Poetry
Cat Scratch Fever
Ten / spooked claws / snagged your skin, / and two cross jaws / made a mouse of your / pink and defenceless thumb, / spurring a microbial war / in your...
Photograph of a girl on a slum doorstep in 1912
Yes, she sits like that everyday. / Yes, she answers quickly when you speak. / Yes, she just got it recently, was diffident. / Yes, her mother told her to tie up...
Dance
the mind of the hunting hawk. thought can be as hard to move as a rusty red wheelbarrow. / that person from Porlock. we’re political to the extent that we love. a...
Your Eight Storied Heaven
Dante’s book is where we left it. / Not even the wind turns its pages. / I wanted to be limpid / so you could be perfect / / and I...
the well-wishers
It’s come to this – an empty house; / a bag of cupcakes from teenage girls / (so neighbourly, so young) / blowing smoke into their hands – / our lakes now...
mount merapi: yogyakarta, java, Indonesia
“Here,” he says, “this is where you may see / Gunung Merapi” The Burning Mountain. / The volcano looms in steam and sulphurous mist. / / The sun rainbows drifting clouds....
romania, sideways
supposedly, we all come with / hair clean, combed free of nits. / don't share towels, she warns, / everything is contagious. / sheets, pillows, children– / all need to be cleaned...
at doi suthep
Green porcelain gleam / of Naga’s scales along a balustrade, / garudas craning skyward from a tiered roof. / / Plop of ripe jackfruit on the terrace / / Near...
hotel room, madrid
We leave behind a language, travel back / to where her name began, a country split / in dialect she never learned to speak. / / I want to smoke a...