In Milk Snake, Toby Buckley invites us to look at the world from a slightly different angle, where small things become unsettling if you look closely enough. The poet explores queerness, displacement and trauma through clear-voiced, deceptively gentle poems about fishermen, maggots and bees.

bleary

from sleep and warm

water and no glasses

i spot an uncertain comma

sliding

he drags his tail up my

shower wall cumbersome

and not unmaggotesque and i

can see

his guts

or maybe it's

his dinner

- from 'companion'