I Have Loved Coal

Like a teenage girl loves an older guitarist with a rough black smudge of eyeliner. I have built my life on it, screamed down decades for it, coal not dole – bared my soul for it but old women gossip about the pit, I know the world has had enough of it. Coal – with...

The Day of the Flying Ants

When did we learn that flying ants are not another species, just another sex? I saw us twice today while the air was thick with wing beats: once we were children, chlorine fresh from swimming waiting on leisure centre steps, the other teenagers, kissing loudly with...

The Cheeseburger Love Song

At the window is a woman you have loved against your diet, gorged on the look of her with the guiltiest parts of hunger. Her deft hands dance on the wax wrap paper, forearms flecked with a hundred spitting oil scars. The fast food tattoo. She is always here, and you...

At Least Not in Wales

after R. S. Thomas Come on, and move back west with me. The bright girls from the valleys will say they can’t hear the difference in English accents, I won’t know if they are lying, but I’ll laugh. Maybe in Cymru we can match – until I split myself down an...