Category: Poetry

We once thought we could fathom the vastness of the seafrom the lap of an island shore. Watching shipstip over the horizon, we laughed, knowing nothingcould survive the fall past the edge. We did not see how, deep beyond the continental margins, submarinecanyons channeled secret rivers onto underwater plains, or howthe abyssal fish slowly went blind, their…

They don’t tell you there are fewer starsin some places than others.The city frightens themwith the threat of their obsoleting, and they hide to savetheir light. There are fewer stars in places where personhoodis loudest. They don’t tell you alienation is spelledin unfamiliar constellations. Astronomic signposts dipout of sight, occluded by some dark enormityas the…

Their genealogies are manifold: there is no record of wherethey were sewn, or sutured, as with a wound. Dismember their home as they may, they eat fromthe same tarnished pot, the same boiled grain and thoughthey may spit and rinse the taste from their mouths afterwardsthey return to the pot, to share their seed. I do not…

Meeting you the first time was likeburrowing fingers into fragrant soil after rainto find earthworms, curled up like springs and summersin the notches in the feet of trees.And in some vernal ways too it was likethe sun glowing through green cocoons abovethe swing, revealing maps of veinsand corpses melting to nectarsoon to be stitched and…

Windmill-shoulder precipicesspinning gannet eggs on tangledwildgrass snares, harbour bells booming and anchorsbreaking spray beneath the bellows of bull-shark horns Pounding sails, roaring blades slitting skies driving cogsexoskeletons crushed by bitter beaks, stinging seawaterstoking wounds in lips and scaleson tongues blander than clouds, edged knife-like like bloodand brine which wind the windings of the tongue the same way, salt in cuts smarting, stonefish, urchins, iodine easing pain through cracks inskin and seagulls sliding, the twang of wires slipping through thethrumming feathers of birds bumping against the empty skinstretched across my window, a brief pretence of blue.