Sarah Maguire

Two soluble aspirins spore in this glass, their mycelia fruiting the water, which I twist into milkiness. The whole world seems to slide into the drain by my window.

It has rained and rained since you left, the streets black and muscled with water. Out of pain and exhaustion you came into my mouth, covering my tongue with your good and bitter milk.

Now I find you have cashed that cheque. I...

for Tadeusz Slawek

Yesterday, the weather in Warsaw was the same as London’s: ‘Sunny; 18°’ (sixty-four Fahrenheit). I am sitting in a walled garden drinking gin, the fading sky as blue as this tonic water loosening its bubbles against the flat ice.

What is in the air? The first midges; a television three doors down, its hum like this lone bat avoiding the walnut tree. A...

Even at night, at random a click – and mist fumes

from the watch towers clouding the cuttings with fog

Bare leaves are downy turn blurred and glaucous

as the fine fur plumps and sleeves itself with water

Ten beats and it’s finished The electric leaf

buried in the leaves is parched and replenished

all night

In mid-July they think it is...

I have no idea what is coming      as I take the hand of a perfect stranger            as I’m taken through the streets of Marrakech.

The exhilaration of trust.       The exhilaration of risk,             of...

Freezing out of season     with Eid after Easter – a provisional city    a concatenation of loose roundabouts     building sites   and razor wire – scars of forced demolitions    spite     occupation and new wealth Little Bantustan       rimmed twice...