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

across the street 
 
I am washed off my feet
my heart 
splashes up into pieces 

Dusk is dancing & all the visual technologies at hand feel
overwhelmed: mobile eye, pit pastels, graphic card.
 
It’s down to language, then, imagine.

Twenty- something sex are bodies.
thrown down like sophomore prose.

The footbridge was skinned in graffiti – slogans, threats,
declarations of love, swastikas. Grek. Kost. Lapse.

Canvas boots, pig-iron tacks.
At midnight, the wooden platform groans like a hull.

While children kneel at your cage in awe
edge offerings of cashew nuts, chopped fruit,
curse words into your magnificent beak,
mums settle carrier bags at tired wet feet