This is just a woman,
sticking her life back together
after years spent recovering.

What you are –
 
bodied light, a store of oil
 
a hive of warm blood

In the back of the taxi on my way to the hospital, 
thighs clenched together,
the driver asked me, 

Here — in the absolute zero of space — fireworks!
Look how the crucibles of creation, 
those million coloured fingers that stretch light years — 

We unlearn how it felt to touch
And resume our separate days in shirts and trousers,
Like hazmats against the sun and its longing,
The moon with its underbelly pulls.
 

Now a blanket is spread, offerings
of chutney and shin bones, 
 
a taper held to the fire
that heats the tar beneath our boats.

I didn’t know then,
moving for a mouth  
that refused to yield an inch,
what it wasn’t.

      In my cookery exam, we have to prepare a family meal This is summer and Mum can’t put out her trot line with its hooks because of swimmers so I buy three mackerel from the fishmonger. I cycle to the school bus stop one arm on the handlebar,...

& my sub-tropical heart 
will punctuate the idea of treacling hope
puncturing the sense of a book