screaming
out for something
wanting it
as a child’s hands
in the air in an attempt
to reach the teddy bear

one is in London
their name grows
like a yellow flower
I want to smell
and touch with my brittle fingers
sleep in the creases
I could be a ghost
or an outline of a figure
with a blueish hum
an inaudible echo

they dance under
streetlamps I have not seen
and **** in the glow
of others of course
who are painted
in shades of utmost tranquility
assured in their abilities
I want to reach into their mouths
and heave it out from them
have it all for myself

I feel the water
slip out from me
as if a rusty sieve
and nobody is catching
the little hexagonal pools
in the palms of their hands

streets my feet should be on
but a riddle of issues
erupt from the page
bad acne teen
harsh black bullet points
sinking into my lungs

there’s anthologies to share
splash through my dreams
because you can
I tiptoe into tomorrow
with holes in socks
uncertainty my electricity
finger at the switch

And here we are,
blundering through the cold, dark
early weeks of the year,
flames from the fire
growling up
the walls
at the King’s Head,
our local.

Inside we’re the jokers,
knocking them back,
lager in
our mouths,
a bwah-hah-hah
noise
between old songs
and the lost-count-which-pint.
Questions blurt     out
but we’re on
the razz,
sozzled.     A mate turns up
the volume, which one
I don’t know, lights
swirl
to x’s, white pinpricks
and would
I like another?
I slur out a guhon then.
We’ve all got
the zest
for more.

when he opts for the obvious   again
this time   I think   will be the time
I finally pipe up and say what needs saying

that while I hope this fish dinner
satisfies you   the taste of the sea creature
on your lips   that salt and vinegar mixture

it ought to be me next to you   on the sofa
smiling or laughing at some ****** TV repeat
fork skewering the gone soggy chips

tips of our fingers stricken with grease
but worth it because our hands
will be a ruler’s width apart

and so   while I wrap your golden gift
slip the fiver into the till
as you puncture a Coke

I concoct my line of choice
something about fish
or how I’ll batter your wife

Find it in the sound
of the crick of your wrist

the crinkle of an eyelid
drooping by the gravity of sleep

there is laughter
to be found burrowed
down the back of the sofa

but people who live
in static images alone

headaches dissolved
in purplish juice

it is so easy
to dance wickedly in the dark

look how it holds you

right through to the bones

Me in jeans plus four others,
the nearest a guitarist,
black bag shape slung
over a seat, his sleeve
rolled high enough
to see a clamour of ink
in his skin, a ladder of colours.
He listens to music, white worms
lodged into ears.
Another, female, older,
glasses two-thirds down the nose,
much wrinkled Times between
her wrinkled fingers, glint of a ring,
the only one it seems, fatigue
rolling over her face.
The third, sweating, texting,
doesn’t look up, unaware to
anyone but the swirl of letters
on the screen beneath his eyes
where only he knows what exists.
The final guest is asleep,
or is pretending, head drooped
to a shoulder like a dog’s.
The train rattles on,
Monday night,
metal vessel of mysteries.
The musician glances up,
notices he is among a clutch
of others, sees me
and for maybe five, six seconds
does not look away,
his muddy-coloured irises
pouring into mine,
his boots scuffed with muck.
I cannot help but acknowledge
this unexpected attention,
but, flustered, I rustle for a book,
even though my exodus
is minutes away.
I flip to page sixty-two, he looks away,
and then back, swivelling, as if unsure
which way to stick, and there is
a fleeting stab of fear,
of what if in a shred of a second
he lunges across, a tattooed panther,
pins my wrists to the cold window,
spews his breath to my face
and grunts in that appallingly masculine way,
a way that suggests he’s in control,
ha ha *****, what you gonna do now?
when he wouldn’t be, I’d know.
I’d have a clear shot at the crotch
and even if the texter, sleeper, reader
didn’t spring to life, I could put a stop
to it, shove him from me like
yanking a piece of furniture across the room,
crank my voice into a bellow.
I can imagine the stupid mask
of shock on his stubbly face.
He could hurt me, of course he could,
anyone can hurt anyone
how they please, and I’m just as capable,
but I wouldn’t, shouldn’t
launch an attack of fists and kicks,
inject my words with venom.
This thought shrieks in my brain
and dies, squashed bug-like,
its pulse destroyed.
Always assuming the worst.
I’ll learn.
I don’t look at him again.
I don’t know if he looks at me
but he probably does,
thinking of a song he’ll write
or leftovers to eat,
or a missed opportunity.
The book slips to the floor,
for a moment, I forget,
I am being transported.
Everybody leaves, I am no exception,
standing, moving to the doors
that will open with a quiet whirr,
it slows and then a bit more,
bit more,
his memory of me
my ***, perfect in these jeans.
Typical. At least, I think,
it looks good.

Some say a first kiss
is like a firework

so when I hear
that needle-sharp shriek
the wait for it
     b o o m
of amber drizzle
in the sky
I ask you
if that’s what it’s like

and you said
‘like that, but all of the colours
and all at once.’

and it is this that interests them more,
that captivates their attention
for a collection of seconds
instead of contractions,

an adverb insertion.
Outside it is a stop-start matter,
from a deluge of white wisps
to a sputtering shower,

and yet their eyes swivel to the window
for a moment, then another,
as if this is more critical
than how to spell beautiful.

So I walk in a little late, still high.
Groups of strangers on primary-school chairs,
no question that I smell differently.
‘We all know why we’re here’, the man declares;
forty-something glares behind her tall glass.
This week’s book, The Bell Jar, and so she reads.
A page down, ‘would you like to go now?’ Pass.
I think of my ill brother up in Leeds
as her pretentious voice clogs the room.

What a state of affairs, what a life. How
it is what it is, it is what it is -
My brother says that a lot, back at home
or he used to, at least, long ago: Now
he can barely drive through small villages.

these years go quicker
than you would’ve believed
five years ago

now the others
seem to be doing well
this one other

I look at the pictures
they have elected
to wallpaper

their pencil-case sized
portion of the web
and yes

between the shots
of leafy streets
meals reflected in mirrors

an emotionless selfie
one in every six
it is clear

they have gripped
the big city
or the other way around

and here
in your own mirror
straggly tufts of hair

glints of silver
sewn into teeth
thin crimson pitchforks

in the whites of the eyes
you wouldn’t know a life
like that if you walked into it

shook its hand
over a strangely-named drink
in a poky but affable bar

coming home to you
our dog hopping at my feet
my hand reaching for the drool-smothered ball
lazy lob into the kitchen
a shout fizzes down from upstairs
yeah, it’s me, I throw back

shoeless into our bedroom
you half-groan into the pillow
duvet curdled
eyes punctuated with tiredness
I kiss your chapped lips
shuffle my tie free

think I mention work
something about dinner
but night shuttles in
radiator cracking awake
as I glide into my vibrant
reverie of you

Imagine blue as building
the first snowman of the year,

red as the toasted marshmallow
above the fire,

then pink as a child
roly-polying on the grass.

Can you see green
as the smell of a new paperback

and orange as your toes
over the sea-licked sand?

What about yellow
like a hug on a December morning,

black as the rain
as it pelts the windows,

with white the sun
creeping in through the curtains?

But what about purple?
It is round? Is it loud?

Give it a nudge, note the sound,
let the taste cool in your throat.

for God’s sake
     the plot well lost

moths back in my head
                                 flappity flap
   worries
     quickstepping against the light

they’ve got it easy
   when I think about it
the kids at the school I mean

     know of the swarming
                 strange desire
                                to impress
   with altered pictures
     but no notion
   of depleting tenners
        raindrop-like friends
        that slip through fingers

my agitation a snare drum
     everybody else
          out of tune violins

I’ve never been good at jigsaws
     give me the next chapter
     of my damp-speckled twenties
     fully formed
with a warm glow

what was the question
                                       again

when they put it to sleep
   I am already halfway home
or already home
   my head heavy
with that strange social buzz
   that comes from
severing myself from shindigs
   but making an exception
minds skewed with alcohol
   a barefoot teen Fosbury-flopping
over a mate’s dad’s armchair

   before too long
I’ll think of their foot-long children
   caterwauling at 3am
the desk-job half-full cup
   of cheap coffee
our greetings infrequent
  dialogue Wyoming-sparse
say how I should’ve told you
   six mid-Decembers ago
my days a haze of disfluencies
   TV repeats and cold callers

Early morning drive,
the blur of landscape
past my eyes,
vacant fields,
stationary trees,
and here in these crooked hours
between the first papercut of light
and the salutation of sun
are when the memories assault me,
a ripple of echos,
champagne hair,
a voice drizzled in alcohol
and venom on her tongue.
I’d be rotated, a personal Picasso,
and I clutch the steering wheel,
the pulse of something strange
thuddering deep in my ear.

call a crime scene
there was a bang cracked
the day wide open

flip through the images
like police reports
who's arresting me next

neckerchief suits you
and the galaxy dances
on your ceiling at night

could be I'm seeing you
with a new prescription
shake rattle and roll

can't handle the bolts
imaginary electricity
is your skin plugged in

name may be cinnamon-made
or strawberry sauce but
Monday isn't a Sunday

to the bottom of it
red hair resuscitation ring me
if anything changes

floating
   tapestry of infinities

sparkles like the distance
   is sprinkled with apostrophes

lilac ribbons
   teal condensation

and somewhere
   in the middle of a middle

our spherical mass
  of wet paint-brushed clouds

blobs of rock
   brimming with us invisibles

Our faces
in the dictionary
next to awkward,
me clutching a can
of some second-rate cider,
you looking round the room
for a certain someone? For someone.
I flitter over like a moth,
my eyes assaulted by every little thing,
the earrings lipstick
top skirt heels perfume,
a barrage of chemicals
that send my mind whirring
as if sloshed in a blender.
Conversation swarms with errors,
my syrupy words out of date months ago.
Then he comes with his stubble,
charming smile that appals,
and the silence flows in
like a toxic smog.

You make it all go red,
bottled wine crimson.

Pictures pop like plump bubbles,
sleep clogged
with soggy might-have-beens.

I bounce my words
along a washing line
in the hope they’ll find you
looking out
at a cement-made sky,
windows lashed
with crinkled blobs of rain.

Pause. A thought.
Skinny ***** of light
javelins across your face.

A sentence built
with strawberries,
not a comma
like an ugly smudge of blood.

petrichor hour
colour bundles
on the windowsill
amber and blood
blood and amber petals
flecked with blobs
of rain

child chases the dog
by the love-lies-bleeding
amaranth ponytails
a rainbow somewhere
hemispheres of dandelions
breeze-swing
wet dog chases child

I’m in a queer mood.
The leaves make laughter,

the stars waltz into
a glimmering white stream.

Kissing is funny.
Why do we close our eyes?

Is it an ugly business?
Specks of sugar

form a hopscotch pattern
on my upper lip.

The grass throbs green.
My fingers swell

like creamy numb tools.
Am I touching you right?

Does it make you cry?
And now another feeling,

raindrops explode happily
on my skull.

I store my worries
in opaque jars.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of stepping on,

fingers bent into palms,
knuckles milky white,

the typically British palaver
of locating a seat

with their tasteless patterns,
a table with the sticky

residues of fifteen coffees.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of zoning out,

reels of fields.

Perhaps it is simply a case
of a phone turned on,

a book with the spine
not quite fractured.

Of course, of course,
perhaps it is simply a case

of not stepping on,

of wallowing in your ragged
safety net fashioned

from string, from dead skin.

But, of course,

you shouldn’t, but you will,
but you can’t, but you can,

but you want to,
but you won’t do.

Perhaps then, it is simply a case
of one foot in front of the other,

stepping off, fists unclenched,
pulse regular and thumping

at the wrists,
your own language of success.

I walked along the shore,
   orchestra of shushes
as water slopped
                        across my bare toes,
jangle of pebbles
as I placed one foot
                                 in front of the other.

In the distance
                         the orangeade tang of neon lights
                         punctuated the view,
electric hyphens
from the arcades
crammed with Irn-Bru-skinned tourists
   there for a week
on this comma of coast.

In the winter          it is different.
A silver fug that sweeps the streets
     like the cocoons of a thousand ghosts,
machine jingles muzzled,
cafes only drip
                        fed with regulars
                                                     from around the corner
coming in to pick the horses
for the 2.10 at Uttoxeter.

The phone quaked in my pocket -
   my mother, calling me home.
I passed the sandcastle rubble,
   slobber of seaweed
   like the drool of a kelpie,

my socks speckled with sand
as I texted back
on my way

fall into myself again

i am the pale flower
you left out in the rain

never growing

but these things take time

one morning will sing

ring-a-ding-ding
inauguration day

become yourself again

champagne voice
or a cliché of your choice

does the new year
come in April

leaves that surf the breeze
got yourself going green

soak those lungs
with that fresh air

will it come it will come

you don't think it
but know it

the fog can only cradle you
for so long

until you grow

like spring flowers

Tell me who you are

Oh I am hoping
to grab your voice

and keep it
alongside mine

so we can talk
     look how we can talk

it's not pretty
but maybe

this is how
it can be fixed

fixed enough
for everything

is just a bit
broken sometimes

the picture

sloshes into view

like a wave on a beach

you haven’t discovered yet

there’s a tree outside

whose leaves quiver

like green flames

and there are books

on the coffee table

worn at the middle

from finger-flicking

in a lake of boredom


you are clinging


onto a voice that radiates

out from the walls

but you don’t know

where it’s coming from

but like a note on the piano

or the branch of rain

that leaves a slippery avenue

on your windowpane

you want it to stay

so you can hear it again

the cool cadence

flooding the room

Look at this, I said.
Chalky expanse,
lonely, untarnished decoration.

Blush of cold,
branches rest as veins
atop a transitory skin.

Could be silk, maybe fur.
Winter discovery
like forgotten snowmen.

A footprint chime,
high note shimmering
through bitter liquid.

Murmurs of cobalt,
tongues of white,
our fresh heaven.

On the TV
at the azure blue
Olympic Hockey Centre
in Deodoro,

our keeper’s
saving everything,
the Dutch careless
when faced with pressure,

the gold medal
swaying the way
of our women.
It’s the first time

I’ve paid much attention
to this stick-wielding sport
but when Webb swerves, turns,
clouts the yellow ball into the net,

I’m chuffed for us
as a cheer detonates
and there’s an ecstatic
bouncing circle of red.

told us it would happen
didn’t believe them

our biggest capitulation
end of civilization

last orange blink
final carpet of stars

Asia first
then the rest

toppling dominoes
stripped streets

lead-less dogs
and hollow televisions

kick your history
to the kerb

man-made oven
own fault

must be time
to update my status

exaggeration the word
   that   skips   on the front of my tongue

a bar of orange-fizz light
   a rooftop where the sky
is a pond-ice blue

     a blush of inky flowers
shadows that drip
     down
   accordion-stairs

the sun fits between     two of my fingertips

     conversations swallowed
behind windowpanes
or          lost in the clouds

a city that   groans   in heat
   chalk-white tiles
   blood buses

trees with          arms wide
green   condensation
    and a child with ice-cream

you bruise of colour
snippet of a smile
I cannot
          hold

     postman delivers
your   wispy   ribbons
of          silence

vortex that ***** me closer to you
     but   always          further away

wonky     syllables
make for
          a wonky
     heart

freckle constellation
clouds like wet peach wedges

Tetris-brick walls
and mint green street signs

a woman
talks on her phone
by the dry-cleaners

a chef speaks Greek
hands coated in hair
swollen worm veins

students kiss
with their rosy mouths
serve arms for a taxi

buy a gun
stick of gum

a book on the top shelf
third edition
pencilled-in price

traffic stomach-ache
kaleidoscopic car horns

your name
like drops of honey
so good

drops of honey
your name

So, another day of it.
The clock an instrument that ****** you
with its skeletal finger,
and now the night crawls up, covers
the town before dinner, the cold
licking your skin the way it can
every October.

You haven’t been yourself.
You’ve been stumbling,
legs like lead pipes, head
pulsating, unmissable signal.
Stand -
a conker crack scurries
     across the skull.
Sit -
pulse in ear, gut gurgling
     just as a long-blocked sink.

Sleep is a taste of petrol,
appetite so far gone
you expect postcards.
But at least the night crawls up,
delicately, coldly.

months
blend together

head steam-swollen
by lack of action

daily ladder
aging technicolor

but enough
to want to be made

from crystals
see-through

to see me
you also

handful of glisten
rare element

visible amid
the cool stream

oh
wondrous
you

among
the
wreckage

came
from
nowhere

to
my
eve­rywhere

more bronzed

rectangular packets
of muscle
almost visible

underneath
another white tight shirt

the stench of deodorant
or aftershave
or cologne

or a cocktail of three

enough to send
a throng of blondes
in my direction

eyes like sapphire halos
cheeks that shimmer

phones infested
by a palette of pictures

all samey
all shots of a head
tilted this way
that way
back again

and if only
a little more funny

pouring jokes
in with your drink

giggles reverberating off
from the gaudy lights

looking so Instagrammable

we’d have fan accounts
by Monday
our own personal emoji

ITV wanting us for a series
and a blue tick on Twitter

you see it too
you must

and if you say

look babe
we look good together

I’d smile and say

yeah babe don’t we just

so she puts on her scratched Doc Martens with the mud-stricken laces - because that’s what she wants to wear - swish and flicks the stick so the surf of her eyes have raven wings - because that’s how she likes to do it - strikes her lips Beauregarde blue - plonks a fedora atop her tiers of panther-black hair - because it’s her favourite colour - her favourite hat - wriggles on three rings - her grandmother’s, mother’s, and the one from Amsterdam - pins the badge GIRLS DO NOT DRESS FOR BOYS on her fluff-stippled dress - because she’s in the mood to wear it - because it feels comfortable - prods a white trinket in her ear that gushes Bikini **** - because she’s feeling like a rebel - fishes for a fiver for bus fare - knows the driver will silently judge her - knows the thirty-something mother will - knows the raisin-faced cane-in-hand man will as well - knows she doesn’t care - sun javelins in from the windows - feels great looks good her version of girl - later when her friends call they call her Wednesday - her kisses tasting of blueberry pie

All our friends are leaving
so let's tie ourselves
together with orange ribbons,

watch the strangers
in their sandals eat
freshly baked bread

and say isn't the weather
just glorious today, I could spend
the whole afternoon outside

letting the sun hit my body,
a gift for the skin,
or is it us saying that

in a European city sometime
in July, eating oranges and accepting
whatever form of love this is.

James Hamilton Bruce (1st April 1864 - 21st March 1907), buried in Smoot Cemetery, Wyoming. A newspaper obituary from the day after his passing stated he was poisoned by the dried plum pie he ate for breakfast. Furthermore, a piece of this pie, fed to his family's cat, reportedly killed the animal within five minutes. He was a 'highly beloved' resident of the small town and is buried with his wife, the English born Annie Elizabeth Bruce (1868 - 1961).

The car brings us here,
another titchy town
with its one-floor houses
spread like piano keys
either side of the road in
road out.

A ramshackle barn
and pick-up trucks,
green ripples
of the Star Valley
beside us.

The vehicle grunts to a stop.
You say *here’s the place
- me thinking the place for what -
but we get out,
   stretch,
a wilting American flag
by the post office
our obligatory welcome.

You breathe in,
arms wide as if ready
to embrace where we are,
keep it under your coat.
Have you been here?
   Never.

So we walk,
see no face
bar a cat that slinks its way
through a square
of overgrown grass
oblivious to us,
tired newcomers to this
scribble on a map.

And then we are in a place
full of faces six feet under,
scattershot blocks of grey
tell us who rests here.
BRUCE,
a James H.,
21st March 1907.

A distant relation?
A swift shake of the head
but a story
gushes from your throat,
how he was poisoned by pie,
loved by the locals,
a father to many.

And we spend a minute
in silence
as that’s all there is here,
thinking of a man
we never met
in a place we’ve never been,

the clouds swimming
across the sky
like plumes of chalk.

crimson shiver
across a herd of puddles

OPEN 24/7 ruby lights
entice

cocktails
with silly names

rusted hearts
on cubicle doors

dried blood punctures
wall of wounds

where new-born couples
spill their lust

lipstick leftovers
from a thousand calamities

raspberry dress flicker
face with no name

your kiss a delicious ampersand
on my skin

In the room
I used to be in
but now on the other side,
a ****** on who I was
or think I was,
knees bent beside punnets
of new faces
born well after I left.
They are rising like vegetables,
some already have
in the few months
that have passed
since I saw some last.
I’m sure they recognise me
but say nothing.

Gripping their lead utensils,
digging the pointed grey
into flawless white,
today’s date,
Tuesday 12th September

a mob of letters
compressed or stretched
as elastic across
the maiden line.

This afternoon
involves castles and knigh.
I point at the page, say
‘there should be a ‘t’ there,
on the end.’

They draw, content.
I loop around the desks,
a sporadic
sliver of praise
drops from my mouth.

1.30 becomes 2.30.
I think of how
they’ll still be studying
when I am thirty,
and a string of incidents
will keep flooding in:
job, relationship, money,
perhaps, crackling black words.
These pale faces
know little of the sort,
so they shouldn’t.

I leave them to sing,
this knowledge
rowdy in my head
like a shaken sack of marbles.

Not knowing what they’re for,
linked questions
on an eastern future
where yourself, you’ll find
on the lip
of a fresh decade,
your tangle of metallic
teeth the answers
to somewhere.

And there it was.
Static streak of animal,
collecting feathers of snow.

I came across it on the walk home,
frozen bite of early evening
scrunching my bones.

Almost hit him with a foot,
my eyes adjusting to the sight
of a defunct hunk of fur.

Eyes like bullets of liquorice,
slack jaw and an ice-cream scoop
wound, a flush of sickly crimson.

That night I thought of it,
fantastic, an orange flurry
between trees.

A day later, with rock-heavy eyes,
a head swollen with cold,
I walked the way of before.

People nodded hello,
the path draped in a translucent drool
but the animal had gone,

hauled from its bed of death,
its memory a blemish of ruby
on a beach of boundless white.

wish you could extract the words right out my throat

not the clusters of dust I often proffer

but little glittering jewels every time


I don't know how I'm supposed to run

is this body a clock

is this mind a million-piece puzzle


told to do it alone

but still submerged in a lake

chilled under a cracked translucent shell


so pop me back into my sockets

drizzle me in sentences

as if private rainfall on a summer night

tourists with cider
avoid sludgy leftovers

  briny exhalations
  of the unknown undulations

   sun-pecked - wrinkled as though
   Christmas wrapping

   sand slobber
   up to a young girl's toes

  left its fluorescent residue
  as hairstyles for rocks

water's unravelled applause
where dogs aren't allowed

I tried to tell the sea what I was thinking.
It simply unfurled its blue vowels at me,
a slippery blush at my feet.
   So I asked again; a similar response,
cauldron of murmurs into nothing.

Close by, a dog followed its owner,
a lady, lobbing a tennis ball,
the animal a black exclamation.
It panted excitement at me,
pink ribbon tongue sloshing about
like the sea when it sidles
back to where it came.

I asked, once more; there was no reply.
A glossy breath,
in and out, like all of us.

On the way home from work
a man on the train sneezed into his handkerchief
and a woman next to him, maybe mid-thirties,
mangled her face into a state of disgust.

Two friends were talking football
as I turned onto our street,
one in a City top, the other with a ball
scuffed with the marks of many a lashing
into the north-west of a park net.

Our daughter was doing homework,
exam season, a cocktail of notes
scattershot on the duvet, and when I asked
do you fancy a cuppa
she said yes, so I clambered the stairs
and she asked me how work was.

The game was on, midweek match.
Two goals but by the second half my head, drooping
down and again down, laden with sleep,
so I left the last whisper of wine in the glass,
undressed, brushed the last remnants
of a steak and kidney pie from my teeth,
put myself to bed, my wife a hand away.

begins

new jewel

almost a year

since you made it official

and now back

to the start

another year

stretching its arms

April wave

green blaze

love like the blossom

You're off again
and I'm left with residues
like fingerprints on a frosty window

I see bubbles everywhere
all too temporary
awaiting their rapid deaths

you're part of the transparent clique
glistening - unavailable
another noiseless vanish

(her name washes up on the shore
my private shipwreck
except I'm not the only one
who knows
there's no blue smudge on my thumb
from where she spilt her breath

blossoms elsewhere
stop yourself before the vowels
bleed through)

and you choke on the smoke
of your past

Look
I’m not sure
what to say here
about this picture
maybe it’s the colour
you painted your nails
or the way you are awake
but in a position ready for sleep
regardless there is something delicate and silent
about this picture and the way that you look and so
I thought that I should tell you that
even if these words don’t breathe
in the shadows of your mind
for being strangers is such
an indefinable sickness

and they are ready to pull,
   a crew of pinkish wands
sprouting from the ground,

clouds of green
   flecked with mulberry veins,
the soil quite soggy

from last night’s rain,
   grass tickled silver,
pewter-rippled sky.

I grab the first,
   press down, listen
to the burst of a crackle

like the spine of a book,
   tug it out
as if a tooth.

When I carry them
   to the kitchen I think
of the crumble to come,

the smell, the spoon
   diving in, exhuming a pool
of amethysts beneath.

the snow flirts with you better than I can
when we walk back from the bookstore,
where books are discounted for one week only
and we passed recommendations
between the shelves and said
I heard this one’s good.

there’s discarded masks by the subway entrance
like malformed *****, mouthless and obsolete,
a whiff of Korean food that meanders
out from the takeaway
and I offload corny joke after corny joke not even worthy
for the back of a beermat
or graffiti-besieged toilet cubicle but you laugh
anyway out of pity I suspect,

the sack of books (Vonnegut, Glück, Didion) seesawing
by your side, our footprints a transitory
punchline behind us.