Sometimes, walking the trackwhere the gorse thinsand the fern breathes its damp breath,I feel it rising in me— that old, strange longingfor the soft-footed onesto step out of the shadowsand choose me. To nuzzle my open hand,to look up with the moon-wide eyesof the doe, the rabbit, the wary bird,as if I were some benevolent…
I keep staying up too too late. to look at pictures of hothouse flowers online. eat the thought of them as I sleep. develop a bad back from it. wake up angry from trying to find beauty by myself at 1am. I know the answers. I know it’s never found in 1am alone. but keep…
had had I had had a long dayand it was only lunchtime. I had had just two tasksto start the morning but they had had complicationswhich caused them to multiply seemingly infinitely.Now I was buried beneaththe weight of hundreds of jobsand I had had quite enough of it.I had had a good nightthe night before.I had had some…
He burned the letters in his possession—they were legally his— burned them without her knowingat the bottom of the garden withthe rubbish. He spoke as if every traceof their first love had been erased. * My mother’s photographs packed into boxes,forgotten after she died, came to my home when my father went into care. After his funeral—time to…
it was the hottest summer of my life. cycling every day instead of walking to escape the ultraviolet light. trying not to get hit by a scooter. watching the powerlines liquefy across the rooftops, drinking three cups of warm water and then going out again. pausing at the park to see the turtles. cooling down…
My nephew describes a string of objects he found by the estuary: the separated eyes of aplastic dog, the paper wings of a miniature plane, apple stickers. And already when he camein I could tell that something was wrong, seeing him looking up at the ceiling and rubbing hishead the way his mother, my sister-in-law, would,…
Jessie and I are accosted at a tiny beachby a drunk man with a black eye | who goesso far as to float out to us in the dark water he wants us to help him swim as if heisn’t already swimming | or to touch him orbe pulled under calls us cunts when wemove away | Jessie still…
A bobwhite quail crosses the road in front of the car, rushing to join his flock. Something is crowning, but let me not know. Amongst the ebb and flow of typing and clicking I can feel my own world expanding. I unfurl from a gargantuan core. Watch the gulls, dark smudges against an endless grey…
It came to me young, that lime-cordial sweetness with its surge then turning in on itself. // And I saw it in the iris of a boy I kissed; a boy who didn’t make it past the rope. Remember flecks of citrine, perhaps just mnestic afterglow. // Later, double-stacked green hearts would get us wide-eyed…
That time I lost my best friend because we turned seven and he figured out I was a girl been swallowing the bruises ever since :diffidence and valiant diplomacymakeup a homage to dropping out of art schoolred bra concealed by sorcerywedding ring from Temurewritten promises of safe passage: I would never deceive my wife, much less…