Author Archives: Liz McPherson

So good to be three floors up surrounded by pigeons fingers flying through catalogue cards nobody there in the hour before moonlight when everything is possible and the books whispering in the quarto room with leather-bound tongues. Liz McPherson Back … Continue reading →

You cross a checkerboard of stones, where vagrants seek pennies for visions, loop ranks of towering knights and pawns, enter crenellated streets, where citied girls thrall to stiletto heels and telephones. The air is hot, it stinks of drying cloth … Continue reading →

We eat and drink, we speak of this and that, the children play, the adults smile, we chat, and see ourselves, our eyes, the way we tilt our heads while thinking of the things we should have said about the … Continue reading →

The plot at the end of the lane rests in a patch of everlasting summer, fat lawn spread like a counterpane, apples sun-steeped, berries rainbow-ripe. Borage and thymes sprawl lazy with bees, peonies linger in whispers. Plum, pear, cherry blossom … Continue reading →

The donkeys are growing flowers on their farm, treading quietly with flinted hooves, driving seed to earth and in their footsteps will root Catchfly, Fumitory, Stinking Chamomile, Prickly Poppy. Then will creep vole and field mouse, air will be deep … Continue reading →

Three decades Dad’s volunteered at Oxfam, sorting the books, pricing them, putting them out, taking longer each year to walk the quarter mile, summer and winter, tapping his stick along streets shifting like oceans under his feet. Knocked over once … Continue reading →

This year you would have been sixty your friends would have thrown you a ‘do’ and you, all of 5 foot 3, would have been a little shy. Your children would have been here, your cake would be pale green, … Continue reading →

IMPOSTER SYNDROME. A sonnet. It greets you in the morning when you wake, at night it kills your hopes and mutilates ideas. You’re too afraid to make your mark so, sick at heart, you face the empty page, then turn … Continue reading →

Last night, in the morning, I gandered down the wooden stairs, ate jellied eels for breakfast with my pals, the grizzly bears. Just a normal day so far but, as we slurped our dishes, I heard a floosome noise outside … Continue reading →