Hello

      Consolation poem In a meadow of red campion beside a wood in mossy quiet, a boy and girl leap into the air, wave sticks, make Maurice Sendak faces, are suspended forever between earth and sky.       Charlie Hill is a critically...

      Lobster If my father were home, the larder would be full of brown paper bags bursting with over-ripe mangoes, purple-tipped artichokes, dead pheasant hanging, packets of stinking cheese, figs split and spilling seed, and sometimes I would be...

      Afternoon Walk   I went out for my afternoon walk, and dreamed of no man’s land: a Bir Tawil, a terra nullius fort; I went out for my afternoon walk: orchids bloomed on pseudobulbs ― pink, yellow and vanilla to sport; I went out for my afternoon...

      Referendum I throw the ballpoint pen away. She hits the carpet with her stick and says she wants it back. I offer her another one but, no, she wants the one she’s always used. I check my watch and roll my eyes and marvel at her stubbornness, her...

Things They Tell You your mom tells you when you’re six years old that if one person says something is wrong with you get a second opinion but if two people say the same thing consider that they might be right she tells you people can see inside of you they’ll figure...

    I am the Groupie I stalk Frink’s warrior –  London, Liverpool, Swindon, Chicago.  He entices me into art galleries and sculpture parks in the pouring rain. I want to know the dreams that curl up in his bones, the length of his longing, depth of his...

      The Deputy His office Next to the Head’s Was so untidy, Papers on chairs, Rubbish bin overflowing But it was here They all waited, For an interview Or a result. Amongst his jumble And his wall charts And the red faced Secretary Apologising.  ...

      What the data about migration told me We are incoming packets discrete, carrying our own context. Our aim is to pass through without being stored in a session. We choose the optimal path for delivery, clustering at the interface between nodes....

      Taking HRT at The Neon Sign Museum, Las Vegas Popped tubes and leaking neon. Lucky, Golden Gate, Circus-Circus, half illuminated Happy Days. Scorching pinks turned to blues, stiletto heels snapped to slippers, bright night shine, dull by dusk. The...

      Hand-shell After Dora Maar Divide a woman’s body into geometric shapes. Triangle tits, a six-pointed star. Segment a woman’s face into orange slices. Split it through a spider’s web. Float a woman in a pool. Swim statue-stiff, your hand-shell on...

      The Fringe For days, weeks, I’d longed quite hard for silence, as the weighted ache of noise loured. Then, Sunday morning, three o’clock, humid morning-night, the window open, there came a silence fringed with scents (our lane half-in, half-out of...

      The brief invisibility of fathers I do not draw but here I do. Heavy looping lines. That scar of road. Weeds through the stones. The olive tree, persisting. Wild fennel, and him bent over it. The way that he inhales the leaves. Pours rice like...

      We Are Alike We are alike, you and me. We are alike. You die of love, I die of love. You die without love, I die without love. We live to love, We live without love, We live until we die And then You must die alone, I must die alone. You and me,...

      The Nearly Times Once, when a group of horses bolted and reared, eyes white, legs flailing, trampling whatever was under their hooves. Once, wheeling too fast on a bike down Richmond Hill, tumbling off. Stilled on the tarmac, a human speed bump....

      Every Girl's Dream White egg dress black shoe suit doughnut sugary ring thrown flinty dandruff and white rice copy and pasted vows wedding receptionists are only here for the liquor vacancy signs is their twin eyes a head dress of heaven? A...