Hello

      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...

      Surge The day approaches from round the corner, narcissus insinuate themselves into the soil, a jay rises high, too pink and beautiful to be contained. Beginning of buds sing at the top of the flame bush zinging like lemon zest on a tired tongue....

      Allotment Service Metal in the sky: ash-cold afternoon The big fork: foot on its shoulder Heavy handed: spearing the heap Slip through tangle: the prongs ring And layers gape: yellowing stalk-work Developing compost: the heat rises Vapours...

    Change The general acceptance of the bicycle came suddenly. People that have helped me on numerous occasions who I’ll never meet: a counsellor, an academic mentor who is also the former. What does it mean to take charge of your mental health? And why for...

      A14 shifting left to right     slow lane middle lane back to slow lane     indicator tick-tick-tick indicator off     rearview articulated truck coming up fast on inside     grey van moves right     moves left again     silver sun glaring off wet...

      Spaghetti in the road I saw a piece of spaghetti in the road, not a fork. That stringy pasta piece didn’t have two choices: a ‘this way or that’, nor an ‘L and R’. It went all ways to show me that time is tangled, tangled as a pocket headphone...

      Mer de Ballade I’ve been keeping a jar of seawater on my desk. There’s a tragedy in keeping a wild thing captive. In the morning, I see the salt-rim footsteps Of a retreating tide, frozen like a mausoleum. Our bodies are two thirds water. The...

      That’s best to try In the magic mirror of competition, you’ll never win, best not to try. You have that loose neck, goosey-goosey, and those crow’s feet around your eyes. With their ebony-haired youth and rosy-lipped beauty, step-daughters are the...

      halfmens namaqualand the halfmens feeds off rare fog that travels inland from the coast, and struggles to seed. she is my sentry to the afterlife: the hills here look dead but they burn with grievances and blooms; they paint their poisons daily....

      Aum Desire shudders like a yawn to my surface, a deep song rising for air – a sound at the centre of myself. Sometimes I can feel it in my fingertips. Other times a colony of nights confounds me and my heart stammers. Without sound my body is just...