I try
not to think
about my daughter’s
condition
when I
hug her

I tell you my heart is breaking
but the heart has four chambers
and is not shaped like a heart at all

No, no one is who they think they are,
nor what we think they are, either:
the demon inside is thinking it
and you can’t tell him.

Like one of those horses
on the carousel

going round and round in circles
sliding up and down a pole

Everything is moving. I have to remind myself
it’s a flat canvas and behind it a wall that’s solid
as I am.

A vixen or a reason. A
rave. No air, no sex, nor

On a bench outside Next,
a punctured woman
traces circles in the air with
a pale finger

He is bitterest regrets,
dark chocolate, olives and kale,
The Telegraph and Magritte’s
pipe, the treachery of images.

Restless two-hundred-year-old village elder,
a ragged playground of words, or is it weeds –
fragments of chant to slaps of skipping rope.