Charoset
not ch like chocolate / the kind of ch that gets stuck in the back of the throat & stops you from crying / the kind you throw together once a year / but like the moon it never sets / and stays behind & washes up / i wonder how many miles per hour […]
My grandmother’s hands
In a fading photograph, they sit一双手Newly-wed still. They pause,hovering in a chant of numbers wavering into silence, and words slipout of reach 一粒, 两粒, 渐渐溜走like grains of rice through parted fingersuntil cupped hands left almost barrenwait only to receive a voice: it
Apartment 271
After Meret Oppenheim Steaming in gazelle, espresso in a fur-lined teacup clipped just less than an inch scowling on the dresser. She gullets fuzzed brown innards with a Levonelle & a little salt (a day later) three p
The Isis Poetry Competition HT21 Winner
1 On a summer evening, I stood outside on the pavement lifting my arms & pouring my own-most entire being out downwards, watching it flow in a slow, steady stream & become a shapeless little pool on the pavement — translucent, tacky, awkward, glittering; catching & holding the du
The Isis Poetry Competition HT21 Shortlist
may-day it is long past time for coffee the girls play in the garden and freeze when they touch each-other what life is there left for those of us who wait and wait for the dust to settle what humour is there in prophecy […]
The Isis Poetry Competition HT21 Shortlist
Dad brought me fishing took hold of a herring broken on stones we passed no one but a boat one hundred metres off a cuttlefish swam spectre-like You know what they eat the sea he said fascinated I fell in the vision I was blue scarlet Dad carried me on his father’s back I remember […]
The Isis Poetry Competition HT21 Shortlist
We’re at the rock pools again. You’re bothering anemones putting your hand to your mouth to taste the salt Like licking the shiny side of a crisp packet We talk about the old sea The sea from before and how it used to keep its distance I have never [
Ditch Lilies
All across the yard, false peach. Elm trees spitting shadow on their heads. Like an ocean, he says, thumbing the brim of his cap, like lilies. The golden in them. We’re far away from ourselves, her ashes dusted in a field, your voice still scattering my dreams. The pastor bles
Eggs and tea
(For Jessica) I’ve been trying to eat fewer eggs lately on the head of your soi at the kai jeow stall we’d stand in flip-flops hands crumpling green notes and watch eggs swirl into omelettes in a smoking black wok and a savoury steam would slip like a whisper into your elevator,