Monday, February 17 2025

From Zerbst

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 fur and shiver, her dominion strengthened by a new country. slow famine, disease, but the land strong and rugged, people weak, dying.

Lorenzo’s Girl

I’m sitting at a pavement table outside Lorenzo’s and a bus drives past, a big red bendy one with dusty adverts down its side. It snakes down a busy road, Route 35 to Clapham, its occupants sweltering in a tight, airless cocoon. It’s another humid day in London, and I’m working on another cold pint

Persephone

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 tongue The swagger in your hipsway The palm pressed to my chest Delicious smile betraying a distant diastema and the mascara clotted on your lashes The softness

The Clocks

Under the fluorescence of the beer garden, oak gleams white compared to pine, tables with places where ashtrays once stood majestic, coasters with pictures of maidens, and empty glasses rimmed with rings of dry froth. A pint on my table, my scarf undone, and then I’m looking at you. You gently kiss your man and

The Orchid

On a Sunday, in the early evening, and I can hear this couple screaming endlessly in raged abuse. And I’m looking at them through the hedgerow, through blossoms in shades of purple and pink and blue. And his hands are around her throat, and her hands are in the air, and it’s a hard, hopeless