Wild Court

   © Gerry Cambridge         Dead man’s beer   They were bundled in a bag for life in the garage, thirty yellow-black tins of Boddingtons like a nest of wasps, their presence stinging his widow. I got the job of retrieving and drinking them. It took me a week to work through the lot…

        Grief is like a miracle   like opening your mouth for water, and finding rain. You stand for days outside the body of a silent church. Snow touches the stillness of the windows and you long for their acceptance, a few tears. You tell yourself the door isn’t closed: it’s open and…

        Flyleaf, Tractatus   I. A flock of birds down where it’s still, where, each morning, fishermen throw their nets into the river, and they flock in the wide fields. The sky is clearing. A rising wind.   II. And downriver down past the birch and the oak trees marked by tides and…

        The shouts   Somewhere, of course, someone is dancing. No, no; not us. Door handles bark and women seem Like babies. Moon. We hopscotch through Prognosticating streetlights, light in their pockets, Drunk and sad. The shouts Prism into snakes of light and snakes On snakes and light again: one day I’ll kiss…

        Happy Birthday   …You clear them away, usher in a future not featuring you. Michael Laskey, ‘Birthday Cards’   While hunting the posh cutlery for my cousin’s annual visit, I found them stowed in your sideboard, opened one to declarations of love next to a wobbly heart drawn by my primary-school hand.…

        The Train   The concern, unspoken amongst us, was whether goodwill would hold. We’d been on the road for weeks; children walking alongside the wagons until they fell and were thrown on top. Last Monday, however, we made landfall. The ridge achieved and this small place found. We pitched at the river.…

    Waterland   There are still pike in Jesus Ditch. The length of three finger-joints, quicker than dactyls. Gone before you can say ‘Jack Pickerel.’ Drowned land, drained land, where earth is silt and blood and river. Fen Ditton stippled with pools, Milton’s vocal reeds. City built on water, don’t you know the Wash…

        Dear Mother You’re Dying   You are wasting away, you have cavernous sinuses and hollow flesh. Eat gracefully: there are those that are starving, you told us this and shoved our faces into Mother, ten years dead and veering further right. We held a wake while you overslept, I forgot your name,…

        Death of a Trophy Hunter   Over the kill the larvae loom she posted on Instagram before the blood congealed, paid in dollars for the fun. Trophy hunter with a smile, herself hunted down on the net they published her name, address. Not overheated reaction, not revenge not justice even, the vigilantes…

         Urban   Drawn to our open lawns and clipped verges, the spectral profusion of a well-stocked border or neat geometrical bed, they tiptoe across our phantom frontier. Too easily startled, they sniff an air that’s fraught with omen, their delicate ears twitching. Once spooked, they bounce on bony shanks beyond the…

Photo credit: Brian Fraser     The below poems appear in Pascale Petit’s new collection Tiger Girl, forthcoming from Bloodaxe in June.          Mongoose Brushes   After my father left, my grandmother called me her little mongoose – her Rikki-Tikki-Tavi – clever enough to kill the cobra under her bed, which is where…

  The below poem will appear in Katrina’s third collection, Wild Persistence, forthcoming from Seren this June.         House as Tent   You walk uphill to sleep, downhill early morning – and there’s a flush – it’s more complicated than slipping out, squatting in the chill, the moon keeping its eye on you.…

  The below poems are taken from Bob Beagrie’s new collection Civil Insolencies (Smokestack), which tells the story of the Civil War battle of Guisborough in North Yorkshire on 16 January 1643.         Lyke Wake   “Where am I hurried! What sanguine place Is this I breathe in, garnished with disgrace?” John Quarles…

        Back End   of February and the drifts are up to the eaves. On the old folks’ bungalows, startled faces at the glass shrink behind their curtains. Crazy! And we know it, painting in this, but it’s all the firm’s got on. We forearm snow from around the windows, haul the propane…