Ask for Nothing   (after Philip Levine)   Instead walk out alone in the morning heading out of town towards the arboretum just waking in the chill spring dawn; the dust risen from the steps of your trainers transforms itself into a fine red rain fallen earthward, not goddess gift, nor Easter token. The ash-trees…

6pm   I’ve always liked a versatile man who’s willing to do a turn or two when I come home from work, though unicycles and funny voices can quickly lose their charm. This one has the devil’s contours in his legs, (I run my nail inside a thigh, he begs for mercy!) say, ‘Do your…

Blaze   You’d think that mountains would be worn with looking, that a booted gaze would have eroded fells, left tarns as dried-up bowls; or that a blaze of seeing would have scorched waterfalls and lakes, welded summits in a haze of steam; melted dry-stone walls. But from the side of Blencathra, look back and…

Vision   Now you see it: Derwentwater, full on, pinkish spill of Good Friday silver; mercurial shape-shifter between mountains.   Now you don’t. Grey film slips Over eye-shutter, bang, gone. Tongue tries a lick though any sense, even the sixth trips you.   Now you turn to trick it, inattentive, or attentive only to scree-slide;…

YN   There’s a moment in all of our lives between the display-cabinet and the mirror, between the hectic wrought spiral and the hard-wired yearning when no means, very definitely, no   no   no  means, very definitely, yes is yes’s other; its doppelganger, id; its dark tinsel electromagnetic twin. Tall creature yes cranes to…

Mask   I wear this face on Saturdays: me, nonchalant, swiftly scrawled. My lovers search between the lines. They will not find me.      I tilt my face on Sunday: me, devastatingly unmasked. My lovers unravel my eyes and lips. And still they do not find me.

Monument to an unknown woman worker   They are wearing the tools of everyday work: typewriter slung around the waist; telephone over the chest, receiver attached to one arm. The shopping basket loops, unexpectedly, through the taller one’s breasts. A baby’s bottle tilts down from her clavicle as if to moisten a nipple. Baby’s dummy…

Fall   And here’s a photograph of me   Lying beside a waterfall in a wood With one golden shoe on    The other dangling from my toes And the you that’s here is the you     From nineteen-ninety one, My daughter, minutes before      You take your first steps And I am reading a…

Word  Leicester bar, bar with mirrors;retro vinyl sofas. Neither of us are truly here. Things on your/my mind. Three glasses of wine. Enough. Wobbly white tulip (tunic, shaman’s) is not symbolic. Like the possibilities of watery photographics sinking down in the same mirrors. Glasses full of cocktail ice, white wine.  Possibilities.  Paris.You, naturally.  Me, climbing…

  Justice  There are boundaries you cannot cross. At least, not if you’re a woman: a seventeen- year old girl in Swat Valley, Pakistan.   Two men hold her down- one is her brother. This will give him honour. A black-turbaned fighter with a beard whips her and whips, whips, whips her. The weather map…