Hello

      First Snow When snow fell at night, it was her future decided in hushed tones outside the room where she slept, so in the morning when she rose her world had been swapped, swivelled like a set in a play, permitting her (as she stepped out) to...

    Oranges On a dark Friday, in the early night I walked past an orange on the pavement by a parked ambulance, in a setback carpark, under faltering streetlights and hefty air. No stars were shining but this orange seemed to do so, and for a fleeting moment...

    Workshop for Shy Self-Promoters Although I have never been on the pushy side of unassertive, what precedent in tactical avoidance I’ve established for shy self-promoters!: a workshop on low-visibility preening in Ray Bans and balaclavas by Inspirational...

    The Human Market Animals gather beneath a plasma screen in the square: a colony of lemurs with calculators in their paws, lizards with phones that twitter and purr. How did you get here, naked, bruised, unshaven? An owl scratches numbers into your...

    Emily Little love, I see your face, so like your grandfather’s. There is the obvious - his July-lion’s mane tamed to your September copper. But me in the middle, part him, part you, I was always too distracted by laundry, homework, things that keep a...

    1901: The Interpretation of Owls (Four owls on a branch, and one on its own, all smoking long churchwarden clay pipes, and listening to the music of a songbird in front of a giant moon – like five patients waiting for wise Dr Freud.)   The First...

      Vaccination Day At the surgery my mother doesn’t want to wait in the car, keeps opening the door. It’s deadly out there, and all I can think is she’s going to say Yoohoo! It’s Mrs … yoohoo! No one is actually warm enough. Mr Poole never does turn...

    A safe den When my girlfriends come we delineate our territories. I build a fence with a cradle, two chairs and a stool, a cut-out space that protects and defines against trespassing. Knitted blankets cover my baby dolls, rags are my curtains. I arrange...

    Something Boy, I see you, turn up day after day, crouch by the pond, assortment of snacks, hold out a hand or stand still as air. Trackies, oversized tee, slowly scattering feed, pigeons land on shoulders that carry the world, there’s room for a thing...

      moment Once upon a teacup, I woke up. The eyelids yawned and reality percolated down. This is not how rain starts, this is not how the world keeps on its axis. I had a hat to cover my sinful thoughts, and a mouth, to zip them in. My hands...

      Flying Away I sit watching the green line on the screen, your flight moving relentlessly onwards, away from me. Everything feels hollow. So many people here didn’t want you to go. What have we done to the world, how did we shrink it to allow us to...

    Winter Thorn Before the bend he remembers what he usually sees at the bend even in mist-less and anemic days the thorn’s bespoke glow, a hazed corona of frozen smoke its branchlets weave and hold working the air with web, a murk his rallentando steps of...

      The Neglected Partner Love the way your bones keep you upright. your skin a raincoat. Don’t neglect the beauty of all those organs working ceaselessly. Let your body and mind flirt, have a constant honeymoon, swear vows regularly. Praise the...

      In the Days Before they Came What interests me so much more than those pages of scripture foxed with turning is his choosing of a blue gown over a white; his weighing of two stones in either hand, the one mottled like a perfect moon, the other...

    Looking out on the Menai Strait The viewpoint is deserted. The sky a pastel chart. Beneath the bridge the Swillies gargle, Fish traps bob like U-boats. The glaciers are gone but the air is deathly still. Text messages haunt like Ouija. This age has...