Hello

      Hair Growing up in small towns hairdressers offer crew cuts, curlers, wigs in severe bobs. In cities my fuzz is flat ironed, acid straight, topiary trimmed. In cosy bars, strangers clink pints on our table. Sweep sweaty palms across tips of my...

      Escape of Harold ‘Rubber Bones’ Webb Chaplain asked me if I’d renounced my criminal ways, Depends on my girl, I confessed rattling the concrete flinders in my pocket. I’d sprung by midnight, slipped down my chiselled rabbit hole following hot...

    Dreamer Set the sat-nav for home but drive in the opposite direction without any sense of where or why you are going or where this will end or who you really are or might become each junction passed is a single recalculation of opportunities missed of...

    West Beach, Berneray You want your days to spread along the bay, a coat of gold light wind harvesting machair tuned to a sky littered with geese, sanderlings skittering in every direction a ferry waltzing the low tides of the Sound where you walk on sand...

    Little boy dream  My brother used to burn ants with a magnifying glass. I blamed the sun for tempting his half-talking, grazed knees to kneel on hot tarmac. He’d run his pink-licked fingers through the slab’s trenches, collecting worm eggs beneath...

    Shap Fell In the murk of evening and car-heater fug, a thud. My five-year-old head hits the roof. The sheep is not quite dead. Bloodied on the top of Shap Fell her breath disappears into mist. No cars pass. I pray to see the sheep haul up onto matchstick...

    Spring Song I remember spring and everything a freshly washed clean smell of green. A newborn kind of rain left the parked cars shining like a passed shower. I remember cycling, the tarmac deep black and streaming, past the shoppers queueing the high...

    Wanting Joy Glory be to the changeable wretch I am       condemned to dance within. Spirits thumb a ride       surging synapse and hurling ourselves in directionless tangles. Joy is hard. Joy must. I seek sepulchred secret caves inside guts where sin...

    LAZY ABECEDARIAN FOR SUMMER MORNING PRESERVE ROUTINE A pile of kitchen-stove kindling twists Braids with achamma’s kuttichattan hair ribbon Creasing her fingers when she crushes a twig Dew-dropping her brew for new mothers in Early morning rose-light we...

    spiralling during Planet Earth Attenborough’s voice echoes in my head (like God) He says that we need to act now (draws us all in with baby orangutans and birds that look like aliens.) Because otherwise, no one cares. Does he know that? Current levels of...

    Mountain in Winter White ground, and white sky / / / And white trees, and white light. Hiking along the path of a mountain’s ridge. . . Twisted branches hang like misshapen cages; bird-prisoners sing their little laments inside / / / And it is so cold....

    Intruder A rattle spikes through my ear. Tin, tin, tin. Tintinnabulation. Fingers seeking their way in – sneaking, screaking fingers, scratching at the metal, scrambling for the bolt. Ding dong. What a racket! Tin, tin, tin. I’m on the sofa blinking at...

    High An arctic tern will fly 10,000 miles to flourish in two summers worth of light; so I was high after he died, chasing sun on the wing, though directionless. I swallowed three green capsules every night, peristalsis pulsing them through my scorched...

    We Secretly Hate You Here's our booth, come sit with us for a second. Come share this necklace with us. The vibrations here are excellent all night. Have you read Mira Kirshenbaum? That's okay. Have a sniff of this. It's meant to hurt a little. Listen:...

    A NOTE ON PINK These things are pink: tongue; blush; intestine. Candyfloss. Ham. Flamingo. This much we know. The lotus flower is an excellent example of pink. The pink grapefruit is internally pink, but externally a warm peach. A sunrise is sometimes...

    winter monsoon, Bangkok, 2020 in Bangkok students amass asking after the disappeared in the shade of a banyan tree cut in half, in a diary twisting sugar with ink a seer wonders how to speak of what she has embroidered of a night world of frangipani...