What the tabloids know:

the way a purloined curio of pain
will fascinate, or how a scandal ratchets;
the fact that one-way mirror means the same
as two-way mirror; all the razz
or onus in a name;

the way each softcore amateur limps on
to will dulled flesh to willingness,
hump shadows on a shadow-puppet screen
while grimly twinkling for that sly auteur
the rest have never seen;

the various yet binding routes by which
each Mister Average comes to comprehend
the diametric possibilities of resignation,
a working kidney’s market worth,
the pinned yaw of his station.

 Image by Nick Conde-Dudding

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Kona Macphee grew up in Australia and now lives in rural Scotland, where she works as a freelance writer, co-directs a tech/consultancy business and runs Muse Tuners [http://www.musetuners.co.uk].

Kona received an Eric Gregory Award in 1998 and her first collection, 'Tails', was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2004. Her second Bloodaxe collection, Perfect Blue [http://pb.konamacphee.com], was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for 2010 [http://www.thebookseller.com/news/macphee-wins-geoffrey-faber-memorial-prize.html]. Her third collection, 'What Long Miles' [http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/titlepage.asp?isbn=185224965X], is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in March 2013.

For more information, please see www.konamacphee.com

Poems by Kona Macphee (Australia/ Scotland). Published in Issue 25.

The end of love

Retired at last from his instinctive duties,

lacking a rope to work the soft hurts of his nose,

the bull’s a sketch of brute heft and bewilderment

awaiting, in his pen, that willed embrace

of gratitude or steeliness whose outcome is a future

now teetering between the knacker and the trackless clover.