Hello

      Mucky fingers A wild daffodil bulb wilts at my feet dug up by a dog. I scrape my fingers into the loam, resettle it in the riverbank. At twilight, two children crouch over a fish – it flaps on the path. There! the boy digs into the wound with his...

      Double Life In the Christmas vacation I work two jobs: an early shift at the sorting office; a late shift at a restaurant. In my daybreak life I become an expert on London postcodes. At night I learn to balance things on my wrists – three plates,...

      film stars we don’t go to parties in dark sunglasses we keep our mouths closed we stand under neon lights with tall cocktails clothed in navy blue your arm is shadowy under the peach tree listen we could make it in los angeles leave secret...

      Sourdough My hands heave with microcosmosis. Under my nails a miniscule municipality with pink glass dome, chipped. There is discontent amongst the denizens. Lactobacilli line up throw bottles of urine at Candida eat each other down dark passages...

    Talking Dirty   Ten years after you died I asked you Was it worth it? and this time you did not answer, your mouth being full of dirt. Dirt followed me around. I spent nights vacuuming and mopping, trying to beat out the echo of your footprints....

      The Nightwatchman Over his shoulder, I’m watching him chew sarnies out of grease-proof, at his last place of work, cracking a pack of Rich Tea. Between one snap and the next, he follows the beam of his torch, ferreting to the four corners of the...

      The Talk There are cheese and onion crisps in a flowered bowl,  sliced tomatoes, strong tea, Mr Kipling’s Fondant Fancies, ye always loved those, all the news that matters, a family that doesn’t speak English has moved into Mrs McLeod’s God rest...

      To Stability The consultants agree your latest bloods and lung function indicate stability; that you’re likely to remain disastrously alive as a toothache buzzing like an electric saw applied to your wide-awake jaw, alive as a spinal injury that’s...

      Frenemy Ever noticed how your legs stop moving when you fly? As a crow makes a sudden dive up through the mirror. I too have mapped my body against clouds of glass, masked like a surgeon on the Canterbury 17. On arrival she says she’ll cut my...

      Sonic Boom It knocked you for seven in the frozen aisle. It wasn’t sound. It was faster than that. You’re going through the ice box, rooting for peas when, with a BOOM, you have your life play the drums in your ears. You hear the past crackle...

      Luciferins Yeah: all the colours crowding the daylight claiming their own place in the sun and then there's us reacting with oxygen to make our own position clear, our own availability gorgeous. Pride? Yeah: why not, we say as we spark the...

    How, tonight, a Detective Sergeant’s Wife will have her sadness taken from her  Leaning back, sipping coffee to keep awake, he’s evaluating witness statements, incident reports of suspected criminal activity, photos of indistinct footprints, and knows...

      The Birdman at Manchester Airport Makes His Confession  1962, Elisabeth Frink, Manchester Arrivals Hall We are envious, full of longing, incapable of looking at the setting of a raspberry-peach sun without desire. We want to hurl ourselves into...

      Park At night in the dreary park empty swings the roundabout on well- greased gimbal manages to budge a little I tread the slight bounce of reconstituted tyre at the slide's base rakish boys and girls sip from a single bottle spark up a cigarette...