iI saw this fat man.Haw Fatman I says, How’ve ye got 3 caursOn yir lock-block,A big yin, a wee yin an’ a medium sized.The big yin’s for the faimly,The wee yin goes the shoppin.An’ yir medium sized, pearl metallickedTurbo fuckn dieseled?The laddie drives, but mainly It’s for back-up.Back-up? Aye back-up.An’ is your wife as fat […]
Dusk on the water, the job was to watch,unracked, the wet still-dripping creels being tippedinto the grading tray, alive with life.Our seas provided black-eyed velvet crabswith small horns ridging their top plates. The work: to grade by size, Those big as a fist, they pointed – big as a heart, I saw – were lifted […]
Nancy leeved in a sma warldin a sma fermnae faur frae a sma toon.She hud sma ettlins.Clivver is she wis, there wis naethinshe wintit mairthin tae wirk the ferm. It wis a sair trauchlemulkin coos, thinnin neeps,howdiein caufs, begowkin the todthit keepit is ill ee on hir chookies.The sonsiest hingmy in Nancy’s sma warldwis er […]
Autumn slidders inback hame, auld hauntsCorries in an settles dounIt’s nae strangerkens yir faither, richt backThe leafs faseelent smoutheThe snaw creeps dounwarton thon braes ahint the tounA win’ comes upblawin strang an bauldThe leafs leave, an winter crowls in
on reading Arundhati Roy’s essay, ‘The Pandemic is a Portal’ It cam sae suddent, the lockdoon – guns jabbin oor backs, aawhaur baured,naewhaur tae bide.We were in the swatshoap,ma bairns an me, at the machines,stitchin zips, three hunner atween us an oor,pirn-threid castin stourthrou a gash o licht blearin ma veesion;sae blin I wis, an […]
I hate seagullsbut let me tell you thiswhen this one banked in the colossal shadowof the high-riseit had all the slide guitar in the world behind it.A wonderful thing,the not-so-green grass and the longriver soundand even the old merciless Sunlet the air string a breeze through it. Lately, I am uneasy.Here, I declare my love […]
for dan, after derek jarman ‘Peonies are impossible. This is his only regret.’—Anna Pavord on Derek Jarman the beautiful boy tells me that a greek goddess created peoniesto reflect the moon’s glow,so i buy three bunches for my birthday—a lifelong believer in the virtues of homosexuality,i welcome this fresh year with floral flirtation mary oliver […]
The saints are crying in the wind, can’t you hear them?Only the cries of the wing borne sing out,oystercatcher, skylark, ploverand corncrake. This too may be an answer.The saints are letting their tears fall, a gentle cascadeof green marble, don’t you hear them clatter together?Only the sound of the surf in the shingle, and the […]
[Golf was popular among prisoners of the Polish POW camp during WW2. This ball is housed in the World Golf Museum, St Andrews.] Polished khaki, stitchedfrom strips of leather bootsstuffed tight with sand, cotton, or whittled pine—whatever they could find—bound in rubber from tobacco pouches,the shell of leather sewn as neatlyas the seaming on a […]
Shui Hau Tonight you’re not dried and flat,blending into the road.You croak like no one’s watching,loud, multiple—among you, there’s this ridiculous laughter,surround sound of abracadabra, abracadabra,distinct, almost like a mockeryto the itchy factthat our blood is your food’s foodby the thick, green soupof your lotus leaves and children,some of which will never grow.We thought you […]
There are too many momentsthat we forgetthat there is a warthat bombs and shellsand the dead fallelsewhere.My son asksif he will be put on a trainif he will be sent to a campif he will have to wear a starand leave usI say to him nonot todaynot yetnot us.
Found in ankle-length wet fescuein the centre of the field by the wood.Not dropped from a height or discardedin a rush but carefully placed side by sidelying comfortable together as old lovers dowith the best of their years behind them.There was no one around but the windshaking conversations from the trees;no clues either to arrival […]
