Silver Branch
series

Two Headless Snowmen 

 

Life— a parenthesis 
pressed between frost and twilight. 

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Snow blooms beneath my boots, 
slow-breathing earth. 

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My trench coat hums; 
Sinatra drips from amber-lit air. 

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I turn a corner— 
light lasers verglas 
on brick and bark. 

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Two headless snowmen— 
glove-craft: sculpted stone 
and swan-ice. 

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Their faces melt 
into the sun’s frost-flecked spill. 

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Fate puddles gold 
in the mirror of thawing rivulets. 

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We too— coral-boned, 
time-creased, dissolving to salt. 

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Sightless snow-boulders 
melting toward the hollow of night. 

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Nominated by Black Bough for the Forward Prize for 'Best Single Poem' (2026)

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Needle Mountain 

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Imagine slender steel 
 rising from the earth’s cracked lip— 
  a point honed by misfortune, 
  the knife-edge of life 
   balancing atop it. 

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Feet puncture. 
Blood threads downward, 
 and the mountain drinks— 
  pulse by pulse. 

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We barter skin for shelter, 
 trade hope for tether, 
  cling to slick sides, 
   to paths spun from fraying sinew. 

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The wind howls 
 in tongues we cannot answer; 
  our mouths are stitched shut 
   with frozen silence. 

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Above us, birds 
 with needle-feathered wings 
  embroider the sky, 
   stitching clouds into scars. 

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Below—only a gaping mouth, 
 only the swallowed. 

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Needle Mountain shivers, 
 quenched yet starving. 
  It dreams of threading us— 
   through its hollow eye— 

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one by one— 
 until our lives 
  are sewn closed. 

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And still, 
 somehow— 
  threadless. 

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Every Thread a River, Every Hole a Space 

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A burgundy river coils through your crow’s feet: 
crumpled banks of skin, sedimented in sun-iron. 
September seeps its bruised dusk across your shoulders; 
summer has ghosted, leaving its army of molten light 
to rot in memory’s cellar. 

You are a shattered hourglass, 
cerulean sand spilling across a collapsing face, 
each grain a shard of sky. 
Lips cratered like dried volcanic ash, 
oysters split open like bruised moons, 
each a penitential skin 
you wear like knotted wire. 

Record a WhatsApp confession, 
launch it into the void of no one and everyone, 
drown in oil and brine, 
press a blurry spine against the lens of 20/20 vision. 

Favourite sweater snagged, 
fibres unravelling into brittle lichen: 
hang it in the scarlet wardrobe, 
press it to your undulating chest, 
to the steady rhythm of a corpse. 

Shadows bristle— 
a gaze unspools, 
thread into hole, 
hole into river. 

Reemergence— 
a cavernous current swells in your chest, 
armoured in mercury currents. 
Flood into it, 
grow until the last crocus of spring 
erupts like obsidian fire. 

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Seamwork of the World 

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after hearing Joanna Newsom’s Ys 

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A thread pierces the needle of the air— 
a harp-string shivering like captured lightning— 
and something burrows into me, 
foetal, clawed, 
curling around fistfuls of mineral-dark soil, 
a cooled meteoroid 
fracturing into molten silver veins 
that slither through my sternum, 
hissing and thrumming like starlight in bone. 

It keens through the ribs— 
an ember chewed by violin teeth, 
the bow rasping open a seam 
into the raw genesis of this world. 

From that seam, it spills— 
forest breath twisting into fractal spirals, 
the owl’s interrogation slicing the marrow of night, 
moss clutching stone with green-fire claws, 
rain liquefying into swan shadows, 
a raccoon rifling clover as though it knows the cosmos, 
hooves whispering secrets over snow like inked Specters. 

Her harp— 
its thousand silver ladders 
threading the night with lightning-silk, 
each arpeggio a net snagging collapsed stars, 
each glissando a river unspooling backward, 
pouring into the marrow of the earth, 
into my marrow, 
into every sinew that trembles awake. 

A path of knowing winds through m e— 
soft-footed, cat-eyed, glinting with dew and phosphor, 
leading to a meadow 
where wind chimes tinkle inside mirrors of hay and sparrows, 
where air hums with the pulse of unseen creatures, 
all of it blooming inside my flesh, 
shimmering 
like liquid auroras unspooling through veins, 
a body dissolving into myth, 
supine beneath the constellations 
of memory, fire, and unspoken worlds unsewn. 

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Self-Portrait as Starlight and Vinegar 

after Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele 

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I walk indigo corridors 
of cathedral hush, 
ribcaged in pipe-organ breath, 
a labyrinth vibrating 
with scorched lace veils and crackling static. 

Tori waits at the centre, 
not still, 
but spiralling— 
harpsichord ripped open like raw bone, 
pluck by trembling pluck, 
she screams a widow into my marrow. 

No hammer, 
only feathered violence— 
a tremor of petalled blood 
shattered across the keys, 
their thorns quivering in resonance. 

Bodies dissolve, 
skin melting into song, 
flesh folding into midnight tempo, 
spines arcing like lightning. 

And I— 
I devour it. 
That raw, cobalt stability 
floods my veins with liquid thunder, 
quivers through my sinews like living wire, 
my skin a cathedral of fire, 
every pore a resounding bell of molten light. 

She baptizes me in flame, 
hurls my old names 
into Pele’s open, molten throat. 
I rise, sacred, 
flesh incandescent 
from the ashes, 
hair tangling with smoke, 
bones vibrating with starlight and vinegar. 

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Macromutation 

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Rarely, frogs erupt from flesh with eyes 
where soft, wet mouths should gape— 
an anatomy unstitched, 
organs blinking where they ought to sleep, 
a body that ought not draw breath. 

I imagine this grotesque benediction 
bestowed on my translucent, waxen child— 
eyes trembling from the soles of its tiny feet, 
striding through honeyed, viscous air, 
or dissolving into the gelid core of my skull, 
palms cupping the viscous world, 
tasting its flickering, pulsing weight, 
knowing— 
when, at last, to turn its gaze 
from the searing tide of living light. 

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Lucid Dreaming 

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In my latest dream, 
a nest arcs like a flying dinosaur, 
and a bird carries a migrating home. 

I crouch beneath its wings— 
roofs against a monsoon rolling through my chest, 
nuzzle whisper-close, 
feathers brushing, ruffling bone. 

Chirps pierce the cleaved sky at dawn, 
splintering the wet slumber that clings to my ribs. 

Through a hatched-egg window, 
my gaze climbs: 
twigs veined like fossilized lightning, 
branches prehistoric, 
crimsoned by a pink sunrise. 

I slip through a keyhole; 
my eyes meet a hooked beak— 
displacement claws my chest, 
tiny talons digging memory from marrow. 

Birdsong bursts wide as life, 
the world hums an ephemeral hymn, 
and I let it flow through me, 
dawn washing me in liquid gold. 

My arms become teal wings, copper keys, 
unlocking every door weighed down by gravity, 
every door hung with shadows. 

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Bowel of Anticipation 

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The curtain sags—faecal with nicotine. 
You appear as you always did: 
stains on cut cloth, 
death-living, life-deathing, 
hyphenated griefs pulling apart 
with sloth-nailed fingers, 
sinkholes blooming in the weave. 

A green smoothie curdles by your lips, 
flax seeds burst like tiny lungs of need. 
Steam curls—a lavender ghost— 
coiling through the smoke-thick air. 
You whirr within the bubbled foam, 
your voice surfacing, dissolving again. 

Sharp stretch, clawing, scratching— 
an alley cat stirs inside my gut, 
gnawing at the unsaid, 
bowel-hearting, heart-boweling, 
language twisting through skin and waste. 

Each pulse is a protest— 
against the stone-eyed believers, 
the self-satisfied bright ones 
who choke on their own light. 

I cough up the wishes I swallowed whole, 
their edges catching in my throat. 

Bowel, heart, world— 
all waiting, thick with angst, 
the curtains dripping tar and bathwater, 
and still I remember you— 
you—before absence took your shape. 

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Liturgical Kite 

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An open mouth, cleaved bread, 
chalice lips spilling violet floods. 

My outstretched palm—a hand 
short of prayer. 

Frost snaps bone-bright 
against bare skin, 
etching the cold into marrow. 

His name scurries between my fingers 
like a wiry-tailed rodent through cracked concrete, 
vaulting from cupped hands, 
billowing into the wind-ripped cerulean sky— 
the expanse a confession box, 
every unspoken sin humming against my ribs. 

The thinnest kite string splinters 
in calloused hands 
and ghost-lit flesh. 

I steer the billowing, 
but the air clamps its invisible fist. 

My mouth floods with thorns, 
piercing inner cheeks; 
the sour taste of old bread and vinegar 
scalds each raw seam. 

I cannot let go of the tether, 
even as his name pulls and ripples— 
each letter a tiny liturgy 
evaporating at our altar, 
quivering eulogy closing my throat. 

Wine sours this tongue, 
spills from these lips. 
Forgive me, Father— 

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Early September 

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I wake thirty-seven again. 
Summer turns ghost 
in a snap of fingers, 
as if you’d severed ties 
with a friend over nothing. 

The heavy lid shifts. 
The sewer yawns. 
Sourness rises. 

Summer was radiant— 
a reprieve from near-deaths 
hatched in hospitals, in March, 
spilling from brittle, cracked shells. 

Black rivers gushing 
into your stretched mouth, 
congealing your larynx. 

Every green shoot stamped 
into thick, muddy earth 
by a stiletto heel. 

Now light is a face 
shut behind memory’s slats, 
a gnawing ache 
in your creaking, foul chest. 

Your eyes scour for clean water, 
for wood not yet warped. 
Hands drag the lid. 
Arms stretch to snapping. 
Fingers flick. Flicking. 
Every switch. 

To reignite a friend. 

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Love in the Key of Dissonance 

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Scott Walker sheds melody— 
ghostly baroque melts 
into metallic thunder, 
felt beneath shuttered eyes. 
Fingers trace electric edges 
along the spine of dusk. 

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Deadline Dream 

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I stir, eye mask pressed tight, 
fingers sparking lightning across keys. 
Sweat slides in torrents down temples and spine. 
Hands pound—thrum, thrum, thrum. 
The last key strikes; air floods eyes, 
mask loosens, lungs open to dawn’s blaze. 

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The Child of Ashes 

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is possessed 

by a long- 

dead dictator 

burning 

towers, books, 

and cities 

into smoke 

that curls 

through your body. 

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Neo-Tokyo Through Your Senses 

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after Akira 

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Smell the acid of a cyberpunk poster 
curling from your cerulean wall. 
Hear a neon blast crack through the night. 
See your vision spiral into biker gangs. 
The city climbs your nose—metal, smoke, oil. 
Sneeze sparks of burned circuits. 
A blue-and-white capsule fizzes 
across your red-jacket tongue. 

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Rage in C Minor 

 

after Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele 

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Bolting on the treadmill, 
throat burning molten acid, 
I fling it back into the screaming pit. 

Leg slams, keys rip apart, 
harpsichord shatters, 
air fractures in jagged spikes, 
strings snap, skins tear, 
sound howls, blood hums, 
fingers claw, hammer, shred. 

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Inkblot Keepsake 

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Blue-lit diorama, still coursing— 
a miniature life frozen 
at the curve of your silver beard. 
Now a tiny inkblot you carry 
beneath the bristle: 
bristles fray like frost, 
a crease of paper soft with fingerprints, 
a folded coin tucked in the corner. 

  

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At the Folds of Eyes 

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The skin rivulets at each fold— 
I shrink to swim them, 
lick the tear’s cool pool, 
vessels of vision flooded 
with signals and light. 

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Hollow 

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somewhere a spleen ruptures, 
blood trembling into shadow. 
somewhere else, 
newborn eyes split the air, 
blinking wet and raw. 

i close my eyes, 
palms press into the hollow 
where my stomach once curled, 
searching for the shape 
that folded itself 
into darkness. 

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Bulb in My Chest 

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Fingers sift the soil. 
A bulb gleams, damp with breath.                                                                                                           

The cage of ribs holds light 
like a cracked jar, 
leaking warmth into the dark. 

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Extinction 

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The museum hushes. 
A glass case glows. 

The T-Rex’s jaw—open, 
teeth like peeled paint. 

My palm on the glass, 
its chill holding my breath. 

In her hand, 
a smaller dinosaur, 
mouth sealed.