lives in Middlesbrough. He has published numerous
collections of poetry and several pamphlets, most recently: When We Wake We
Think We’re Whalers from Eden (Stairwell Books 2021) And Then We
Saw The Daughter of the Minotaur (The Black Light Engine Press 2020), Civil
Insolencies (Smokestack 2019). A new collection 'The Last Almanac' is due
out in November 2022 from Yaffle Press.
Hallucinations in Extreme Heat
My neighbours are petitioning the moon for rain
because the Sahara has decided to visit our street
it’s been squatting our homes now for over a week,
they’re holding up wine glasses to catch the soft glow
that’s falling like the year’s first, fine dusting of snow,
or flakes of ash from the ghost of the incinerator,
then tipping their glasses to pour over their hair,
upturned faces, bare shoulders, down their throats
bubbling with giggles like a bottle of Prosecco,
sighing as if standing at a waterfall’s plunge pool
sun-stroked skins soothed by its airborne cool.
They’re playing a track list they know the moon loves:
Van the Man, Cat Stevens, Beck, Ariana Grande,
their table's laid with milk, marshmallows, cheese, loaves,
they’ve passed a duck egg around in a kissing ring,
they’ve raised their voices in a lunar-shower prayer,
they’ve all started dancing as if no one’s watching –
they are twerk. They are twist. They are shake and sway.
They're under water jitterbug. Their mouths are rockpools
their fingers flicking like feeding sea anemones,
they’re wailing out whale song, yowling like wolves,
pouring out their parched hearts with pure yearnings.
They pile them into a pyre, set the thing on fire, right there
in the middle of our pot-holed road on the tarmac
that’s bubbled all day like a tar pit, and still no cloudburst
still no breath of fresh air, so as arguments flare they leap
like sparks into each other's eyes, stinging them raw
they’re blinded by tears, sipping from the fountain
of each other's faces, their bodies deflate like dwindling
juice bags, paling to the translucency of shed snake skins,
ready to be swept and dropped in the recycling bin.
Instead, I gather them up and fold them into paper boats,
paper aeroplanes and set them afloat upon the night's
hot thermals, sailing up and away toward the moon.
Something Like But Not Quite Purpose
The early evening
darkness makes the compressed
voices of the
rattlers at the alley gate reverberate
down the street as
they wait for the dealer to appear
from behind the
steel bins with a pocketful of brief
forgetfulness, and
while I wait for you to get home
from the job that’s
coming to an end as you know it
up on Eston Hills
kids are lighting fires like beacons
to warn of the
Spanish Armada, and the last blast
furnace at
Teesmouth is being demolished, mam's
skinny feet are
throbbing with arthritis - she learned
to swim among slag
heaps near the Gare but hates
the creeping signs
of old age and Dad's increasing
deafness is one of
his secret comforts; everyone is
getting back into
the grind, going dry, hitting their
own treadmill,
looking forward, glancing back,
the solid spaces
around each of us have been painted
by Vermeer, the
wind is keening its bitter woes
in the chimney and
while looking for the wet wipes
under the sofa I
have found a new word but have no
idea what it means,
soft and fresh as a snowbell,
fragile as a newly
hatched chick, potent as an ink cap
shroom, it's been
growing there, I think, since new
year's day and it
stains my cupped hand like a freshly
plucked heart as I
hold it up to the lamplight, leaking
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