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      Places Other People Live Orange hilltops in nice winters glimpsed through wet windows on quiet mornings with safe people tiny lights glint at night, illuminate a friendly darkness where people come home in nice cars. Rainy days spent indoors or...

      Can’t Name Trees Either Plastic spoons, no bellies to show for, scooping the cream left unswallowed, strew the pavement like bird food. Who’s to say it’s unnatural? Street parties are well straddled heaving from recycling bins, We were thrown, we...

      Zip Wire to Freedom (after Simon Armitage) I write in praise of air. It was just me clothed in a translucent glide, dressed as a thunderbolt, blurry-eyed holding the sky in my hair. To the top in shocking daylight, then helped to lie face down. I...

      To Frank, on going to High School Be bold and push open doors. Embrace the subjects that thrill you. Maths. Drama. Art. Endure those you hate and do them well. History. Literacy. Dance. Life is about balance. Find your tribe. The weird ones. The...

      Life Skills Module 3 1.1.  Often misunderstood: Stem cell research Children Trigonometry Joy Choose two. Compare and contrast. 1.2.  In autumn, trees weep their leaves, ready to bud again in spring. Does this make you sad, or happy? 1.3.  Your...

      Dead-spit   My father kept what little he had of my mother in a drawer. It branded his next wife as second. She tipped the contents onto a fire she’d lit in the garden – photos with deckled edges, wedding pictures in card sleeves, snaps of my...

      Medlar Jelly This is going to be a pre-Raphaelite poem about the fruit of the medlar tree that grows in parterres by the West Wing. They leave the fruit long on the tree so that it can blet (good word) to its heart’s content. Then the gardeners...

      Dead Graham Amuses Himself Dead Graham stands in the doorway eating a family pack of Tyrell’s crisps my crisps Dead Graham isn’t a ghostly thing ghosts were at least alive once he never was Who’s had all my vintage Cheddar? Dead Graham smirks from...

      Hiding is hiding First it takes away ‘the’ indefinite from your mouth. Then it is its own skin. Space on walls where it used to hang. Edges of time’s slow camera flash burnt like a castle’s kitchen bricks. Then in cracked cards of a book binding...

      Physics of sound It’s on the attack; though I turn away it still marches into my head its most effective ambush is from silence a click, a drip, sudden creak, then gone but it can bounce like an acrobat then bounce again.. again.. again strokes my...

      Early Morning Someone spread these crumbs in the dark An off-white offering for city crows Shredded bread like snowflakes in the blackness Caught by the neon glow of the MAXOL sign Where men have begun their work by now Washing metal, checking...

      The House where Courage Lives That night I spent every waking hour staring at my face in the mirror in the darkness. It was the first time I’d looked myself in the eye. In the morning I removed the guard from the fire of my heart, gave careful...

      History Here vineyards spill beyond an autumn hill, each vineyards's grapeleaves a different red or gold, geometric as Cezanne, the arc of the sky a long blue neck by Mondrian. What if the earth breathes its seasons as though alive, for when...

      Visit Now that I am here, it’s clear. What I wish for you, Lydia, is that you will be washed up naked and alone on the shore of the Phaiakian’s island, not in this white space with locked doors and that blank-eyed doctor armed with a pile of...

      The Virgin Mary Is Crying I am thirteen and leaving our house as breath haws out my mouth. When I breathe in hard me nose burns. Hands are dead, fingers tender as if they have been burnt. Hunched shadows hit the work trail; they close gates...

      Winging It He loved his pigeons, almost as much as serving his Lord. He would attend to them when his other flock were grazing on life. He’d gurgle along in the loft, ministering to their needs before the race. Setting the clock as they were sent...