VICTORIA
trouble travels on many winds and snags itself in sunshine hair This morning, after the phone call from my mum, I try to reach the girl,...
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HOW NOT TO PAPER OVER THE CRACKS
My grandad (on my mum’s side): 1. puked on my grandma, sat beside him on The Speedway, rising and falling in stomach-churning...
TWO NIGHTS IN SLOVENIA
Do you have to go? Elsie asks. Iris is sat, not nibbling on marmite toast. It’s good for us. It’s good for you that we’re in love. No,...
ANGELS OF THE NORTH
Take a slice of cereal box and rust brown paint, sloshed on ridged white. Take clay and slip and a sharpish knife. Blend the Medway sound...
GIRL
I’m waking up early but want to keep sleeping, to stop the sun rising, to wave away leaving: to not say goodbye and feel my heart...
THE MOTHERS-IN-LAW
They come armed with bulbs: it’s not too late they say though the wind blows cold across the Shannon and the ground is frostbitten. I...
EXPECT LIFE TO BE LONG AND MISERABLE #1
In the 'synthetic cream' bakery, a squat man chats to his thin-limbed son. The boy has an empty orange bag slung across his chest. "How...
ALWAYS LOVED, DESPERATELY MISSED
Do bones feel a tickle as a finger traces letters – nestled, mossy letters – neatly indented in the cold grave stone? Is there a shiver...
FOR ZELDA
Esmé comes down the stairs with angry tears streaking unwanted understanding down her Year 5 face. This is death like she’s never known...
DEFENCE
It’s raining. It seems mud and rain is de rigeur in this world. She keeps this phrase to herself. Underdressed, she shifts, stamps feet,...
DRAWING ON MY DEAD AUNT'S PAPER
There’s finite space to fill – space she chose with an artist’s eye for weight and shade, cut up sometimes, ideas half-formed, or framed...
DAD VERSUS THE GRANULATION PLANT
Once, Dad took us to see where he worked shifts. (nights, eight to four, four to mid) With stretched necks and straight backs, we peered...
THIS IS A FUCKING HOLIDAY
When you say ‘staycation’ it makes me want to shove you into a suitcase with no wheels and heft you into the boot at 6am so we can drive...
CHATHAM LIBRARY
The girl has shoes on her feet – hand-me-downs, scuffed in and comfy – with petrol fume lungs and a head full of stories. “Ours was the...
GLASS HALF
Mum brought her kazoo to Zoom. She dragged her bed into the garden to hear the blackbirds in the morning: cooked a trout on a fire,...
LAST TIME
The December night, silently freezes the hurdy gurdy: the steam horses and burnt burgers. The lights are pin prick bright. At the edge of...
IRIS IS NOT A CROSS COUNTRY RUNNER
But she’s fierce and fast and tenacious and so she’s selected. Number 842 is attached to the front of her red Medway vest with borrowed...
WORLD SERVICE/BOOK DAY
The scattered kids of rural Kent hop from foot to foot down lanes: hanging heads over bridges to throw Pooh sticks into babbling brooks....
PRZEMYŚL TRAIN STATION
Poem by Sarah Hehir
WAR CRY
This girl, this English nurse, flings her flaming hair over the bath and sings. We laugh – we, who were born to be Dovedale mothers and...