Chrissy Williams’ anarchic journal Perverse mag is host to ‘poems deliberate, obstinate, unreasonable or unacceptable poems, contrary to the expected practice’. The perfect place, then, for a new prose poem of mine about lying: ‘Lies I tell’.

It’s great that Chrissy asks about the rationale behind each poem published too:

‘Lies I tell’ is part of a fantastical sequence about a lion tamer’s wife, her courtship, marriage, and family. Different voices come forward to speak – the wife, a narrator, the daughter, the lion, the circus. Who is who is not as clear-cut as it might seem. As cascading versions accumulate, they intertwine, overwrite, and contradict one another. The sequence explores what we make of the narratives our families tell us, and what they make of us.”

You can read ‘Lies I tell’ and other wonderful poems in Perverse mag.