for Gail McConnell I How much of what we scribble down survives – Sappho’s miraculous bits and pieces, Dialect words for kitchen utensils, See-through dresses, moonbeams – somebody At a busy street corner advising Where to shop for chickpeas and mascara. II Let blank spaces between parentheses Be annotated thus by me and
In the days when I loaded goods trains for a living Out of love for you, and no small concern I felt cold and tired and clean My throat pulsed slowly with the cold air’s burn Down on the silvering frost-lit rail Balanced with risk on the oiled sleeper Pushing upwards against the weight Of
Life together began when you hooked your shirts on the rim of my bedroom mirror — I liked having someone mess with my neatness. We’d skirt the notion of settling down and fly a kite on Parliament Hill. If the walls crowded round, the smoke too thick from each cigarette we lit, we could take
Kew Gardens, March 2022 Late-winter dawns the larches start to sing their conjuring of bright green coronets like miniature elvish party hats strung along hanging shoots in sheets of song – notating, emoji-like, clean morning notes. And then you see scarlet-and-green mitres, miracles of meticulous enamel artistry, as your mist of breathing clears
I suppose you’re right and breaking up would be quite a good thing, but staying together would be an equally good thing, so whatever we decide to do it will be all right. On balance, I lean towards doing nothing, but whatever happens we’ll go on seeing each other, won’t we? I suppose it
Agnes B. Marshall, née Smith, of Walthamstow, practised at Paris under Viennese chefs, had visions of snow-capped mountains, stiffly beaten peaks, set in glassy dishes. Not for her the Penny Lick. She knew life wasn’t a rehearsal and set about chipping away at Gatti’s glaciers: Norwegian ice kept frozen under London clay. (Liquid nitrogen later
when an unexpected whirl of wind tosses grey veils of rain across the Common; gobbets of roof-tile moss and mud plop on my doorstep. The parakeets, no doubt bewildered, flung among new-leafed trees, are blown to destinations never planned for. Flowers I planted yesterday fight for their lives in sodden borders. The sky turns dark.
Come, pop -ology of psych, Beam yourself into us like Headlights through lightheadedness. Come, nanny of nanny states, Come, hour of our hourly rates, Come, heart of our heartiness. Consolation of a prize, Soothing sight for see-sore eyes, Sooth, and say, some truthfulness. In developments a rest, In first worlds a second
It was the largest mass of wood I saw Stacked on a siding, clambered on by weeds, Parts drooling pitch or tarmac long before Someone had laid them there like water reeds Cut for a roof; and as for rafters, these Were sawn too short, and far too chunky, piled Up like an ancient
and I’m dead set on a fire: the year’s first. Barely cold, but I want to ball paper, lay kindling, strike a match, smell autumn. The same as a boy: the sleepovers, bike rides, fishing trips – always the next thing, always tomorrow. I’ve got good at this – wielding an
The old upright shopping bicycle has the wrong saddle, a racing one, more like an iron bar than a saddle. I perch on one side or the other, carrier bags swinging from the handlebars full of provisions for the weekend. It’s hard work pedalling uphill in the rain, but after a while I
won’t be deterred, though her cough clinks and rattles like a bottle delivery. The porch covers her; rain and shine she sits cross-legged on the doorstep, not watching while the street happens, coughing to punctuate life’s sentence. Somebody should tell her the fifties are over, that no one’s going to photograph her
When I get there, my friend is fast asleep with nail clippings scattered on his knee in the dayroom’s baffled light. I wake him gently. ‘I don’t know where I am.’ ‘You’ve been asleep.’ Homes Under the Hammer is on the BBC. We manage, once we find his stick, a turn around the block.
Perhaps there is more than one way of loving the world, Miss Agar. Perhaps you are right. I am booting lonely stones on Perranporth Beach as I struggle with this letter late this morning by the hunting sea. I apologise again for that silliness with the shark. My memory has fixed a photograph of
How many nights now and my desire is a bronze hare — as heavy in me and as light — molten creature cast on the point of flight, elements holding their form for two thousand years and more — although the patina is changing, reflections change under different lights. Every day this spring, walking in
Can you hear me singing? I have a high, clear voice like that of Percy Sledge. I’m a soul singer from somewhere like Macon, Georgia. I perform mostly country soul numbers in the Music Shoals style – Percy’s ‘Out of Left Field’, ‘You’ve Got My Mind Messed Up’ by James Carr. I’m not
Her tree still sheds its leaves, their fall makes grief and grieving tangible, and where a cast-iron drainpipe sleeves rainwater poured from rotted eaves an old grief, making water sing, dies in the broken guttering, and where her dormer window mists she ghostwrites with her fingertips or doodles breath as scrims of rain bring gusts
Here they once tended the camellias; Now all the camellias are deceased, Choked by the fresh flora that flourishes In this broken purposed infirmary For tender flowers consumed by the years. The red, remembered as a period piece, The white, no longer abed, still waiting For the nurseryman’s nurturing hand. Now never beheld through the
won’t budge. Tired of her name, tired of travel and the southern blue, she sinks into the patch of land she’s found, and spreads her windsurf wings only to feel the sun. She won’t meet her mate of thirty years again – so much water under the bridge. She’ll die here, and nothing and no
From reception they followed stringboards upstairs to the photocopying room, through accounts, into the main offices. Miles of white cables overpowering skirting boards, pinned around door frames. And where they came up short, taped to woodchipped walls or burrowed beneath fitted carpets – those ripples never went back quite the same. Superhighways of