The Picture A bird made a sound like a fist on our window. Mum tiptoed towards it as if it was sleeping then cupped it in her hand. Just a baby warm and silent. She stroked it talked to it wandered around with it still in her hand – still, in her...

    Chris Kinsey grew up in rural Herefordshire but always wanted to head for the hills  in Shropshire and Wales. After a degree in Yorkshire, she settled in Mid-Wales. She’s had five collections of poetry published. Her most recent: From Rowan Ridge was...

      Gilestone Standing Stone the map tells me not much (there are so many megaliths hereabouts) on the point of giving up there it is three metres tall girthy like a pollarded oak its reason now lost in depopulation maybe it was erected here for its...

      A child’s coat There’s tiny me on a strip of concrete. There’s the tiny coat I’m wearing, fluffy white: the brightest spot in the image, this coat my mother says she loved, this coat my mother says was so well made, a gift from someone who had...

      Speaking in code I once heard a man speak in tongues, just sounds like words, but not words. He told us he was filled with the spirit. I once heard remuterations in the air, cirvivulating on the breeze, uncanny in their lisonulance; breathless...

      Ghost, Moth They want you out of this House of forgotten tea in which you are floating Like a calcium slip This house in which you yield As a sweep of onion skin In old dishwater Disgusted by yourself hollowed out In the flesh of an armchair An...

      On the Hill No-one has seen me outside the bungalow. I am a rumour behind windows that reflect the sky and reveal nothing of an indoor life. I could pretend there is an extensive lawn in front of me, leading down a gentle slope to a pleached hedge...

      Autumn A sea of firecrackers on spindly fingertips. The wind sails through harmonious foundations. A thunderclap, a secondment of wings, embossed leaves fall like burning fossils. It's the hour for nightingales.     Emma Jones is a...