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      Errata A boy at school liked to collect the broken nibs of pencils: dozens of fractured graphite tines he kept inside a secret compartment in a carved wooden case. They rattled in his bag as he walked: a constant reminder of shoddy penmanship, of...

      fossil fast forward a million years or seven ice cream sticky fingers picking up the shell of me nestled in the sputum on the beach tilting me this way and that looking for angles tracing ice cream fingers through the ess that housed my spine look...

      your flesh is an abacus. i touch every crumb of the morning on you dust it off part you open real slick slow my fingers knead the hard math of you, the science your goosebumps, my abacus beads that substitutes logic. you rosary between my fingers,...

      If I was that woman If I was that woman. If I was that woman in the big house with the tall windows like eyes staring across open farmland where the late afternoon sunset glazes the manicure of her lashes. If I was that woman whose Italian...

      What I Asked of Life When I was six, Life gave me cartwheels, bilberry pie and all of us at the mirror, comparing purpled tongues. From thirteen to thirty I pleaded, Give me a Christian nose, legs up to my armpits. And please, stop me having...

      Mole Understands my Grief She digs into soft earth in search of solace and slugs. I slide into the bathtub below the tidal line. We’re solitary. In enclosed space. Time slips. Down plughole or into soil. My mother ages. I’m dim sighted by how this...

      Colour is Distracting Feel the Prussian Blue pushing against the eyelids. Oxide Green touches the arch of an undressed foot. Raw Umber brushes against the neglected fold of an elbow and leaves a Red Ochre rash. Gold and Silver fill the throat....

      Chutney Music paint the bones of irascible day, braided light, sway of blue mist, island sunrise, yellow bird perches on cordwood, migrant wind, I become a sand house, half-closed eyes, listening to musty ripe poems that hold doors to the last...

      When You Leave, Two Are Leaving One behaves like foreign media: Only notices the events’ cracks, not the water drops hollowing the stones, The ballet school the kids used to go to, its eyes gorged out The dentist’s chair now in the middle of the...

    Mysterious Primates I’ve seen them again – actually not that hard to catch sight, there are so many of them, now. We call them ‘small feet’ because of their prints; their adults’ match our smallest children’s. They wear skins – so little hair – all kinds...

    Hares New born, the leveret hunkers down, this shallow grassy form its only refuge. From the field gate — one careless step away — it faces lowering skies and April deluge. Furred and mobile, leverets grow up fast — once an evening visit from their...

      Chef (i.m. Kevin Higgins) You saw the world for what it was and responded with a flambé of possibility. You saw the charlatans for who they were and knew exactly the combination of spices to season them with before you roasted them. The truth was...

    Circus We are the leave-takers, rolling our hearts in tents. Rootless, our life is soil, any soil. With the first flutters of red we drive a stake in a ground, peg ourselves to the here and now. Harlequin knows the grist of a place, instantly: takes his...

      Postcard - Untitled   Before Mark Rothko As the floor gives way, I’m a bird always burning up in the desert. Every few years, I tear off my layers. I eat the ashes of predecessors. I’m the torment of cells, neural connections. I’ve learned the...

      Union This marriage was not meant to happen, too hasty,  driven by needing to make everything right.  Late night urge to clean my grandmother's saucepans, to rekindle how it was to be hearthside with her. Too keen and desperate,  now look at the...

      Dangerous Bird She wanted grace. she wanted to feel her limbs lightweight to know flight without wings where light was dim & bass louder than bodies hitting ground. she once saw her body hitting ground purposefully, carefully planned &...

content warning: gynaecological examination     Naming of Parts                                        (after Henry Reed)   Today we have naming of parts.                        Yesterday we had no idea they would need to be named. Two students avoid my...