TFI Friday…Oh, it’s Tuesday FYI, it’s day three of a one day pow wow,via an all-hands to the pump conference call,with space and sufficient time built in as standardfor conflabs or face-to-face break-out huddle-ups, but IRL, I’ve finally finished workshoppingmy life choices across whiteboards, neon Post-itsand A3 sheets of paper. The colour-codinghas run riot. I’m…

Mat Riches recently published his debut collection, Collecting the Data, with Red Squirrel Press. Below are two new poems. Sticks The time to cut a stickis when you see it in the hedgehe said on one of our walks,before they became too much. A countryside carpe diem;it was the soundest advicehe ever gave me, a…

Photo by Tim Foster on Unsplash           Captain’s Pond   I didn’t expect to find myself beside you, swatting flies and leaves to watch fishermen watching you like I watched Dad that summer, his float piercing the fly-busy surface until a tench rose to the bait and yanked his rod clear from…

        Ash   He found out I smoked the day I went off to university, and disapproved, of course, but nothing he could do or say. Although, he did, often. He’d have hated seeing us sitting around the fireplace using a bowl as an ashtray, blowing smoke up the chimney, drinking his best…