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      A mother teaches her Neurodiverse child colours What colour is the dog? The dog is brown. Can you see the brown dog? What colour is the cat? The cat is black. Can you see the black cat? What colour is the school? The school is too-bright primary...

      Some Hope I am a clown performing slapstick at a funeral, Cassandra whispering to Narcissus, an ant on the lawn at a posh garden party mooning policemen with pepper sprays, I am a blunt pencil snarling death-threats at the deaf (while hoping for...

      The rain is expected to stop in 8 minutes and start again in 29 minutes I am lying on grass There is blue sky above me And an aeroplane And a fly I am a David Hockney painting (Minus the fly) I work as a volunteer at Oxfam putting donated clothes...

    The Lung Men Look at the faint rain twisting itself into the ground, making dry things resign themselves to different states of damp. Watch silent doors opening, closing, think of climbed stairs, rooms reached. Hear minds unslam, shadows chewing soft...

Interview Response after Yaël Farber Nothing I can tell you to answer your question — all I can muster is that it was that production of King Lear, Edgar emerging raw and fresh and naked from the storm, unrecognisable even to himself, his father blind and suicidal but...

Small hours chat (after The Poet or Half-past Three by Marc Chagall 1911-12) O celebrated bard, you should know espresso mixed with drags of Gauloise won’t steady your head. Your pondweed face betrays chaos, lays bare a wretched heart, while cubist-dissected skin...

Half Past Eleven Much like a burnt-out farmer flumping down upon his ache-allaying, tender bed past toiling in the unforgiving sun, Ma does the same when stove-led tasks are done, heat-pillaged, sapped, and flabby at the head, with arms full splayed. Throughout her...

Lot’s Daughters Visit Their Mother Each year we climbed to that place high above the ruins. The first time, our almost-twins bundled in shawls, we found her tall, unyielding, testament to all those she had loved and known: kith, kin, home: the cursed we left behind....

Mel Tibbs lives in South Devon where she is completing a Masters degree after a career as a freelance copywriter and magazine editor. She has previously lived in the Midlands and all over the South West, though she grew up in Canada and began raising her own children...

      COWBOYS NEVER DIE a cowboy is that split second of doubt between victim and victor, quick whipcrack out the corner of the mouth, then dissolving into being. a good cowboy never introduces herself, wants you to confuse her for some other tasselled...

Bust of a Young Man (from the Burrell Collection) Bronze. Roman copy, made in the Eastern Mediterranean. 100 BC – AD 100 I'm nineteen, I'm ancient. I am so hungover one of my eyes has fallen out… He'd come in every Saturday morning, looking rough as fuck. Chipped skin...

      Everybody Knows Ceilings don’t hold water well. Burst a pipe at the top of an apartment block to test this theory, if you will. Lock the doors to each flat. Let the water run down between kitchen floors, popping out the eyeballs of ceiling lights...

      Abertawe After Richard Siken For CHD Tell me about the time I mansplained that Swansea is the English for Abertawe and means town at the mouth of the River Tawe. And about when, from the hill above Rhossili beach Lundy Island’s spectral mass...

  Mark Wyatt’s pattern poems have appeared in Ambit, The Echo Room, ELTED, Nine Muses Poetry, P.E.N. New Poetry II (Arts Council/Quartet), Poetry Nottingham, Slow Dancer. He is currently developing a sequence of pattern poems that take inspiration from...