Verse

'Last night / I heard a dog / in the valley / puncturing the hills / with a sound / from a long / time ago.'

'She said: Do you believe in anything? / I said: I weigh my food. / I said: I cried for an hors d’hoeuvre. / I said: I gave away Gramma’s pizzelles'

'I’d look up to them looming on street corners, / or down on them at night through my bedroom blinds, / crashing home from the Labour Club, mad drunk. / After a while I decided they must be unhappy.'

'The veil of weather, the hopeful smell / of just-cut grass, the who-knows-what / that goes on behind closed doors'

'A girl wearing a two-piece / and waterproof mascara / joins me in the slow lane: / we breaststroke clockwise.'

'Ma’am, I am imagining you / at your worst: watching / a wet-lipped girl / type-set your cutlery.'

'When we got in my cousin said / let’s climb that hill. We had just / got in from Rome and Cantelice / twisted away from the second story / window in cobble and brick.'

My big sister rings to say she is riding around / on the back of Richard’s motorbike and would I like to meet for a drink. / Richard is a married man. My sister is gay and I am always / dropping this in to conversation.

'Almost no one knows / that Ulrich Gwerder, / who, dressed as a merry shepherd, / posed in 1970 for a jazzy poster / for Tourist Information / in the city of Lucerne / was – at heart – a leftie.'

For Christmas, the Queen / Requests new nipple tassels / Then, on Boxing Day, / She sets herself up / With a portable podium / On Brighton Pier