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      Elegy for The Tumbledown Dick It burnt down twenty years ago. Landlord’s stealing ran it down. New management couldn’t fix a sticky-carpet sea of broken glass each night. Nor dare to clean the toilets. Dealers’ trade kept high in cisterns. Punters...

      The Village after Ryan Calais Cameron A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth, skank around flickering amber hues that singe eyelashes of a soul cracked and popped, barely a speck of him to sign-point that he was...

      Automat Chicken sandwich widow in a cave Edward Hopper edible so lonely it wants to bite off a piece of itself and eat it. * Nothing More To Say The stout aunt says,  His coffin is small.  He was small. Heaping upon him her scoop of dirt.  ...

    The Road Our father taught us kindness, bringing home speechless men to sit watchfully at the table, their wild hair and swollen fingers mysterious on the white damask, staring as our father gestured with the family silver, leaning in towards the...

      Burying the Husband As your hearse stretches the road we walk, trying to be respectful. My shoulders heave an ease at their freedom, my bruises will heal now there’ll be no fresh hits. Our feet turn, our bodies sideways themselves through the gap...

      By the Time I Learn about the New York School Poets I Can Walk Around their Neighbourhood Without Leaving My Living Room   for SD It’s six thirty in the evening, going dark I’ve zoomed to the other side of an ocean been helped to understand what...

      April Showers In the spring, we wait on overblown grass, trading false promises of a golden summer. I cry at the sight of swathes of daffodils, parading their freedom in joyful orbits of propagation. I cry over exams because my heart’s poison is...

      Wu Zixu (after Hokusai) The warrior, Wu Zixu, tries his hand at writing poetry. Perhaps he thinks it won’t be exacting enough. Cocking his head to one side, he dips his pen in the ink, while at the same time holding a brass pot above his head....

      Various kinds of pin and their uses This pin is for piercing the tube before we medicate the cat in the fur on her neck. She hates us for doing this, senses we are coming for her with our toxins. This one is a safety pin. I open it, slide five or...

      i excuse myself from you tonight. there is low cloud on the fields as the sway carries these hands between this and the next stop. i’ve fallen for an other, make eye contact; deliver it through sight. i recognise my place by the trees; wonder...

      Oktoberfest Gretel nurses a knot at a table for two in a dive bar in Berlin. Bloated shadows crawl above the industry of night. He’s late. Nerves ripple crumbs, popcorn for the crows. Habit makes a ghostly work of worry, she orders something...

      Good God Corner, Harlech It’s all Good God Corners around here all hairpin bends and sharp breaths in perpendiculars and parallels that pull you out to sea a riptide of light reaching down from the hills toppling the little train into the water. I...