Lilies of the Valley At four or five they gave to me A bed of Granddad’s un-worked land Between the shed and garden path And end-stopped by the water butt. The old man helped me dig and plant. Next Spring I watched the leaves unfurl, The buds...

      Last Winter on the Farm (Inspired by David Dodd Lee) Waxwings, I learned later they were called, the birds that wintered in the cedars. All day long they'd dart in and out of the huge tree that hung like a waterfall over our verandah in the Ottawa...

      Cousin dear cousin how are you over on that side. i hear you lot get a bit of sun and field. does the heat cling. we don’t get much on this side. i’m not sure if you get much smog. sometimes it looks like there’s more of us than there are but then...

      Classified we do not know the name   black boy   aged twelve   well-set with a good grasp of english  has run  described as agreeable no vices the young  fellow believed to be between eleven and fifteen has been reported  missing from listed...

      Loving the Social Anthropologist Almería His country was hot, his economy informal. His method was covert – participant observation. Before dawn in the square, he would watch the men gather collecting in shadows and concentric circles – the...

    from After (John Ashbery, Worsening Situation) As one broken upon a wheel, or dropped from a great height upon jagged rocks, I have watched this murmuration, this perturbation, and have felt my limbs grow numb, however great my desire for flight. Will...

      they define ‘hiraeth’ as a kind of doomed longing - your childhood bedroom is someone else's now and your hometown doesn't exist - they see dandelions, a beloved film, their grandmother's hands, safe old gummy nostalgia recurrent as a mourning...

      gratitude I if I had to tell you about my friend John he’s got a daughter, same age as mine he’s listening to GoGo Penguin in his favourite chair nothing else about his day is optimal but he’s leaning forward, head in prayer there’s a lot of...

      The Half-a-man The giant statue in the main square is weeping sky-blue and sun-yellow tears. Later, leaf-green, then blood-red…soon a technicolour dreamcoat’s worth of crying. Only, this is real. Overnight, the statue loses a leg, next, a finger,...