The last day of May – overnight the garden has opened out, firethorns drip cream along the boundary fence, poppies rise up from glaucous leaves, spread split red skirts, reveal their black centres, their secret places, silk filaments, the puckered green of their sex, everywhere such generosity – and you, love, closed tight, tight as a miser's tight fist on pay day, you, too, now open yourself to me.
By kind permission of the publisher, Shoestring Press, ‘Pay Day’ is reprinted from Angela Kirby’s collection The Day after Always reviewed on page 25.