James McDermott trimming my tash over the sink     felled hairsform into a blonde man’s clip-on ponytail heave it out the basin to chuck it buttwo ponytails     binned in there     like dead rats stagger to stairs to spot ten ponytailsone on each step down to the living room his armchair has a ponytail     TVmy crisp sandwich doesn’t have a hair … Continue reading Ponytails

            Kayleigh Jayshree My landlord emailed me a month ago and told meabout the dream he’d had. He said he was in chargeof all the houses in South East England. He hadthousands of emails to answer and could not hirean estate agent. None of the houses had mould. Theprices kept going down because of the government.He … Continue reading Contact

In this essay on Emily Dickinson and ‘anorexic aesthetics’, Charlotte Shevchenko Knight blends close reading and autobiography, critical analysis and personal narrative. Moving between Dickinson scholarship, Sad Girl Theory, editorial history, psychiatric literature, recovery narratives and Tumblr-era anorexia discourse, this essay traces various forms of inexpressibility, from the ‘quiet rooms’ of Dickinson’s dashes to the … Continue reading Emily Owns the Void

            Bryony Littlefair When I first moved to the cityI lived on the 29th floor where the view was wideand the lift was narrow and my Polish flatmatemade soft, white dumplings filling up the freezer.Everything was cold, high up. I often had a lonely, professional feeling.Like I was an air traffic controller. Bryony Littlefair is a … Continue reading London

            Jayant Kashyap This evening I’m not writing a bird;nests have shut their doors and I cannotremember the structure of wings—instead I’m writing arrows, burnt trees,myths and faux Greek tragedies: in one there isa woman, doing nothing (or she is notallowed to); in another a manis stripping naked and moving towardswater; in another the earth is … Continue reading Annotation on Ecopoetry

            Ryan Collins Too many new Americans speak in reassuring            tones & say not a word to be believedat this late hour in the maw of end-stage            capital. A jingle jangle thesis is as usefula currency as any to bang a gong to            or keep the lights on. W/ any luck, aftergreat pain, the pain & our feeling form            into … Continue reading For Fong

            Jasmine Gibbs                                                   Bitter January morn.We shun the desolate promenade for a momentto let the old girls in the café gnaw our ears offabout the dead season, smokeblue fade tingingthe colours on bygone circus posters. ‘Right grisly’they tut. That we do not have a thousand wordsfor grey remains an oversight. Today, the sky’spaint shade matches the … Continue reading The Dead Season

            Kaja Wojtkowska Not even September and alreadythe chestnut trees are shedding leaves,littering pavements with dried brown crisps.The thistles have grown wild white hairon their heads, releasing their seeds into the windlike mothers sending children away to school.The balsam flowers retreat into tightly-pursed lipsas if tasting something sour, then spittheir small black seeds when touched, burstingand … Continue reading Season’s End

            John Greening        for Katie and John London in May. That she should arrivejust as this is happening. But noceremony for her other thanthe rituals of an NHSabbey, this wing, its bright notes, a C- section, not a natural birth, whereshe is lifted through a discreet woundinto bunting, kitsch, quiche and song, thususurping her way to … Continue reading Crowning