Half the Story Franz Kafka, the story goes, encountered a little girl in the park where he walked regularly. She was crying. She'd lost her doll. Kafka helped the girl search for the doll, but they couldn’t find it. They arranged to meet there next day to look again for her doll, but still they … Continue reading Half the Story by Ian Duhig
Author: And Other Poems
Two poems by Vicki Feaver
You are not You are not in the tulips, not in their flailing stems or shrivelled yellow petals that alive you'd have painted; not in the pearly wintry sky or the scarred slopes of the hill that before your legs failed you'd have climbed; not in the spiky firs or eddies and swirls of … Continue reading Two poems by Vicki Feaver
A poem by Rebecca Bird
Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle Considering the 1 2 3 4 of her digits and the ziggurat of carpal bones: all columned cashews and peashells, pumice-stones and corner-moons, her hand should not be too hard to hold. In the morning, it passes me coffee, points out the Sunday funnies in the … Continue reading A poem by Rebecca Bird
A poem by Imogen Forster
Dancer after 'Girl Ballerina' by Yinka Shonibare I am buttoned, tailored, piped, the tight fit of the colonist’s clothes round my slim child’s waist. Net and frills, my costume’s a good girl’s party dress. Am I a welcome guest or a blackface clown? I give nothing away. I am a dancer’s body in little … Continue reading A poem by Imogen Forster
Two poems by Rishi Dastidar
The anniversary issue I am forglopned*, struggling to load, pixelated while walking down Wardour Street. Greying personalities with media hair pass me, talking about intertextuality and Paul Morley, while I pretend to be Eustace Tilley, the way you do with the anniversary issue. The queues queuing to get pancakes. beseech me instead to contemplate … Continue reading Two poems by Rishi Dastidar
‘The Eel’ by Hugh Dunkerley
The Eel after Montale Eel, siren of cold oceans, quitting the Baltic for our seas, our estuaries, our rivers, coming up from the deeps, nosing under the downstream surge from tributary to tributary, stream to stream, wanting to get back inside, to get to the heart of rock, infiltrating rills of mud, until one day … Continue reading ‘The Eel’ by Hugh Dunkerley
Two poems by Penelope Shuttle
Langspiel New lamps for old sang the harp prepare for sorrow and snow for sleeping on a bare floor New lamps for old sang the harp, be glad to eat alone in the cold kitchen to walk by the golden cliff along the sunlit tide line Get used to the hard work of it … Continue reading Two poems by Penelope Shuttle
‘Fire-voices’ by Adam Horovitz
Fire-voices What is religion? A shared dream of landscape fenced with simple rules by which to live a life of listening for the quivering fire-voice of hope; some spark of kindness in the desert's inward creep. * Does it still the hand that wields a knife? No, not … Continue reading ‘Fire-voices’ by Adam Horovitz
A poem by Kevin Reid
They Said It Would Change School bus fare was a three penny piece, or as grown-ups would say, a thrupny bit. Kathy, the school bus conductress, the familiar bundles of brass coins in her verdigris hands. School rulers were wooden with black lines. Mrs. McCourt had a thing about pencil's being sharp when used … Continue reading A poem by Kevin Reid
‘A remarkable life’ by Niall Firth
A remarkable life Once they’d hoiked out her irradiated heart it powered steam turbines to keep us warm. Her titanium sternum, dripping in parsley green, was lowered carefully into a cove off Dubai where scuba divers dart in between her curving ribs like tropical fish and pause to take photos wrapped in her chest cavity. … Continue reading ‘A remarkable life’ by Niall Firth
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