Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries I Think That’s What Love Is I find you in the small canteen. The noise around an elegant TV mast. Oh god, the sadness. A series of paving slabs implanted into a field like a proto-spine or a history of unstructured gangrene. I eat my wet sandwich […]
Poetry
2 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Control The Pontotoc manwho confessedto killing his best friendduring a fishing tripbecause he believed this personwas summoning BigFoot to harm him,has been convicted. The man recounted seeinga twelve foot BigFoot crouchedand hearing his friend howlthrough a drainage pipe. He claimed his best friend also insistedon catching a […]
2 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Your Cathedral I remember the first time you brought me here:your roofless cathedral you called it, showed me the way samphire gets washed in gold whenthe sun falls over the mudflats of Morecambe Bay, Lakeland mountains bruised violet by the sky they touch,charcoal smudges across the water, huddled […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries North Star(a e h i l n o r s t anagram) Terns strain as east sleet threatens,it thrashes these northern shoreson seasonal rotation. Stern, here.As the sea lathers, the inlet silts,its islet less isle, its saline isolationstolen as the straits start to thin. See those tell-tales? […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Happy Fat Brown Puppy After Utagawa Hiroshige’s woodblock print:Ushimachi in the Takanawa District About this view by Utagawa H – who else would set an oxcart wheeleye-level, and so in your facethe uncrossable distance of artseems semi-zero?Or persuade a fading rainbow’s curveto follow the rim of the wheelon […]
My Dog Ate the Sun
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries And tumbled through the door when Ilet him in. His rust coat moved like awindy sea. I turned on the porch light: itdidn’t make any difference. “You’re dead,”I said to him; he cocked his head to theleash on a chair. Of course, he wouldwant to go walking now, […]
Rue Garenne (trans. Ruth Ward)
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries There’s this woman as eccentric as Christ walking on water. She writes poems on her painted toes, which will never touch the ground because she slips them into platforms high as half her head, or higher. Grey pigeon feathers decorate her hair along with leaves of fresh mint and laurel. And each […]
3 poems
Image: © Courtesy of Manchester City Galleries Telephonophobia I sprint three stairsat a time, dying to hearwho’s on the line.I lift the receiver to my trainedear, my lips purse tiny airholes.He said he was a doctorabout to visit our schoolneeded to conduct the firstexamination. Are you alone?I’m alone, I say, thinking of the lollipops […]