Candy Neubert

I have people to see is what I said. I did not say they are all in my head. I am committed; did not say to whom, did not say to my own self in my room. I have places to be where I must go. You want to make arrangements? Sorry, no.

As if a turtle you have laid your eggs in a bowl of sand. Unlike the turtle you sit next to your own heap overlong considering the wondrous thing    you’ve done, the babies wrestling in the gritty dark. And all the while the land cools steadily, a small white light somewhere over    the sea, over

A place to see the little things between the monuments and tombs. As in the chapel of St Gabriel, a pencil. Here they are, behind the obvious. Next to the chapter house, a cupboard with a bowl, four toilet rolls. How small things quietly wait, make us forgivable. Inside the vestry, just inside the door,

Our pilot on the Delaware offers to show you his laptop. These are the buoys, he says; I know exactly where I am to within a metre. This is the same way we track our missiles and drones. You stare for a moment and say oh. Then remembering your manners add thank you for showing

I’d tell you I came back here, that I’m writing in this room, if you had not found another and are happy, I presume. I’d tell you I returned and I have walked to you know where, if it were not to disturb you for so little, seems unfair. I’d tell you I have chosen

I trust her look the shadow round her eyes her level stare explaining paracetamol these ones are strong take them at night she looks straight at me she is not very tall either inside deeper than skin confidence blooms more fragile and more certain than the hug of a friend

Nothing brings him to the door quite as surely as Silexine Watertight, the complete waterproofer. One Imperial Quart. Opened this morning to seal a stump, it scents my hands beyond washing. No warning on the tin, no list of toxins, just a metal lid scummed with rust. Eleven and thruppence. My father walks into his

As I make my way to the greenhouses a seagull kills me in its pure white throat. Quiet in the tomatoes. Quiet among the beans. Soft dark patches where the rain leaks in. Can I come home? Has it been too long? Tall weeds growing through the coils of hose.

I was late for dinner not because I wanted to exercise restraint but because I wanted to hear them calling me

I have preferred the practice wall and not the netted court a decent racquet and a ball the steady thump of steady thought and no one else at all

just to tell you there is nothing better almost nothing better than getting into bed in the middle of the afternoon when the sun shines down outside and you are perfectly well shedding your clothes one arm under pillow having no sense of ambition beyond this experiment with quiet having learned something from the cat

the worst night coming the bloody dark covers our traces fanning across the grid worked out in the Ops Room section by section any place my heart is gone any direction beginning in the house and loosed off in mid air in some canal or building site or park the hinterlands behind are coded as