Even the Guy on the News Annoys me Now This year is the end of my hand. It is fingers alone and pointing backwards. You can't see my...

Norse Code On Uig Sands I walk along the tide line of an empty beach collecting shells in wonder at the salmon pink of tiny clams, the...

I thought I should say something about illness for your magazine I've been sat here with my illness of fibromyalgia I introduce her:...

I. Li Bai – Quiet Night Thoughts In front of my bed, a patch of moonlight, Which calls to mind an early autumn frost. I raise my head...

Asylum On the other side of words, we rely on hand gestures, so I keep my grandparents' glove puppets close in order to spread the news....

On Ageing Now that the heart is shapeless, dove-meat seraphed by a history of flame, a shadow on the blood begins to form, inconstant in...

The Language Falling through the aspen-grove and ushering itself along the gutters, night rain speaks a language you have never...

Picture by Alan Sorrell For the most part we think of classical texts as "high" art, a canon of complex works written for an elite,...

The Ghost Apple Girl And then I was the Ghost Apple Girl awoken to a chill hold of fantastical protocol, bloom-cheeked, furred. Arrested...

A Pair of Small Ears I have come to translate the silence. I've brought paper and pencils and a pair of small ears. I ask you not to...

Parabolas we orbit the truth in dark parabolas you and I and a thousand thousand others sliding easily through the fluid air like clouds...

Home Birth You had been pushing a wheelbarrow of sand and cement for me to start pointing the bricks of the bedroom extension where you...

Highgate "I don't want to get into a debate about the screwdriver. I admit I lost it, and I should have told you." As she began to slowly...

Rooftop poem This poem is a rooftop; a horizon line in a horizonless dawn. You sigh like a cat into the night. The flowers at your window...

Women Who Wait For Their Fathers After “The Fathers” by Catherine Smith If we arranged to meet you'd set your clock for six, catch the...

demolition we have raised children who are brutal. I reject your ideas and I question your motives they bark. after the fighting, still...

Covidsomnia Your heartbeat is loud in your lips and you can't unthink about it and it's pretty damn weird actually then you discover no...

Referendum I throw the ballpoint pen away. She hits the carpet with her stick and says she wants it back. I offer her another one but,...

for the fox, dying you came tumbled and burnished all at once bursting bursting inside with fox-joy with lullaby spring ...

I Lick my Cat's Paws Steadily, tenderly. I missed their warm edam scent. I dug him up from the back garden and brought him back to life....

Mannequin Late mother one late morning in February as the day warmed and she cooled, no longer she but a mannequin, startling, waxy and...

Swept She dreamed she died leaving all the towels in the closet aligned. Sometime through the night, she had containerised her grains,...

Spring Equinox, 2020 The night summer came to a world remade, streets were carless, silence walked the roads. A kite's red-gold,...

Here, once again, is Fran's introduction: About the poems It is not easy to explain. I owe more to Roddy Lumsden than to any other figure...