BLUEPEPPER

Clock Wise They were traditional retirement gifts after a long working life. I never understood. Perhaps the first time it was given in iron...

The Ghost of Liparis Loeselii at Crymlyn Burrows Bunting out of this purpled, boggy heath are grasses that fence small pools stagnating and ...

Wild horse rights advocates say: leave the hoofprints in the dirt. If we continue to sweep away the remnants of what stepped here yesterday,...

Common or Indian Myna They're a favourite of suburban poets lazily in need of some local colour, even though they're an interloper, ...

Snowflakes Falling  With the look of winter, you emerge from the front door of a house. You are young, and your eyes sparkle with curiosity....

If I Had Only One Pen I would write your story large, of living by the railroad tracks, mother gone too young, father hunched up in traditio...

The Psychologist Her kids are American. In pictures they draw in kindergarten they have spaghetti meatballs for heads. Her life is Americana...

The Swerve “The messages are brief but they extend    in the solitude of their (our) nights.”                 -  John Berger in Fellow Priso...

Dostoyevsky's Dice 12 times the mousetrap snaps and 12 times I discover it's empty. Hemingway had bulls. Bukowski, race horses. Nabo...

  Application Yes, I am an American citizen. Yes, I have a bachelor’s degree. Yes, I am not brave enough to starve.  Yes, I will find some t...

Number the Stars   We are so arrogant as to dismiss the gods, Making it so easy for the gods To dismiss us. We are so arrogant as to try to ...

Elsewhere Under another sun, my twin in teal trunks daydreams in an identical blue canvas beach chair. He too slurps lemonade, smells his wa...

priorities it was an artistic eye favouring an assorted coloured flock to gaze upon instead of gallant black headed suffolk various fleeces ...

son, are you okay? You had blood in your hair, when I met you, you had broken teeth and your skin was scorn, full of scars and small lesions...

September-gold Sometimes life feels like The tiny artful twists of a bonsai Choreographing me to the places I am meant to be With full autho...

Recipe for Confession Kneeling behind a latticed screen, Saturdays you used to confess a teenage fire beginning to flame your belly, tonguin...

After Normanville in baking January our skin sweats maraschino cherries traces of last year drip from creases of tired vocal folds a squawki...

Lincoln Laughed First Particularly memorable were his words to a young woman whose deep interest in a hospitalised soldier led her to press ...

I saw this bloke at the bus stop who  I saw this bloke at the bus stop who looked like Warren Oates. Collar-heavy shirt in powder blue, hair...

Winter Triptych I. Wind rushes the house,    growls around corners, doesn’t rest though night    has tumbled in. Lights blinking, we wait   ...