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      petrichor it has been raining in the night both french doors are open wide cool damp air converses around my knees not one flower moves except to drip occasionally the gentle violin music flows over the scene of my third cup of tea my third...

      Water, Guilt, Hemisphere You come in like water. I hear the ghost note, x, pp, turn to see you eerie in the half and half of the refrigerator light and my shadow. I don't need another guilt trip, stumble upon a photo album, lose myself in a...

      Lost and Slaughtered Sisters The cruel stepmother, the Beast, I read of them, and other grimmer tales but, said mother, some are too nasty, just don't bother with those. That last one, the Bloody Chamber or the Forbidden Room, I shouldn't read...

      Day Off Vultures don’t fly on Sundays, it’s their day off. No use saying you’d like to see them flying about, they won’t do it, haven’t for ages. I can tell you where they are - they’re down by the disused railway hanging out, walking up and down...

      Clocking off from Sankeys This young man’s veins run with smelted iron. Shift ends. Furnace bellows push him home. He feels for his key in the oil worn bag rummages for fags    wedged between Sketchpad     and empty sandwich tin. Lighting   on the...

      Out Of Bounds   The sweet shop, for starters. Dabs, dibs, Creamola Foam, anything with a fizz. The maids upstairs in their own dormitory, who passed us a copy of Modern Sunbathing. Travelling too far beyond the cricket pavilion, where temptation...

      The calling You’re sitting in the half-light, in a cavern scoured from limestone, on a boulder by an underground stream. Behind: a dark tunnel, too narrow to crawl through, where water flows from, cool and clear. Ahead: heaped debris, the walls of...

      The sisters of stone wend their way in a line one after another the sisters of stone walk across the hollow lake quieten their legs on the dry drowned bridge listening they prayer their fingertips around the cupped whim stones that hold neither...

      Proposal Oh yes, I can still rise with the best of them, sink with the worst. I can play my violin outside your door as easily as spit on your roses. How would you like your jazz? Perfectly syncopated or horribly atonal? I got the sun in the...

      Arpeggio I lie awake. Night presses down my eyes. A blackbird’s song scythes through the gloom, its silver corkscrew ripple reminding me the days are longer now.     Susan Castillo Street is Harriet Beecher Stowe Professor Emerita,...

      The Fisherman King A man who lived alone worked in the city. One day, as he left the building, he heard a kkss underfoot. He looked down. He’d stepped on a crisp.. He sniffed. Cheese and onion. He ignored it and walked on. As he left the coffee...

      Pink Legs I want to be a bird she says Which one? I don’t know A small one With a strong voice One that likes to sing on summer afternoons Long nostalgic notes No, a single long nostalgic note, like sweeeeeeeeeeee That ends in a question...

      Getting Away with It In the hardware store you tuck a chainsaw under your shirt and walk out grinning like a grill. In the pharmacy you glom handfuls of expensive pills and pocket them. In the bookstore you stand and read a book right through and...

      The Gamekeeper’s Son Unfortunately, Julian, you’ve missed the First World War. His history teacher, Mr. Perks, owlish, gentle, self-contained, welcomes him back from his illness. The boy’s attention has to leap from Sarajevo to the armistice. But...

      Climbing the Cage We climb the wire, one leg over the flash of a ‘Hazard’ sign, hide nothing but mums’ words: ‘If police get you, don’t call us.’ Portakabin opens with a chisel. The scatter of drill-bits by the on- switch, squeals of laughter,...