The radio, for the serial, ’s propped

against a turnip to maximise reception

It’s a kind of stereo for the neighbour
My very head’s a paddock he says

checking a hedge for catching pricks

He’s been crutching poems since six
Let’s see what the surface’s doing, its

job’s to hide the depths. Turn to me

reflected image: you are nobler 
than a pineapple. This fence is the fence

from my dream, the one I wrote the Queen

I sometimes see her reply winging 
over the cliffs so dolce, as they say

He makes shade as the hay dies in Jersey

jaws, as trinkets spill off ferries
scoffs red cherries. If his name was Raymond

he’d be a diamond, cutting up rugs

like ice. Lyrebirds flayed his shower 
curtain, now he’s condemned to do

the same. He takes his kids to boxing

school so they’ll protect their lunches 
from thieving roos. A tulip’s worth

its weight in Chinese takeaway he jokes

His bread is heavy. I’m not gay
like Tennyson he says in town

Pass the gravy. WW-

I didn’t weigh down my 
lip. Skip sympathy, with its rotten bags

of laundry and defunct toasters. He waves

the flag but wants to secede, to be 
a king of cane, to ride into glory

on a black swan with slippers of cygnet

down. Ugh! See him on his 
ride-on mower having

a heart attack. No, he’s just grabbing

his hat, which has flown like a bat into 
the cucumber patch. Felt is a kind

of feeling. So is a hearty greeting

or memory of shaking a black man’s 
hand while flying a kite. He’d

never felt so white as when

he saw the clouds go over, spelling 
his name, forming his face, raining

on his drought-stricken self-parade

He had an orangeade spider 
later to celebrate. He went off

the juice when he turned forty-two

I want to survive my second marriage 
he claimed. In order to write the novel

he explained to his mates. They were great

not like some. He always knew what they 
were on about, even when

they were sketchy. The judge not

excluded. He finds a painted 
egg in his dressing gown pocket

Must be Easter. Happy chocolate

he says to his indifferent ex-wife
when she rings about the shares

portfolio. Get ex-

husband sectioned she scrawls, along
with a camel and an upside-down

umbrella on the pad. Get

well’s all she says. She has a rabbit’s
foot in a drawer somewhere. She walks

to yoga but accepts lifts home

from instructors. She pulls out weeds
in the late afternoon singing Barbra

Streisand to the wrong tune for the hell

of it. I want to dance with some-
body she tells the dog in a ro-

bot voice. She has a shed

of her own and a secondhand Rolls 
Royce. She stares at goat videos

like she’s the wicked queen of Disney’s

Snow White. This is what 
being out of love’s like. She writes

a sarcastic review of a rest-

aurant and a movie. The reviews are 
the same with a verb or two changed

Let nouns be metaphors

she concludes. She takes off her shoes
Let shoes be the blockers of the honey

of life. She squeezes them like

daffodils for their wisdom or wine