Hello

      Cold is easy you know where you are with it. No lukewarm promises of what will never come. No ghost-friend who ignores you then tells you through someone else that it was your fault all along. This is no hair toss, shoulder-shrug. No brag in the...

      My kitten takes me everywhere I need to go When I am sunk her ears remind me of lightness and rightness and treats, they are paper cones for sweets, chips or popcorn, except these are upside down and miniaturised and made of ultra-thin flickable...

      Trips Are Verbs The ferry chuffed with a lyrical rhythm but I found myself blowing chunks off the starboard into churning green and gray. The islands looked like donkeys in the distance and then like elephants as we drew closer. My mouth tasted of...

    What if? I once read a poem about how a mother can repair a book when it has fallen apart. And I thought what if it was the mother pulling it apart and throwing the pieces into the air for them to fall like confetti? And what if when life puts them...

      the explorer i’d always thought my mother was a hearth rug an astrologer’s words blew me off course even in your pram she poured voyage into you there were the solo cruises of course dad died and she took to the qe2 even dallied with a dance host...

      Search Party Damp October grass left watercolour Brush strokes on my grey Golas As the path retreated behind us like a shrinking quayside. We scouted the undergrowth like a crime-scene Armed with pictures from a stranger’s Instagram, Placing...

      My father is calling the neighbours names Out on the grass my father is calling the neighbours names. It is his art. Softly, he starts to mourn. The sky’s a mild suburban blue, each lawn so circumspect it’s like a stamp, but he is being moved by...

      Soliloquy O little sister. little lark. little mischief never to be found out. How your broad smile is a quartered melon and answers drip from my chin. O little mirror. little wheel. little carriage into the universe next door. How we ride...

      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...