XLIV - Sonnet on Mary Tudor - for Jacqueline

La Peregrina has two bodies
one natural that should produce a son
one political that bears a hobby
on the ...

XLIII - Sonnet from Pico to Mervyn Peake

the woodpecker is the phoenix of wit
the head heats up battering the trunk
then cools down again to pull ...

XLII - Sonnet on Mary Shelley

the male Medusa took you in a phase
and turned you into his carapace
after floating in the sea several ...

XLI - Sonnet to Jain Tigers - for Bill Moran

Jain epics as rare as tigers vanish
by Tamil stripes into the palm-leaf shelves
where heroes are housewives - saints die ...

XL - Sonnet to Stromae

Harlequin checks the clown with Stromae
Sonian and Zenniker poet
maestro of the street arts ignotae
such as mime and ...

XXXIX - Sonnet on the Death-Mask of Oliver Cromwell

surely such was his sleep beside his wife
or was it a nightmare of horrid sport
he just dreamt- at ...

XXXVIII - Sonnet on Goethe

Goethite can be the ugliest rock
as if the Buchenwald close by Weimar
were just a tumescent broach on a ...

XXXVII - Sonnet on Edith Stein

the hylomorphic nun went to meet
her unmaker - she’s bitten on the hard
fruit of death her beauty caught in ...

XXXVI - Sonnet on the Origin of Sonnets

the purpose of the sonnet is to raise
a mechanical art to a natural
science of game so mewed men ...

XXXV - Sonnet to a Banker - for Dr Eric Chin

price decouples the coupon from a bond
just as the mature might of August
gives off rotting light which corresponds ...