I am recovering from the crying I did yesterday I thought about it downstairs felt the low hum of a migraine beginning to squeal I prefer falling down the stairs I prefer watching a knife drop from my hand and land in my nail bed I prefer taking...

      Bay of Pigs Our mums pushed us on the swings and talked about the end of the world. Russians, they said, nuclear bombs, radioactive. What if? You never knew what might happen, bloody Commies, iron curtain, on telly. Ssh. The children. My mum...

      It It is the singularity of black holes a swarm of hummingbird hawk-moths  the insatiable hunger of caterpillars smile of a camel, song of a nightingale  the moon frail as the edge of a fingernail – It is dirty as a clam, economical as ants dark...

      Tones  A story in three remembered voices These were the voices which really seemed to shift things. She went, in her finals year, to a surgery, painted pre-war brown and cream, along from the Mumbles pier. There she heard the fat doctor, beaming...

      Outcrops Heaps topped by smaller rocks. The raffish angles of designer boulders. Jenga towers of tipsy stone. Lizard colony. Ombligo de Venus. Navelwort in paradise. Darkness; damp. Foxgloved fissures. Small pools filling fingerholds: finger...

      Vaccine The needle hits the deltoid with a moon-cold urgency; its jolt of fluid is ice barely thawed. Relax – sharp scratch. I hold myself against this detergent-white light. On the journey home, my pupils dilate: for the first time in months, I...

      The Poetry Arm Today was all left-handed. I’ve slapped it on the wrist, wrapped what it’s written, hidden in a file, locked behind a password: a little bomb of bitterness I couldn’t post online. My left hand’s the clumsy one blundering on the...

      How to pronounce Dagenham For Jodie Chesney First relax ur froat, ur maaf, ur vibe Not much to do about not much to do so ya chat shit: Wiv ya white shirt unbuttoned over West Ham strip Clanging pawnshop platinum on a baby blackbird’s chest. Narmy...