Hopscotch The numbers should be in a straight line ahead of me, like a road, or left to right with a zero at the centre. Hopscotching...

Bonfire First we'd drag fallen branches to the pit, leaving the dew scored. Then he'd fetch the petrol can shaped like a bar of soap,...

Fawkes is Risen Remember, remember, remember but Guy's hat tips like a blindfold over his pallid face and rouge-daubed cheeks. Not so...

The Pontfadog Oak c.802-2013 Derwen, quercus, sacred druid tree, rings of history scribed in its heartwood, stood its ground twelve...

The angel of transformative light On her back, on the bed, arms raised, legs spread, who did this, who dashed on a smudge of lipstick,...

June 27th, 2020 Mid-afternoon, mid-summer, when it darkens all at once, the traffic suddenly illumined, daubs of soft, electric gold...

Heroes for they had known swagger without season, possessors of a fine and pirate fancy. for they had known hemlock, inscrutable rue in a...

Supermarket Sonnet: Modern Abundance matching Modern Prosperity 1. In a time of pandemic, it is the supermarket that is both haven and...

Here, translated directly from Martial, is Jo Balmer's alternative editorial. Martial's Final Editorial for Alan Humm Corruptus writes...

Found in Translation i.m. Nora Newton (1929–2015) A grandam’s name is little less in love than is the doting title of a mother; they are...

Mike Perfectly balanced; sleek and urbane already, with a fiancée and a house that, when I went over, seemed more like a...

Remains Is this what happens? After leaving the body it wanders down alleyways searching for something solid to inhabit – even the heart...

Missing the Man Next Door Mostly, I miss the sounds of him – scraping burnt toast at the open kitchen door, lobbing another empty baked...

Passion I saw Miss Hooker's knees today. She's my Sunday School teacher and it's a sin, I mean to see her knees. I might go to Hell for...

Starbank Park Your present has not yet arrived. In the dark the clay-brown park is subsea, black, and this vessel, thumbed and roughly...

The Hug A month after my stepson fled to Paris and hanged himself in a public park, I was waiting for the F train to take me to a party...

The Beehive Walking, we notice bees coming and going through a crack in the bricks. Hear the fractured hum – picture tunnels, larvae,...

Photograph by Sima Ebrahimi Notes For Self being Henry is like being Pepsi everybody hates Henry is he East or West? yeah, I answer *****...

Tara Browne and Hugo Williams i.m. Tara Browne (1945 – 1966) I read the news today, oh boy, about a lucky man who made the grade. He...

Man and Wife On days like this, her sorrows seem elective: purest gesture, like the fur trim on the stole a queen wears for her sister's...

So Much Peel back your glove, touch green, touch grain, Touch this good earth and then let go, Touch wing, touch web, touch root and...

Gibōshi When we spoke last night I heard your voice so jolly and yawny, and I felt our distance come into sleep alongside the image...

Powder Closet Southside House, Wimbledon Behind the tapestries, shut in that cupboard of arsenic pomade and lice, a boy waits for...

Working Together We Can Achieve Anything! An artist, a monk, and a mason walk into a nave and the artist breaks into a joke about...