his house was so huge he had a room for blue nudes.

it was her heartsleet, drumming the deepfreeze
the heart's cold propulsion into slush

he didn't dare a glance
into that harassed vacuum

the mushrooms, blind grey blooms - blank bulbs, nudged up white and rude around the earthy roots.

through the throbbing star
through its bleared trajectory
bisecting.


*

he was six when he realised that the smell of the sun was really the smell of dust.

he did not build a snowman. he built a snowmannequin.

*

the snowdoll:


was living and breathing.

he painted the lips of her snowfilled mouth.

but how he loved her bottom-heavy body!
buttressing her bottomheavy body
the white bolsters.

**

on the boredom of wise monkeys

He said, "You can hit me if you want."
But she was looking at him instead. It hurt worse than hitting.
"You can hit me really hard," he reiterated.
She just looked.

*

The first time he saw her, the train. He couldn't stop staring, he had to say something. The first week he let her go, Monday to Friday, but the next week, the Monday, he made eye contact. He smiled:
"What are you eating?"
"Imitation peanuts," she said.
He let out a friendly scoff, "Sorry? What are imitation peanuts?"
She didn't answer that, she said, "I have a peanut allergy, so I don't eat the real ones."
"But what are they? What are they made of?"
She still didn't answer, she said, "What was our last stop?" And it was only three years later, when they were already married, that the moment came back to him, and he thought to ask again,
"What were those, the day we met? Those things you were eating."
She looked puzzled.
"The peanuts," he pressed. "The imitation peanuts."
"Oh! They were peanuts."
"Just peanuts?"
"Yehah. It was a trick I picked up in high school - every time I had something nice packed for lunch, my friends would nick it, everyone scrounging in for a taste and none left for me, so I took to saying everything was something else. If I said chocolate was chocolate substitute, no one would take any."
"Jesus." He's shaking his head. "All this time."
She let out a giggle after that. It wasn't a girl's giggle, it was different. The jibber of a bored monkey.
It seemed to pass judgement. On him? On this moment? Their past selves? But he let it pass.
"So you're not allergic to nuts," he said through the silence, watching her reach for the crisps.
"Nope."
And he thought aloud, "No you're not, of course you're not... When we made those brownies..." He trailed off remembering.
The giggle again. He looked in her face. As she aged, it was gaining lines, wise ones. He thought of her back then, smart and bright on the rattling train.
It was not something regularly pornographed, wisdom. There were the topless bimbos in horn-rims, the kinky librarians, sure, drooling into Ulysses, but the mags never showed this kind of face. A sage face, or a shrewd one, wise, or whatever it was.
She crunched chips. "Want one?" she grinned at him, chewing.
This was their Valentine's Day.

**

The snowman was caving in now, smiling its frowned drizzle of sauce towards its belly.

i wanted to make your dreams come true
hoping you might love me like you used to
a tit for tat, a that is that - but i
fell flat, i stumbled. pawing at
the slippery walls of your left ventricle,
i found it steep, i slid
into the deep deep blood of some stray vain
and i was strained away, remaindering.

i am cold and i cannot stop smiling
i haven't smiled once.

**

he ran his thumbpad down her spine
and whispered, that way danger lies.

**

a short story
the tigress ate the afterbirth. but afterwards, she could not bear the night. she paced her cage and tremors filled her skin. she could still taste the blood along her gumline. the red gums ached. in her belly, the meal churned thin. the afterbirth had come and gone before, but afterwards, there was no infant. she did not want to ask herself why. she did not think, it might be that i have bitten off and chewed up more than i can bear. she lacked language, lacked any sentience of the subjunctive. she paced through the thin churning and remembered the paws in her belly, the rolling of the cub, and her guts rolled down, and soon it would be time to take some water.

non fiction:

It might puzzle others, if they saw them, but I know what they are straight away, I'm used to them. These white irregular patches I see sometimes on the black desktop: the salt dried from densepuddled tears.

His eyes appeared on screen and he came at her with his whowhatwhywherewhywherewhen and she could see from his slack shoulders that he was still fat.

After the sexy angst of angry sex, the sobbing. After the sobbing, the cider and the television’s fizz.

The snowman had kiwifruit for eyes and his smile was ketchup.

I was surprised when I saw the time. The airports were all closed and so was the sky, with its shuttered dark.

From her eye, the tear blimped. It dropped to the tabletop, flattening. In the garden she heard him still swearing, his throat roughing air up at a high pitch, the shreik of a skinning cat.

She thought of the next house, the quiet doctor doubtless inside at his desk, with his quiet evening disrupted. She thought of him stubbing his pencil led out mid-crossword. The cryptic clue squinting up at him and the shreiking from next door and the doctor looking from the crossword to the window, seeing only that incongruously peaceful apricot tree, pallid with blossoms.

you smiled at me for a long time, yes
until your smile seemed something slowgrowing on me, like moss

and with this kiss, a loss, no less;
the most of things is such - a fading frost.