Corner Block Vigil in Cowboy Hat I’m five years old, crouched on the knee-high brick fence next to the letter box. I’ve scraped my legs getting up there. I’m wearing a cowboy hat and a man’s striped dressing gown with long red beads, and watching...

      At the Royal Ontario Museum Four hundred pounds of rose pink muscle, the dead heft of a whale’s heart, a mass worthy of Rubens, worthy of Moore. Visitors lean in to feel the quiver of sea, pinned and plinthed under glass, the thought of Arctic...

      Turned Injun I Turned Injun, didn’t yeh. Riders whoop across the screen, red skinned, paint, and painted Paints. And the boy’s jolted by her cheers – outlaw to his young years, music to such green ears: Auntie Val’s rooting for the baddies. More...

      beltane (may day poems, glastonbury 2019)   pale- moon sun: slow,   heavy drops on the site                         of arthur’s tomb (his                                     queen in small   print!) – a quarter of a millennium, the...

      The Farmer’s Prayer He lies across the cow’s prone side and prays for healing. Smooths her flank, half-expecting some bright heat, a glowing surge to match his prayer, a vision of angels, a chorus of song. Beside them lies her calf, warm and...

      Faceless extinctions A moth arrives like a small hand passing over my face and when I open my eyes a heartbeat thuds against my bedside shade. Leave your window ajar and your lamp lit – why, that’s an invitation, says he. White ermine, little...

      Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...

      Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...