Seen as she’d hung her cranial lantern
from the roof of her step-father’s garden shed,
the parabolic formula was skipped; like two calves, we followed the fence
to the end of the foot-ball pitch.

Behind the block, the night tears in scrub-calls.
Fox kill scores the morning,
ripped by prints in muck.

Stepping into the opposing seat
I smile, and the look I receive
Makes me feel the antisocial one.

Hands said to Head
look what you’ve made me do
it’s not me, Head said, talk to
Heart, that guy’s sick

‘Female singing constitutes a ‘forbidden act’ (ḥarām),
punishable under Article 638 of the Islamic Penal Code.’

This is what happens when she sits alone in her dining room, eating smoked trout and canned sardines.

A Tuesday morning in November
out on the street taking in the bins.
As a flight of crows flashed past
the street lights went out.

Noises are louder now: the kesh
of tyres on tarmac slicked
with leaves. Rain’s drumming thunder.