1st prize Indigo Dreams 2026, 1st prize Watchet 2026, Longlisted National Poetry Competition, 2025.

Mars and Venus United by Love

after Paolo Veronese, 1570s

TI like this myth. That a tiny child with wings
might tame a warhorse. That his naked twin
might loop a gold chain round the couple’s feet.
See how the woman has enough milk to feed
the world. How the man, at last, has fallen
to his knees, his war-lust spent, his folly
starting to disarm. I like these words: disarm,
demobilise, lay down your swords.
They’re the right kind of undoing.
Not the reversal of patients in bombed-out
hospitals who yesterday were saved,
today unsaved. Unlove, unhope,
such great despairs this story puts behind itself:
the swollenness, the stamping hooves.