House of two trees

 

 

I see it every day through a car window.

It ghosts alongside like a stalled memory,

age uncertain, between drawn curtains

of teenaged birch, once autumn’s first gale

has shaved away their weak, buttery leaves.

Only its gable ends remain, a pair of

house-shaped symbols of wet, mossy stone,

linked by a low skirt of rubble, no sign of

a doorway or chimney-breast from this distance.

In each of what would’ve been its two rooms,

opportunist sycamores reach up beyond

the level of the eaves, and must form

a roof of sorts in full, late-summer leafspread,

but now join the hunched cluster of skeletons.

Sometimes there are rooks, crows, neither.

I return eventually to our home, twelve years young,

and backgrounded by those half-dozen acres

of pine, poplar, oak – their own sycamores too,

whose diaspora of seeds choke our garden

and gutters with saplings every spring.

And I can’t help wondering about time, the Earth,

the waiting game they’re playing with us,

the winning hands they’re inevitably holding.

 

first published in Liminality, issue 11, 2017

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Aftermath of a minor collision

 
The damage is inconsequential, mere molecular exchange

that it’s not worth bothering to get fixed. Those fanned striations

to metal and polycarbonate. The cracked plate remains legible.

 

But then the talking begins, and you gate-crash the narrative

with your machined hair, your plastic-coated name badge, all its

accompanying officiousness, its way that things have to be done.

 

Oblivious to the audience, you circle, fucking vulture, hungry for

the programme to kick in. You don’t get it, do you? This journey

of ours through the asteroids? You have no idea what’s coming next.

 

 

first published in Thirteen Myna Birds, 2017

Poem published in The Clearing

The Clearing is a fascinating and beautiful online journal published by Little Toller Books that “offers writers and artists a dedicated space in which to explore and celebrate the landscapes we live in”. I’m really delighted to have just had one of my poems – “Spit” – posted in the journal, alongside fine pieces by three other poets, Garry Mackenzie, Mark Howarth Booth and Oliver Southall.

You can read all four poems here.

Four poems in Sleet Magazine

The summer 2018 issue of Sleet Magazine is now live, and I’m honoured to have four of my poems appearing there. You can check out “Airport Run”, “Coming Back”, “Harry” and “Caprice” by following this here link.

I’m grateful to Susan Solomon and the rest of the editorial team at Sleet for finding a space for my work in this very fine issue.

Thoughts from an early morning train

 

 

Strange how certain things – whilst falling apart –

take on shapes that almost seem deliberate,

as though planned that way, as though this

were merely a truer angle to see them from.

A reassembly of ideas. A reversal of mirrors.

So you become the terrified hare cowering in

the tractor wheel ruts as the carriage spears by,

not the owner of the jaded eyes witnessing it.

You always have been. You see holes now

where once there were pegs, an illusion of

opportunity created by yourself, by your own

shadow sweeping across the picture as you pass.

 

first published in Across The Margin, 2017

Two more poems at Ariel Chart

I’m grateful again to Mark Antony Rossi, editor at Ariel Chart, who’s been kind enough to post two more of my poems. You can read “Balancing Act” and “Learned Behaviour” by hitting the links.

Christopher became a chief constable

 

You once went to his house and

drank milk from plastic beakers.

His mother gave you one biscuit,

and kept the small house tidy,

and you never saw his father,

although you knew he had one.

 

What you didn’t know then was

just how handsome he would be,

a classical kind of beauty, like an

English actor from the nineteen-fifties,

always smouldering from a uniform;

dashing, yet incapable of empathy.

 

But you know it now. You see,

in your memory, his elegant nose

and immaculate skin the colour

of bones, the way his brown eyes

judged the world as if they were grey,

made of impossibly precious metals.

 

None of you noticed. You were all

too pre-occupied with teasing, and

something close to but not quite bullying,

with his bookishness – too dismissive

of the awkwardness in his limbs

to see where they were taking him.

 

 

first published in Clear Poetry, 2017

Three poems at Soft Cartel

I’m very pleased to have three of my poems featuring at Soft Cartel just now (and I particularly like this image they’ve used to accompany them. How soon can I move to Pie Town?). You can find “Exit strategy”, “Your second head” and “Nothing much at all” here.

My thanks to Toom Bucksaw, editor at SC, for giving these poems a home.

 

 

Poems up at Ariel Chart

I’m delighted to have had two of my poems – “First dream in a new house” and “Being let go” – published by Ariel Chart recently.

Big thanks to editor Mark Antony Rossi for including these.

Poem in The Pangolin Review

Not only is The Pangolin Review named after my favourite creature I’ve never seen, it’s editor Amit Parmessur has been kind enough to publish one of my poems in the latest issue.

You can find “An old friend” by clicking here and scrolling down about two-thirds of the way, though you’re very likely to get distracted as you go. My thanks to Amit for including my poem.