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      The Stopping Thing after Wanda Coleman You wrestle the car seat’s five-point harness, scrabble for a foothold in the new life. The baby has thin hair and flaky skin like age — this daughter dished up fresh out of my body to gaze clear-eyed at air....

      We Need to Talk about Shoes The right shoes for work, party, funeral. The right shoes for 2023, with heels not worn down last century, like sister Jo’s shit-brown Mary Janes, passed on by Aunt Jess in pristine pasteboard box. Each clipped step,...

      Grandad keeps pigeons and canaries in the same cage. He has never hurt me. He probably could, so I follow, skipping moss stuffed cracks in the concrete path, the bolt is secured with wire, the padlock hangs uncoupled. Green paint patchworks the...

      In stream (after Zaffar Kunial’s ‘This in Land’) That way a river crimps eddies in its skin is this matter of my unreliable breath. That way leaves spin, pause, spin on again is as much constancy as we should expect. That way an eel suspended in...

      Birdsong You’d come in the front door and whistle, I’d be upstairs and whistle back like a pair of tits sounding a return to the nest, our intuitive call and response, a sudden shared slap stick rousing the dog from its daydream, like two trainee...

      In My Last Phone Call Did I say it looks like rain? I meant the sky is black with a thirst only crying can quench, clouds smothering the hills. Did I say this was my home? It was a mistake. The walls are collapsing even as I paint myself into a...

      Three Dimensions X There is no evidence anywhere that Albert Einstein ever said the definition of insanity is ‘is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ except there he is, all over the Internet, being attributed...

      On the Ward No place to put a man and hope he'll stay together. The sensible nouns are already exiting the side door. They know things are not right: that a phone charger is not a walnut, that a six-bed ward is not a graveyard. Poor sort of billet...

      Rite Maud Gonne’s grief at the death of her son led her to attempt to conceive another in the child’s tomb. Mausoleum. She puts her tongue against the word. Thinks maudlin. Thinks museum. Thinks her Georges, as darling as a Degas bronze, his...

      When young boys go missing When young boys go missing, the neighbourhood rallies a search party. We panic like a bomb’s ticking against time. Our fears, ripen to a burst, we scamper through streets, cells & prisons holding tightly to the hem...

      Fuel For The Fire Tish Murtha. Photographer 1956 – 2013 She never ran away or tried to escape that unholy beginning She wasn’t one to cry when she was beaten Tish was always coming home home with its broken bricks and scrap fires always the smell...

      Up She Rises   Hooray and up she rises early in the morning She’s grateful to be alive with these tumours crackling in her bones Coaxes arthritic legs to take the first steps of the day There’s weight in her chest as she leans into the bin and...

      Going Downtown Going downtown was pre-drinking, save money, buy confidence. Going downtown was queuing outside Walkabout, a drunken reality show. Going downtown wasn’t a release, but a rite of passage. Going downtown was therapy. Going downtown...

      Slow walk /        in bits Where can we go on holidays this year,and when will we get a house if you're away for two years,and now you're crying,and it’s £4 to park for the day here,and it was dry when we started now we're soaked,and I guess this...