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      Cep Some years I miss the days of its fruiting or else it doesn’t show: a sign of what’s going on underground how hylae and mycelia are faring. Beneath pines at the woodland edge where a little light comes in its soft egg protrudes meaty and...

      Subtraction of Grief Yesterday I slipped into a broken space the wind couldn’t mend. Beside me the reservoir dazzled in the cold sunshine and larch trees losing their copper needles in the fleecing gusts were still, are always, all one in...

      A Pale Fire of Roses It's a child's game: knock on the door and run away. Each time she looked out, she couldn't see who'd knocked. Reporting it felt foolish: it's only a knock on the door. Fourth time and there's a bunch of flowers on the window...

      True Lies My bro’s so good at dying, he shakes this way and that, dancing in the shrapnel. Mama shouts play nice so we bundle into the sofa bed, bodies clumsily naive. Arnie’s on the telly, a CIA agent, a body of nothing but muscle and man,...

      How Inferiority Complex Talks to A Writer Whose Mother Tongue is Urdu I wake up at 7 am, sleep again for two hours, get up at 9 am to finally work, open my laptop, remind myself, no big deal, it's a day, after all, it will pass. Boss sends a...

      The inventor’s wife predicts a storm Each coming storm, I’m alone, love. I take to bed as my blood constricts, is corseted by whalebone. I blot the sky with clouds of my own invention and watch the day run like a shawl’s pulled thread,...

      The Stack We hold our dead like chairs hold chairs further and further off the floor until one holds no more.     Tristan Moss lives in York with his partner and two youngish children. He has recently had poems published in London...

      Sister Death Sits on the Back of the Settee It shouldn’t be such a surprise. She knew me better than most people, after all. So cosy. And yes, in the womb I gobbled her up and thought I’d won. But you forget such things. Behind me like a pantomime...

      I Fall in Love with a Tree Everywhere I Go  When I shut my eyes all I see is the sky hung with oranges like a dozen orange golf balls; the tree itself on display like a circus animal. I am where the palm trees rise and fall on the horizon; where...

      Morning Conversations Every Gulmohar flower is a vermillion cup of the night’s sweet nectar that drenches the birds’ parched songs. Every branch is a perch for daylight to scout, to rest and to tread lightly without leaving prints. The parrots...

      Sonata for the Dead (After Li Shangyin) Crows pick at the rotting bones of skeletons who gaze with sightless eyes at the stars, where our dreams abide, but never come alive. Crows, seeking somewhere to feed, scatter like fallen leaves, as wind...

      Fish-Tale   She gorged on forests, gluttonous for the town, craved torchlit streets every time she went back to normality.  She swapped her tail for a man washed up on the shore along with the shingle, salt-seaweed, and crab-carapace. She burns...

      The Love Poems I finally took the trash out, sent that email, and had enough clean dishes to eat a meal at the table but there was no time to write the poem Before you woke up this morning I slipped into the cool autumn air in search of the...

      Simulacra I was six when I shifted a curtain in a dark room at the waxwork museum and peered through glass at a woman I remember hooks and chains her tattered skirts pale lips crimson stains I thought of her first time I lifted black tarpaulin...

      The Upminster Train We met on the District Line from Wimbledon to Upminster. Chatted all through Southfields. Hands held by Putney Bridge. Our first kiss at a sudden lurch near Parson’s Green. In love as we pulled in at Fulham Broadway. It was all...

      The Lea at Hertford Around me everything is peaceful. The river flows, willows trail in it and children walk by. Nothing of her suicide abides.     Dennis Tomlinson lives in London. His poems have been published recently in Shot...