Her bricked-in tortoise skull 
a-whir with a whorl of whirring
whose thin tigers skirt the school
whose soft-closed throats, whose purring 

whose fireworks of falling planes
whose backlit fade of fainting stars
whose veiled ghouls in dusked trees
whose sirens sing in the knacker’s yard

whose boiling clouds whose billion
suns whose rack-wrecked spine whose un
-real hands whose two unreal hands
clutch at smoke at sand at moans

there are margaritas, there are guns 
there is the valve of your touch

Rowan was a touring musician and then a songwriter before he reviewed gigs for Brighton’s Source magazine, wrote a travel blog, and moved to prose and then poetry from there. He is studying for a BA in Creative Writing at Brunel University.