Hello

    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...

      The Curse   I bless you love, like the bee is blessed in honey, though, in the hive, the beekeeper has seen the bees drowning in honey. Is this a blessing, a dying from cloy and sugar, surely, slowly? Or, is it this, this, as you will see, the...

      In Rut Eaten alive, being me I step into the street Where November leaves are falling. The air is fine, the clear sky As finely brittle; the aroma of late decay A delicate call to loving. Shed of worries I tread the cobblestones with antlers...

      The Cyclist’s Breed of Freedom Cycling the five miles to work under the blue sky of something like summer, I see hundreds of cars going past me in a blur of metal and memory. The garden greens and reds of the traffic lights hush me over and under...

      Everything You Need to Know about Australian Magpie Swooping Season Protecting your baby is natural – and it’s the same for magpies. The black and white swoop loosens her grip. Here’s how to avoid their protective swoop. She drops her baby....