January 2012
1 post
A Number of Black Dots
We picked em outta the ocean
black specks they were
strange seeds
from the edge of the earth
slippery, they were, and cheeky
we grasped their husks
and flipped em up
hup hup juggled them into our boats
on land they aint as nimble
and a sort of motherliness came over us
we handled them gently one to another
warm scaly eggs
crinkly and gulping in a helpless way
planted, they seemed quite at...
September 2011
2 posts
Venice
Tack tack tack, sails billowing
At the seams, protesting cheeks of a pufferfish, tendonous.
Anchor, collier collier collier fashion down the Thames
Under topsails that deflate and warp, deflate, warp.
A slow start for a first voyage on the Miriam.
-
Thirteen and a half, he stands at the bow,
Face to sea.
Like smoke meeting ceiling,
The water always presses, always unpeeling,
The fat,...
A Dream Of Second Sight
when I feel it coming on before I fall asleep
Temple-tapped and shaken;
(they call me Staithes Nell dear.)
Like water in my ear.
I feel, like bleak cold cliffs, the fear.
-
when I get slowed and throwed, god headed, pour me up
Through the tumultuous black they call the sea
I am writhing, only, in the damp sheets of my shoreline bricks
And slate. My dreams, they call it strange powers,
They call...
August 2011
1 post
The Captain
So, I’m writing a sequence of poems with the provisional title of “The Captain.”
I’ve written the first one so far. It’s called “The Theory.”
I. The Theory
I have always held the theory,
and still stick to it,
that a sailor, like a poet,
is born, and not made.
And the father and the grandfather
and the five sons of Scarborough
“sailor born” if that means
ships were his...
May 2011
2 posts
The Walk Home
A petrol rainbow yawns around your shoe and rain glistens down leaves, like fireflies.
Some snowdrops in a garden bow their heads with no advice to pass.
Car headlights. A crocus burns out in violet before it can reach the sky.
And then, uninvited, happiness creeps in under the draught excluders, bypassed
By the snoozing cat. It quietly cuts the pain from the photos on your shelf,
Draining the...
My poetry is featured on the online magazine... →
April 2011
2 posts
Phantom Island
Like a phantom island I drew you out on my map.
When I was young and naive, I tacked down your dimensions.
I gave you a position and boundaries that never existed
and if they did, they’ve long since been destroyed.
Snapshot (final draft)
When the mall closes at the end of the day, I watch as the final shoppers drag their bulging bags and aching feet out of the glass doors. The sounds of the shoes squeaking on tiles, coughing, laughing and the endless gurgle of conversation empty from the halls like liquid poured out of a glass. A few drops remain. The cleaners polish the last of the echoing shiny floors and finish the last cheeky...
March 2011
9 posts
Holiday Snap
Two bright blonde heads, brother, sister. Sun-bleached.
Pear drops in grinning cheeks. My teeth still ache.
I remember a swimming pool, a beach,
A chalky, beige grassed field. Dust at daybreak.
And the fear. (There are sharks behind those grates!
Said my brother with a covert grin.) He taught me
To fish. Well, he tried. With balled fists he waits
Out my fumbling and quiet dread of the
Bumpy...
3 tags
Blackhole
”Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” - Aldous Huxley
Your brother was really interested in physics as a kid. At one point it was almost an obsession, one summer obsession. One hot summer, your wild enthusiasm for water fights and paddling pools meant nothing to him, as long as he could read his books about space...
3 tags
Engagement Party
I kicked over a glass of red wine yesterday.
The streak of red on cream was met with silence
Rather than yelling. Even worse.
Yesterday it sat, sad and ashamed,
Soaking through the house’s supply of salt.
But today, it’s lilac stain matches
The co-ordinated engagement banner and balloons.
The rooms are filled with the silence of food.
Crisps await their rustling. A fat honey-roasted ham
Proud...
3 tags
Electra
Alison started going to Saturday morning drama classes when she was nine. Her mum probably thought it was a good way for her to make some friends. They were held in the attic of a small theatre. The low-ceilinged room was bustling with props and costumes, hardly hidden by a dull green curtain. Small windows let in usual grey Saturday morning light as the class sat in a circle around the...
3 tags
Going Bad
My double bed is full of mould.
Imagine, slowly tearing back the covers,
Mosses and minute hairs unhook with a lisp.
Organic warmth escapes into the cold.
Snuggle, deep down into
Old skin, soft green mushrooms, fur with a crisp.
-
My double bed is full of mould.
Lie down, always on the right hand side,
Curled like a fern.
And my dreams of you trickle out of my ear and unfold.
Nestle, head sinking...
3 tags
The Beach At Night
“who built/So spacious, and his Line stretcht out so farr;/ That Man may know he dwells not in his own…” Rafael, Paradise Lost
From the dunes to the shore his eyes adjust almost immediately.
Blackness blinks like a negative and collects into impressions of light.
A sheet of glass slides silently over the sand, cut harshly at the edges, transparency betraying its crystal interior.
He stands...
3 tags
Dyeing
We measure out 250 grams of salt.
It shuffles out of the nib in a hurry
and we trill in anticipation as it sullies
out of the scale pan into the sink of hot water.
Cloudy paste like grasshopper spit.
I grasp an old wooden spoon and trundle
the water under our sunny eyes and the mists clear.
A friend once told me, the small things in life
are the ones that give you the most joy.
The...
3 tags
Leap of Faith
Draw your attention now
to the most beautiful part.
Forget what you’ve heard
it’s not the eyes
it’s not the heart
it’s not the giggling size of the unspeakable part.
That upturn beneath the nose where skin turns to lip.
An inverted young strawberry,
pitted with stubble seeds.
A perfect panel for the little finger
as I emit a quiet hushhhhh.
A soft tunnel from the nose
into the dip of...
2 tags
Grandad's Dream
Curious. Windscreen wipers
Always chugging through your eyeline.
Arcs of borrowed streetlamp light.
A sepia rainbow, saturn’s rings painted and repainted
By black robot arms. That light caught in lines
The same way it is caught by a stray spiderweb
In the sky. They say that stuff is stronger than steel,
They must be right - the sun tightrope walking across its wavering length.
Threatening to...
February 2011
2 posts
2 tags
The Marmite Ring
For Laura and Sam on their wedding day.
The smell of marmite reminds me of a sister
In a nightie at the breakfast table, hair tucked behind her ears.
A brother grunting sleepily into his cereal.
Dad is wearing his tennis shoes which are never free of sand.
Mum is mushing a banana into precise amounts of sugar.
My sister says it’s divine. With a glass of orange juice, perfect.
And so,...
2 tags
Evelyn and The Incident
The end of a cigarette falls from her hand and drops onto the carpet. It rolls, damp and smokeless, until it hits the side of a dirty mug half-filled with tea.
Evelyn stands at the sash window, her hand held out motionless, still holding a phantom cigarette to her open lips. Dawn light stretches into the room in a thin line between the curtains. Faint straw light falls across one side of...
January 2011
11 posts
1 tag
Autumn
By the time autumn really gets started, it’s already ended
It pulls itself to earth in mourning robes of orange butterscotch and gold
It yawns, shakes itself in the darkening wind, and strips itself down
We roll out of each other’s arms when sleep comes. As autumn loses itself in morning mists
I wake up to find you have left a neatly folded towel in my chair
Strict angles remind me of...
1 tag
The Lost Yorkshire Pudding Fork
Sunday at grandma’s again. I am horizontal and into a curve of glass my head is raised.
I look up into the circling universe above. Water begins to gush into the bowl,
Detergent is released and I am an astronaut spinning through a galaxy of dazed
Bubbles and the chug chug of clothes. A sock finds safe refuge in the hole
Of a jean pocket. Fragile scarf is whisked like cream and tendrils of...
1 tag
Fear of Flying
“there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
-
That which is most beautiful
Is that which is closest to death.
Shall I attempt for one
Whipped cream dream to touch the clouds
As I fall to the pitch of a flipped heart gripped
In the essence of the essence of fear.
And I’ll bet you’ve never felt fear
Like I’ve felt fear.
Because I have mastered it.
And it feels better than...
1 tag
Echo Chamber, Part Three
Pinning back the creases, what remains now is
The echo chamber. He likes the echo chamber.
It’s his favourite part of the temple.
He takes one balled fist,
Thumps his chest and says:
“Here we bang our sorrows out.”
Whatever sound can your mouth and your flapping tongue make?
It will all be met with the sullen silence of stone. The snub of moss.
Calm your tongue for once; it’s a useless...
1 tag
Echo Chamber, Part Two
I leave. Release so violent -
Lightening resounds from me,
Or white blood-rush?
Or retreating rabbit tails?
Little brittle grass blades
Black and ice and burnt light.
Violent release. Misted vision -
Or something caught in my eye?
Or little brittle tears?
Trees greyscale to womb sky.
I am the lake watching
Her peering in.
I am flawless silence.
I am the sky, stars are mine
What would...
1 tag
Echo Chamber, Part One
And the white ball is following the red one into the hole again
slipping without sound into the net, just as it always has.
And the girls are shivering under cigarette gloom
and the boys are drinking their purple-blooded snakebites
and we’re using the neon to forget the half-light that won’t stay out the room.
The bar maid is leaning over to hear the dirty chat up line
and toga-clad rugby...
thiszineisaspaceship asked: thank you very much for the submission. we will let you know if you've been selected sometime in february. if not, please try again. we love your stuff.
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the editors
cheers,
the editors
1 tag
You and Me and Sunday
Sunday promised us pancakes. Pancakes for breakfast.
The kind of words they write between brackets in Hollywood.
Cafe waitress with flamingo hair spills orange juice into the maple syrup.
We are forgiving smiles with bleary Sunday eyes, and a man in the courtyard is already
Sucking on a g&t cucumber chunk.
We are stacked and dripping, saluting America with our hamster cheeks and forks
Pronged...
1 tag
Einstein's Compass
He trembled and grew cold at the findings,
As he watched, age five, the needle heave toward the pole,
“Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.”
He built a house of cards with fourteen stories
Mastering Euclid, complete algebra control,
Something deeply hidden had to be behind things.
To ride a beam of light, the drawings, the cravings,
To find that dreadful cat, dead, through the...
1 tag
Blood Tests
Gush me into a tube, half-
Yorkshire, like my tea.
My vein says hello,
I’ve never felt you there
before. It pleasingly opens its gullet
to fill the vial. You talk to me of the weather.
I try to speak but now its mouth is wide and
You’ve really opened the flood gates and
blood is the colour of lips wet
at cigarettes, that birthday balloon
you let slip as a kid and wondered when it’d hit
the...
1 tag
Birdless
We built the car park and industrial estate but still they come
Despite the mess we make, movement like light from a quivering mirror
Always present if you bother to look, but untouchable. A flutter
as you put your hand on the door. Only remnants: a gem blue egg, a feather
Their bodies crack into wings that meet at the tips
like last-kiss lips, barely daring to touch
Virginal white...