A beautiful rose of England, an English rose sitting on a sunny winter bench reading Brontë, water glistening across a soft, summer face, braces in a gentle mouth…
Outside on a spread of lawn, behind the fishpond. Dinner with Grandfather. Tender pepper thighs and a splash of water, a table of reminded wisdom. Pockets of cropped…
Tonight’s soup with crusty bread as on Saturday, but tonight, with Fava beans from Franks. A dirty window-box, overflowing from above when I arrived, poor Mrs Rodriguez and…
The elated cyclist smiled like a pony, after a lump of sugar. He had huge sunken eyes, and teeth like a white picket fence that protruded from a…
Moments in solitude, time to reflect. A dormitory and a single bed, two chairs and a corner window. In the distance, the low hills. Twenty-three weeks until the…
I stitched and capered a sinuous ascent through the ferns and treacherous granite traps sharp as you like Knavish roots and vines snatching all the way at my…
Cold sores coming into flower, more than one but less than four. A shiny pointy chin and white teeth beautiful. In a three-piece suit, he stands in that…
Children on scooters, on hot concrete scootering. And bicycles with stabilisers squeaking through a mass of mums and dads, eager to sit down before ice cream becomes a…
His nine-year-old loved the nursery, and climbing trees and her books. History and flowers and trains – And she loved her father. And he thought of her as…
He dressed eccentrically at the most – striped trousers and a top hat bowler. And a long coat and gaudy shirt. His eyeglasses would swing on a chain,…
A calm expanse, the body, broken and still, floating, an immense surface, vast and mighty. No alliance between man and ocean. Written by Jack Brewis
Clothes pegs: in a line, on a line. Little dancing people moving to and fro, backwards and forwards, this way and that. Elegant and charming, graceful in silk…
On a Sunday, in the early evening, and I hear this couple, screaming constantly, enraged abuse. I’m looking through hedgerows, through blossoms – purples and pinks and blues….
Marked cards and letters, filling the top drawer in a gleaming butler’s desk. Two long years, correspondence, and poems and notes of love and want. He remembered the…
I asked a girl on a train if I could take her picture. She said yes. It was a beautiful shot in black and white, with defined shadows…
What brittle, keening wind is this that stings our ears and dulls the fingers? The coachman of the foulest season whose kiss lingers on bloodless, frigid lips. We’ll…
It’s not easy avoiding them. On a dark path, in the early morning. Try in vain, the lack of light, but it all ends in tears. Hidden shapes,…
Across the Russian wastes towards Leningrad and Moscow. Across the flats, the galloping horses thunder on, the supreme Empress, pressing with God-Speed from Riga before the snow and…
Did you just die. I can’t hear you anymore. Frantic and out of control, you buzzed your last while trying to escape the blinding light that tempts you…
Stilettos and hard black shoes, clack-clack, they walk the Christmas pavement. City dwellers and workers rushing to the tube, or pubs for warmth and bitters and peanuts in…
The brothel was cold, but inviting and the numbness of her panting, surreal. Unhappiness and self-pity. And then asleep, her snoring pleasurable, gentle in the murky slumber. Foul…
Amplified sounds from a short-circuiting buzzer echo through a quiet hallway, a salvo of bursts ringing out into the darkness. She’s on time – the primal craving of…
Taut line of thin manila, rope creaking, on dusty rafters swinging. In your shame. Forty years of dead weight, then like a pendulum still. It was three days…
In a drunken state of deep despair, I think about Dr Kazinski and his practise in the East End. I think about his posters, torn and wrinkled showing…
Spring has sprung, and new blossoms burst. Hungered by the lack of fuel, the compost heap beckons from across the garden, angry steam rising from its core of…
His daughter called it Neptune’s crown – I guess it was. Once a shiny hubcap from a ‘76 Chevy before it came off and rolled into the river….
Her boots and laces tethered, and her shawl sloppy around tired shoulders. Always a sequence, always the same. In the distance, a dark, freezing lake. Icy crystals float…
The pictures taught him respectability. One of a young Jewish girl, with tattered stripes and the yellow ‘Judenstern’. Another of broken bones and ash cloud plumes above chimney…
My fingers touch dry strokes from a brush on a canvas from last year. So delicately you worked that piece. The landscape – brilliant greens and soft browns,…
Untouched, a beautiful size 12 pressed up hard against teeth in a cold vice gripping. Naked in isolation, waiting for a strand of cotton and the dub from…
That beautiful, blue gas, up it a notch and make it hot, let them dance erratically on a cushion of searing oil. Demon capers, pompous anchovies, salty dogs,…
Two days in my bedroom, with tins of super strength lager, and Lucky Strike cigarettes from Rachel. A headache again, the alcohol surging to inspire. Warm sentiments of…
Pastel shades, gold and scarlet, splendid in the evening light, the cleanest shades. The room, largely decorative with plumes of grey and black and blue. They called it…
In a dirty, dingy dive, in a dire haze of old memories, I sit with Uncle Patrick; dead quiet as always with a Campari and Soda to soothe…
They move and glide in droves outside the passage brothel, through the alleyway, to their mud nests. He watches her floral skirt, how she lingers in the slip…
I don’t put faulty Zippo’s in the post, for maintenance or repairs. Once damaged, they are kept safe and stored in a small wooden box in my study…
she’s charming software so exquisitely written each byte perfected mark you her plugins are tough to strip from my registry. Written by Martin Ricardo-Jones
Johnny Cash on the Jukebox – Walk the Line. In a truck stop with bloodshot eyes, and all-night drivers, and builders in blue jeans with arms as thick…
Otherworld child emerging restored to set a gentle lingering squeeze on leg or arm. And so it begins: The way you clear food from your teeth with your…
three sons of Uusimaa washed upon a foreign shore. the first shrugged and grunted and planted himself fast and there toiled to build a house rooted in worldly…
Perverse drought, powerless, swelling in your barns. Fruit and produce, blight and mildew. And on the land, the cattle fall. Frustration, sworn to soil and dust, the sand…
Technical diagrams raised a millimetre high. White glossy paper, shining in the glow of an underground train. Her eyes burn and squint erratically, her soft hands gliding smoothly…
I watched you die, little bird how you squirmed, the crazy cat plucking you gracefully from your aborted flight, crimson spurting, eyes rolling loosely as you slipped into…
Women seeking men. Blue font on dirty paper, the Classifieds. Wanted – Good looking, well-built man to make gorgeous blonde, 49, happy again. Tina, Mandy, Brandi or Cindy,…
Foot pedal and cymbals, the beat, the kettle drum, and the girl and the hi-hat solo. men watch her deliver from the shadows. Are you Jack? Your table…
