Take eight each of hex bolts
washers, locks…
it’s important
to fasten these tightly.

Things have been rough lately.
It seems impossible now,
as the breeze relieves us

The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.

Never has there been so much interest
in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth
like the little man in a weather clock.

my brother saw his attacker
at a petrol station

He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him
twenty-eight years older, not eighteen. 

We are the ones
who see big crackers
burst every day—

She barely glances at you when you chink
your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still
spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls,

      Shedding Annamakerrig It begins high up the chestnut tree with leaves on the twigs on the tips of branches where sap has slowed. Turning amber carried by the breeze they touch the earth, rest on the grass where autumn begins   Tim...