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…

  Via delle Ombre (after Louise Gluck)     Where have the birds been all year? They’re back now with cross-hatched twitterings. Even when there’s no sun to wake me and a sea-fret seems to have blown inland in its threadbare wet flannel way. Every morning, dishes. The morning dishes. Out there’s the place to…

 Heritage  ‘Worse than the Taliban’ New law rolls back rights for Afghan women’.                           The Guardian, March 31st 2009   Alan, Nikki, Kev and Pam, last day of the month, lifting lids on cardboard boxes behind the scenes at the museum stores. Shelf after shelf.   What will work will free imagination? Or will trap…

The First   This is how it should be, isn’t it? Students are sitting on the grass out there.   I open my window, the air smells, well, different, sweet, or is it my Chanel Allure?   Let’s say it’s both. Allure and April, perfect elixir.   The clouds have slowed down to quattrocento speed….

<!–[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <![endif]–> Touche Eclat   And they gang up on me, the thoughts, between the hours of three and four, and one by one, they knee me in the face, like the bully girl who decked me for trying to steal her boyfriend. A lie. ( I don’t steal…

    Cue     He kissed me till the morning light He told me that I’d done all right                                         Laura Marling   No. Morning was still pacing the dark wings of night with an unlit fag, sweat stains under her arms and attitude. Method actor morning; that fag, wrong prop for dagger-face.Dark’s…

The Orcadian Poet  (for GMB)    He said ‘I am what is around me’ He said ‘ the life of everyone is unique and mysterious’ He said ‘the immortal diamond’   The immortal diamond   Our grandfathers were cobblers We both loved the sea We drank-although he drank whisky   The immortal diamond Lies under…

  Melt     All the snowy day  the woodcutter smashed his axe into hardwood and piled  the chunks at my door knowing the sin of splicing mahogany and feeding it to sparks uneasily coaxed from fire-lighters, cardboard and ply.   All the snowy day I sat at the window permitting the flakes to land…

The day it was on all our lips 1 I’d forgotten how much you loved snow but your e-mail today brought me Moniack in November; how you woke like a child to whited-out windows and the snowman the students had built in the night near your door; the inquisitive deer; the locals relieved by the…

Blue windows, black mirror You are about to sculpt me in that room in Verona; its either 1997 or maybe its 2011, you are about to sculpt my belly with the hands that have just hung the black mirror above your bed, our bed, with its sheets and scalloped counterpane. When you’re about to sculpt,…