Poetry

Over a cup of Marco Polo And a bowl of bird's nest soup, Listening to the world as a whole Through the particular, I laugh Into the telephone...

There is nothing in this room for those who have not learned to sing without thinking, who don’t know where the music fits in their bodies, how to...

After Alison Watt, ‘Venus’ (2015)Their backs against the grass, she felt a pull, as if the leaveson the trees were lodestones, the hairs on her skin...

There’s a stream by the Avon ward Where I stand to watch the water flow And unwind the whirlpools of my mind When it’s dark I let...

for SECH Clare would have called these five red kitescircling above dead or stag’s-headed oakslike iambs broken from a line of English pastoralby a name that signifies a deed...

To sing the evening home, the lover prepares a pot of lentil stew – her phone lighting up to the news of love’s imminent arrival, imaginingher lover’s...

 He was patient as a dead bird. He perched on the ledge of bottom and rocked.  He was the missed flight. He was silence calmed down. He loved...

Weekends, growing up, I'd watch my father as he sat on a low stool in the verandasurrounded by half a dozen pairs of shoes, their laces...

We look up, & beyond the maple trees & the brick steeples with weathervane roosters, clouds billow as sleeping monsters. Not the sort of billowingthat clouds...

Excerpts from a previously unpublished sequence of poems named The Year of the Pin-Up Calendar.Februarythere is a white pigeon opened like a book on the...

i. labrador duck Sitting at a disrespectful distance— ---------back where they came from—gets defensive when blinking (like only ---------shepherds have a right to).welcoming wreckage to its homeland by ---------sailboat...

An archaeologist in Greece unearths Aristotle’s Tomb; others dispute the evidence. If Aristotle’s ideas are consulted, the archaeologist Needs to prove, the tomb’s where he claims it, Not...

The London Magazine has been celebrating the life of our former editor, Alan Ross. An important figure in the literary world, Alan was known...

Above whitewashed, tabby-haunted Kamari, I wearied of the incessant inversions in Pope’s Homer, and left my self-improvement’s cooling terrace to the night, now drawing in here too, across...

On the wicker chair I wait for the duvet’s rise: you’re just a mound, breath, as I worry over why, again, you’ve overslept. Could it be early...

I only like imaginary men, the ones who think my art is the most transporting thing they have ever seen, and I am exactly as hilarious as I actually, actually am.Even then,...

Response to Finding a Fossil at Writhlington Coal Batches:A Fossil (a Fern) on Writhlington Batches Re-Take (Pt.II)Time not as we know it but another time...

When we stole the eggs from the barn that June  you said we held life in our hands. Untrue I said as I carried a near...

As a man under a restraining order Still follows his ex about from day to day I stalk your shadow as if you could show up In...

I grow lighter for you with each striptease from skin to skin leaving a glimmering bulb a milk light by your bed for you to undress by or find your...

The clouds have swum down from the sky and rolled onto their backs in the streets, begging for someone to rub their fluffy belliesA day...

The politeness, not leaving any butter in the jam, or jam in the butter, or shoes in the hall. Not leaving any residue of who did...

Little hole little well of dark staining the lacquer of my tooth little confessor coming close and coming closewhy are you pursuing me interrogator of the nerve in its...

prophets have retired so do not wait for yours to come to you ~ Ashraf Fayadh (translated by Mona Kareem)In our country, a prince, Dara Shikoh, had...