Poems

The neighbour’s toddler is under our table fists and feet flailing, my mother’s spine glacial, and I’m sat on the banquette eating kedgeree, fish flying around my head in a halo. Mountains are crowbarred out of me when we root up to another country, I shelter under the bed, years pass through me, the candlewick hides me, the frame the only thing holding me, the slats sag with the weight of the mattress over me, my eyes have a heart, its tears stain the boards, the heels of my hands press into the floor, nowhere is safe. A toddler wriggles under a low-slung armchair, she’s rehearsing her birth, Pull me out, I’m stuck. There’s always a child under a table, under the bed, under a chair, under the rubble.

2nd place, Poetry London Prize 2025, judged by Victoria Kennifick

I’m sixteen, home for the holidays, hovering
round Mum who pulls wet washing
from the drum, when an old lover of hers

tumbles out with the load like waters
breaking, the narrow utility room dimming
to confessional. Then coat hanger-hooked

out slips a back street clinic, followed by
Mum crouched on the loo in her cramped flat.
Last, a perfectly formed tiny boy falls

into the basket. I’m spinning. Among the rows
of jams and chutneys I become Kilner jar,
a rubber gasket round my lid.

first published in Magma, Issue 91, ‘In The Flesh’  2025

Wrapped up in gilet, scarf and cap he stands
across the road from me. I know he’s died
but I feel caught out, living in his flat.

Dodging the traffic, specs in hand, I cry,
Look, I’ve kept your glasses –
just changed the lenses.

He looks a little rueful, says he’s living
on Mont Blanc now – he needed fresher air
and an opportunity for skiing.

Yet here he is, translucent on my borders –
his gold knot cuff-links, those wrist-locks,
dangling heavy from my earlobes.

Winner of The Silver Wyvern, Poetry On The Lake, 2022
judged by Robert Seatter

Although you chase me
up the stairs laughing
and tickle me as I hide
behind my door frightened,
your hand up my nightdress,
and you send me a Valentine
of a man baby holding a heart
over his genitals, and he’s blushing
and the card is saying,
IF YOU CAN’T BE GOOD
BE MINE,
and although you visit me years later,
and we’re admiring the roses
in Greenwich Park and the bees
on the flowers, and you’re saying,
Be careful, they’re going to pollinate you,
and in the back of the cab you tease me,
The driver will think I’m your beau,
(although excuse me, you’re 80),
you are my father.

Published in ‘The Plumb Line’ 2022

I sing as your body shuts down,
watch the doors of your mind
fly off their hinges
a white sun pulsing through your eyes,
your chest an alembic,
gathering you with each breath you suck in,
I witness your birth as you die
as you drag on your last breath, elated,
finally fully alive
and you don’t expire, but hold
the breath and take wing
as I gaze into your brilliant face on the bed
not knowing you’ve left, mesmerised.

Shortlisted for The Wells Festival of Literature Open Poetry Competition 2021

Ahead of me the trunk sways
like a coffin down the corridors.

My parents heave it up the stairs,
drop it onto the dormitory floor.

A crater opens between us.

Retracing our steps, I see them off
at the school entrance –

turn back to unpack my loss.

Stuff it into drawers under my allotted bed,
hang it limp in the dark of communal wardrobes.

That night I lie in a row of girls
with no walls on either side
to stop me from falling

First published in Allegro magazine 2020