Hello

      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...

    Space Two astronauts take off into space and not a single person notices the earth contract as they do so. They are birthed free from terra firma and propel themselves into orbit and perhaps mother nature is too tired to strain now so the umbilicus is...

    Heartbreaker We are all just works in progress, muscles aching and eczema breaking skin Our minds playing tricks on us from Our last relationships. I confided this in the pub and you called me a heartbreaker, helping me eat yellow cheese off cold chips....

    The Year in Thirteen Moons i gardener's forgotten fork a pronged Excalibur locked in iron ground, round pond a mirror to the ice moon ii pollen-yellow catkin moon, a token of death loosening its grip : frost gone, sap on the move iii mass of gelatinous...

    Before I saw India I was a banyan tree – roots multiplying, pampered leaves. I would often sit and think about the shape of things, swastikas, shri yantras, and how many shapes are memorised and how many are inherited. I imagined the thousands of shades...

    Matinal Fears I’m going to mess your life up— taping my thumb to my finger. I’m a big foot kind of bitch god, my father is scared to ask me the truth. I cannot wake from meat dreams, orange pulp fighting my maternal instinct. Let’s calm ourselves, wash...

    Haberdasher After Pascale Petit I found out where my heart is that he’s cut out with his tiny scissors. He stitched it to a t-shirt with her name on. Back in New York they spend the weekend together, wandering down avenues that all look the same. She...

    Migraine day Two charged wires, that shouldn’t meet, are touching and – deeply – a tenderness of bright red ulcer pulses. The sky is the colour of unrequited fights and love bites. The magpies are nervy. The weather – saw-toothed and pissed – is...

    Glacier I overspill the high corries where the snow accumulates, breaks down, suffers ablation. Over the decades, the millennia, ice slows and fankles due to my weight. My skin extrudes nunataks, shears away to crevasses; I extend glassy gantries over...