Half Brother (It rained, remember?) We climbed to the roof, took turns dying our bodies glistened & shook, mist from our tongues I step into your game screaming I get five lives! (but you always win) Hold your breath, count to ten cut your...

      The Gift A walk in the park. I see a girl sitting cross-legged on the grass, in front of her a box tied neatly with red ribbon, she stares at it, her chin resting in her palms. She doesn’t move. I watch others watching till a boy approaches, he...

      First Snow When snow fell at night, it was her future decided in hushed tones outside the room where she slept, so in the morning when she rose her world had been swapped, swivelled like a set in a play, permitting her (as she stepped out) to...

    Oranges On a dark Friday, in the early night I walked past an orange on the pavement by a parked ambulance, in a setback carpark, under faltering streetlights and hefty air. No stars were shining but this orange seemed to do so, and for a fleeting moment...

    Workshop for Shy Self-Promoters Although I have never been on the pushy side of unassertive, what precedent in tactical avoidance I’ve established for shy self-promoters!: a workshop on low-visibility preening in Ray Bans and balaclavas by Inspirational...

    The Human Market Animals gather beneath a plasma screen in the square: a colony of lemurs with calculators in their paws, lizards with phones that twitter and purr. How did you get here, naked, bruised, unshaven? An owl scratches numbers into your...

    Emily Little love, I see your face, so like your grandfather’s. There is the obvious - his July-lion’s mane tamed to your September copper. But me in the middle, part him, part you, I was always too distracted by laundry, homework, things that keep a...

    1901: The Interpretation of Owls (Four owls on a branch, and one on its own, all smoking long churchwarden clay pipes, and listening to the music of a songbird in front of a giant moon – like five patients waiting for wise Dr Freud.)   The First...