At the Plastic Bag Museum

these are the things that carried the stuff that people bought see those loops for hands – handles they’re called naturally they never carried boxes the corners would poke through split sides you can see why empties got crumpled thrust into drawers small thin ones used to pick up dogs’ turds the sturdier ones forRead more ⟶

Invasion

It took three rows of barbed wire coiled round stakes, hammered at angles into sand and shingle. The beach packed and leaking like keddle nets of cockles in green buckets, for six summers. Wading off in gumboots, baitdiggers beyond the rocks held occasional wakes, observed by boys belly-down in the dunes with binoculars, swapping quietRead more ⟶

River Ouse, Rodmell, 1941

The first she prises out, clenched in bindweed: reluctance adds to its appeal. And there: not so large as to burst pockets, several flints conspire their surfaces glass-perfect, all the better to slip in without fuss. From mud, she frees a stump of the fat chalk Down walked each day, as worn as the worstedRead more ⟶

Three minute poem

On Saturday I was at a writing day at the Poetry Society, led by Ann and Peter Sansom, who put us through our paces in a series of rapid fire exercises. In one, we were asked to imagine an abandoned item, something forgotten or neglected, and write in its voice. Unfortunately I find myself turningRead more ⟶

I was once the Pope

This is not what I expected.Red was my colour, or white,white as a virgin’s skin. Robeshung from me as delicateas the smooth charcoal tissuethat floats from the fire. Each year I am reincarnate.Children press their fingersto my frame, glue and paperswaddling these new bonesof wood and chicken wire.In six months I am fleshed. My faceRead more ⟶