Hello

      The tenderness of beans slack in a bag from the freezer aisle shaken out like shrunken grey memes I long for the podding of beans to run my thumbnail once more down the dark seam of your housing over broad lumps and bumps that split open to fuzzy...

      Three Winds I go to the top of the risen hill, above the trees, beyond the grass, where only hard ground lives —and three winds mingle, whispering, all merging in a jostle. They use my body frame to make sound and, listening, I hear, as they tell...

      Cracks in the Concrete We searched for it through the tarmac in every rain-bruised sky in dark Pennine shadows where great mills spewed out ringlets of ghost-grey fog we learnt to see Yorkshire mist in charcoal technicolour Along the canal with...

      A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud -the PhD title of Brian May from Queen I like to think it’s a story about himself and Einstein floating in zero gravity, Albert sailing through the capsule toward his drifting pipe, Brian...

      Midnight Swingball Sleep. Elusive as lucid dreams. Closed eyes teem wotsit-orange, spiderweb scarlet & thatch-brown body      jerks                  like      a swingball. Conscience and subconscious flailing paddles back forward|forward back...

      Composting Out again with the pitchfork churning compost into the old green bin, stinking and silent as an ancient earthen vat. Here, dirt makes no distinction between trench beds and the twirling earth. Onion shavings conspire to life by bringing...

      In search of a tawaif's tale (Dilli love) This is not a frilly, mushy love letter to a city whose allure lies in defying all labels and holding the mystery key to a man's heart, though none has ever been able to lay an absolute claim on it, make...

      The Kelpie Around midnight, the hour when pain reasserts its dominance, a voice behind the curtain screening my bed from the next patient’s: an intonation penetrating abstract thoughts of distance, time-lapse; tempered by the Haar, the briny...

      Us and Them They've mended the park fence again, patched it over with the usual ugly metalwork, like a riot barricade. That'll keep them out - the delinquents, the ne'er-do-wells, who break in and sit on the grass in the dark and watch the moon,...

      Return Across the barren land where blood once played its savage Holi, the fearless migratory birds have returned again. In the melancholy blue sky their wings beat with a message of arrival. Blooming flowers fell in the middle of the day— they...

      Examining clots It wobbles slightly, red wine jelly. I peer at it, nose close enough to smell the iron, the scent of coagulant, inhaling through slightly parted lips I imagine I can taste it, how everything tasted metallic, like monkey bar poles...

      Kamila Seen as she’d hung her cranial lantern from the roof of her step-father’s garden shed, the parabolic formula was skipped; like two calves, we followed the fence to the end of the foot-ball pitch. Beneath their sprinklers, we kissed on our...

      Common Ground Behind the block, the night tears in scrub-calls. Fox kill scores the morning, ripped by prints in muck. There's a form for this, a number to call, an action plan, a statement on how the city manages its wild, what to do when it...

      Manchester Piccadilly ➡ Wolverhampton Stepping into the opposing seat I smile, and the look I receive Makes me feel the antisocial one. With oh so many missed connections It seems that somewhere, somewhen, somehow Something has gone horribly...

      Hands Said To Head Hands said to Head look what you’ve made me do it’s not me, Head said, talk to Heart, that guy’s sick, Heart said whoa buddy, I take cues from Gut, whence all appetites bloom Gut growled, said nothing. Head said rumor is Gut’s...

      A Cry Female singing constitutes a 'forbidden act' (ḥarām), punishable under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code. When I was younger I used to sing. In private. Now whenever I open my mouth, it's a cry for all the lives in which I didn't or will...