‘A little bit of bread and no cheese,’ the scribble larks* beg – I know, they feast on bugs and seeds – the notes of their familiar song fall like rain from the sky. At my feet, another message scribbled in the intricate patterns on an empty egg, a warning of their demise through dearth […]
Coffee Morning with the Girls
I’ve been in Coffee Cup Cake for an hour, listening to them babbling on about their success as Internet influencers, the perils of public transport for mothers with buggies on their way to drop of their little darlings at the childminder’s, and date nights with their partners, “thank God for babysitters and grandparents!” Not one […]
Two More Weeks
I have two more weeks of dislocation from the world until I can hook myself back up to life outside. How will I feel? Scared I will freeze at the first glimpse of a masked face? Unable to navigate a supermarket? Incapable of measuring social distance by eye without a ruler? Lost for words? Inside […]
I am the Blue of my Mother’s Eyes
I am the songs that my mother sang to me the dust of Coty powder on her nose, cheek and chin the peach lipstick imprints on the paper hankie that she threw with panache into the nearest waste bin I am the softness of my mother’s favourite sweater the way her chiffon scarf wafted in […]
The Ghost Returns
I gave up following little footprints in the dust long ago. I was bored with finding them on the table, wooden floor and stairs, invisible to everyone but me. I’d started to feel sick each time I felt her fingers flick and pinch my arms or stroke my cheek, and moved to the other side […]
That Look
I sat among the guests on bales of prickly straw, the afternoon sun hot on heads and backs, the expanse of Tuscan sky a perfect blue. And so, daughter, were you, perfect in your wedding dress, in your hands a pastel bouquet and single flower in your hair. I admit, I shed a tear, feeling […]
Blueprint for a Summer Afternoon
We sat cross-legged on short grass that left a prickly itch on bare skin. Summer stretched out, […]
Back to Base
I’ve been tuned in to the bassline of my every day, a solitude tuned so low it vibrates in my gut. Above white noise (or is it tinnitus?), the strident call of a crow and the pigeons’ throaty coos counterpoint a blackbird’s song: they have formed the baseline of my Covid day for so long […]
Silent Sob
I have a poem in this month’s issue of Visual Verse and, as ever, I’m in great company, including Misky Braendeholm, Jane Dougherty and Kerfe Roig. This month, writers have been inspired by a powerful sepia-toned image by Gambian-British photographer Khadija Saye, whose work was exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in […]
Forgiveness
In the industrial hinterland, stacks belch blue flares, stinking clouds mushroom from smoking fires and orange aureoles radiate and redden the sky of our environmental Armageddon. Will chimneys and factories ever disappear? Will Nature fill the voids of mining year on year? Will a time come when a different kind of steam evaporates across the […]
