatross fly head-first into a dream so fast so hard it penetrated half a mile deep. Inside the crater a wreckage of feather and bone remains which over millennia became this fossilised...

      Post The days that follow, we both receive from you a letter. Jane’s was waiting in a bleary mailbox shuttered with snow, having crossed westbound while she hurried east. You couldn’t wait for spring. Mine was older, slipped with a tenner in an...

      Gentrification Remember when hell was a thing? You could look it up in Dante, or better still in a history book you could extrapolate from The Geneva Convention. Remind me the tell you the story of the middle manager who unironically, referred to...

      Lost is the Story Everyone loses their time at the same rapid speed—it’s like flying shrapnel, or a quickly strobing light. We’re all moving into another life, another dying. The oceans feel it too— and every tree churns quietly in its center with...

      Mrs Hitchcock Takes a Bath I’m not so sure about showers — if you must know it’s the sound how it rushes, pounding, drowning everything and, dear, sometimes — I know it’s probably only the pipes — but sometimes it screams so I’ll just take a bath...

      Mrs Yeats’ Love Letters from the Other Side Mrs Yeats slackens carefully in her comfortable front room. Perhaps her slow arm drags a lace antimacassar from a sofa back. Perhaps her lips part in an O. Mrs Yeats unfolds and sags. Where is Mr Yeats?...

    Surveillance She heard it again last night, a rattle wrapped in the rain, pebble-dashing the window. A scrabble outside her door, calling her name. Eyes peer through the letter box. Somebody moves her clothes, tears her magazines. She keeps watch at her...

      Forgiveness clay-sifting one wellyboot year to make him the pizza oven, I was forgiven, wading through the midges encrusted with sun- light sifting leaves & I seven or eight scoured the bank in slow flow fingers freeze beachspade hefted...

      Pond in June Among the lily-pads’ congested leaves, above the pond, white water-lilies flower, their yellow stamens in bright asterisks like fried eggs somehow learning origami and, coloured like a childish sun or star, unblinkingly each water-lily...

      Planting Fields In those days when we couldn’t touch each other— instead— we dug the earth the spacer we passed marked— the ideal measure— in black mark— tuber— here pass the spacer in sunlight or make another—wood with raw black—  no touch but we...

      A Force of Nature’s Personal Ad Deep calleth unto Deep, slim, gsoh, quintessence of natural affection, wltm similar, now in the radiant flower of youth and darkest death, from Howarth to Heathland or wheresoever is the soul’s longing. Lively and...

      My Lucky Cat My lucky cat waves at me through the day. Supposed to bring in wealth, it brings in none. You’d think that I would know the score by now. I’ve been through many so-called lucky charms. The Lincoln Imp brought me so much ill luck...

      Ritual To Ensure My Safe Return Home In the days before I leave I speak to the cat, explain that I must go away, specifying the number of days that she is to be left in charge. I tell her that she is being given a great responsibility to maintain...

      I Am Back I am back, my love, but much has changed: They have rearranged the waters and carved a holy sink of stone and brought their own memorials which are significant to them alone. But they did not fell the ash tree, being not barbarians after all,...

    Rathke’s Pouch As you read Place the tip of your tongue Against the roof of your mouth Explore the dome And there in the centre at the vertex Is a small pit This is Rathke’s Pouch We all have one But most have never known it Even though the tongue lies...