And To Dust You Shall Return
My class has a test on Thursday, but today is Wednesday, and I am sitting in the Lady Chapel, and thinking sinful thoughts, and listening to a man who is brought in twice a term to say Mass (apparently God isn’t keen on women speaking in His house), and I am quietly memorising my index […]
WE INTERRUPT THIS MARRIAGE TO BRING YOU RUGBY SEASON
’Tis the season for men To lock living-room doors; While their wives are out for supper, Other lovers make them splutter. THERE’S our boy! Bellows affirm an Alexander Bronze-built With a mouthguard grin, musk and ‘good hands’. He assumes position Among loinclothed Olympians Shoulder to shoul
A RETURN TO THE EAST CAPE
un-curl yourself, beginning at the edge, then moving slowly inward, breath and sinew. the world has not been kind this winter, tied you up in small sharp endings and beginnings (much like fallow coloured glass you pick from tidepools on the eastern coast – you try to hug the jagged edges smooth bu
After the Storm
They have black tongues, arteries which are rumoured to pumpcinders and tar. As they summon the gale, words drip like treaclefrom their blaspheming mouths, weaving a tale of two horses who gallop the town: one black, the other white,like a negative impression. With eyelashes wet from the storm,they
Postcard from Dún Laoghaire’s West Pier
A fat seal drags itself up the harbour To gnaw on fishbones. In my dreams jaws clamp Round my skull, bring brittle bits of me back Down towards the seaweed, sludge and slime. I see it as I feel it. Troops expected France but spilled out of ships Here, at what was then Kingstown, To […]
The Story of a Superlova
i. Step into the moonlight, beacon boys, the hour has come for us to write. Leave those starless shadows at once; come feel my pulse; the corners are no longer yours – dance, and look into my eyes. Take some time, come sit by me. Let us tease infinity: if we can dance the night […]
Casual Tea, Seattle Man
Casual Tea Last night I dreamed I was running across the craters of the Western Front. The enemy had retreated, and the doctor told me that a Body had died. “All are buried or home for tea, but a doctor works in between. The war is won, and I am done. And so It […]
Harvest
the best tomatoes grow close to the dirt. their cunning makes them sweeter, ripening in hiding like any masterpiece awaiting an end to incubation: dew-drops in shades of ruby glittering, garnet, sanguine beads slowly seeping, secretly, from spined vines and hives, from stems and suckers, tric
Holding for an Hour
Above a glass-blue day another broken angel sleeps suspended, arms straight and close on the hospital bed. Her breath rings round the room, blanketing the floor, and my eyes fall heavy, but will not close. Beside us, the violets in the vase appear to chatter blithely on, marking the seconds and min
