We brought back lacquerware plates that we had painted with almond sap and sprinkled with coloured mica as if we were masters—a drop of dust and a knowing nod, greeted by the sound of hands meeting—as if we were the most important part of the process. And the starts of chapters are marked with torn receipts, where I had asked how she would…
His emanation was at least five emanations away from the main emanation;Someone had counted; someone else had counted twice;But how many emanations had he left before he departed entirely from their field of vision,From their plane of compresence and suffering?That was hard to tell.Could be four; could be eighteen;It could that he had passed the…
1. My dog is a retired racing dog called Luca. I’m not allowed to call him a rescue, and I’m not allowed to use his image to promote anti-racing propaganda so all I’ll say is he arrived to us with a broken tail and one and a half ears and a deep terror of the…
my loves stretch for eons towards the horizonnot your californian cultborn from firestorm deathbut still taller than god and i reckon more loyalsit on the corpse in the centreand observe as your body hovers two hundred feet above slow groundsalamanders snooze and ooze in the canopyembracing fairy rings underneathroots spoon the murk and needles sip…
I In childhood I was up the pear tree so often & the soft bodies of butterflies bumped against fermenting fruit flesh& bees hummed sweetlyfull of needles& the platform smelt of rot from yearly bumper crops& I watched patients of Joy, the Jungian psychologist,trail down our shared drivewayclutching their dream journals. Joy was a Catholic & gave us apples at…
Predestination was something my motherthought was a holiday you found outabout when you got to the airport. I saw it as removing the blindfoldafter they put you in the coffin,discovering too late they’d dressed you in a shirt that didn’t match your jacket. That’s you for eternity.Taking you out of your natural habitat, deciding for you…
The clatter of skateboarders down at the memorial. We are in the long grasswatching each other watch the citysilvering into dusk. Overhead, birdsare making their way home. A sirenrolls away around the basin and there isa bee on your hand and it loves youlike a flower, softon the junction between jacket and flesh. It is…
The first person to descendon Mars will findat the dusty footof the lander ragwort.And when we finallyget to a distant nebulait will be discovered that new-born starsare ragwort in a swampy mist—next to a flying saucerof dry cow shit. And when we dieand if there truly isan almightyGod he will be sittingin his all-grazing glorylike…
In the corner of the cemetery,an ancient tree is edged with death. A schism in the bark has been stopperedwith weeping polypore: a poor bandage. The fungal body fruits like honeycomb,oozing amber beads, a fragrant wound. This loaf of mushroom, spongy and splitlike a pomegranate, is unrepentant. It is a scavenger, searching for the rotting,a…
I like the ambient twittering noises you hear around offices. You, a Canadian, may not understand. You became so old once,didn’t you—and yet your strangeness outlives you, lives outside of you as Ialso live outside of you. I do feel, inside (wherever that is), that I am alive and youare not but not so much that I am moved to…