after Martin Carter They enjoy talking in the dark. They are just voices. With the power cut his voice is air, warm, passing over her ear – the ear is catching it. They have no obvious bodies, nor histories to set alight. They are, both of them, black as the breath of the universe, blank as the space between stars. They are a part of … Continue reading ‘The Unbelievable’ by Victoria Adukwei Bulley
Manger After The Adoration of the Magi This ramshackle hut I was born had neither thatch, roof nor ceiling A hovel with a hundred o holes, having no walls nor windows, not even an exit. Cows, horses, flies slept all within, barely room for a time, Father built chimneys and Mother had sweetbread and kidneys a boiling. Winters were harsh. Hailing, piss-snow over us while … Continue reading Two poems by Leonardo Boix
Eyewitness Travel In Shepherds Bush library, now an annex of Westfield, a man in a corner seat leans over two Dorling Kindersley books —Eyewitness Travel—and with near-complete, near-sighted reverence (the kind you’d give to something rare or precious) turns and scans each glossy page. I’m trying to believe it’s for a trip he’s planning, but the stains on his ripped jumper give me the … Continue reading Two poems by Will Harris
Breathing after Song Dong Tiananmen Square, New Year’s Eve, sub-zero temperatures; he lies face-down, breathing gently for forty minutes while from a distance, Mao observes a few policemen on night watch and the lamp-posts fitted with video cameras. This is the gate of Heavenly Peace. Soon, a patch of frost thaws, just to freeze over again when he rises. In the morning, by the … Continue reading Two poems by Jennifer Lee Tsai
Inside the camphorwood chest – forgotten treasure: a pair of leather cowboy boots with metal toe caps. How they shone. As loud, proud and polished as the men they sparked a trail through. Three decades of dust can’t hide the cracks. A genie-rub conjures up swirls of dry ice, the wink of the glitter ball, and the Night Fever dance floor, a chequerboard where … Continue reading ‘High Society’ by Ian Humphreys
Bars Bars Bars how it was is half the fun. half the story. the grit underneath nails. the last bit of meat left on the bone. a clinging of years. yaa the years. softening like plastic. hoarded in narrowing closets in the coldest of spare rooms. mothball mama. all the how it could have beens. crates of apples & pears. flushing green as sickness. … Continue reading Two poems by Momtaza Mehri
Onlookers witnessed your wrath that night how your fist rose to the heavens, striking down as if Ṣango[1] lived within you. Thirty going on thirty-one. I wasn’t sure what to say. I’ve never been here. The papers described him as tall. They said his neck broke before he landed as if his body was a slinky, waiting for the rest of him to hit … Continue reading ‘The Outing’ by Yomi Sode
Blackface Live Theatre, Newcastle. 3 December 2016 It’s the sucker punch of an actor walking onstage wearing blackface; the roar from the audience as they piss themselves laughing. The vocabulary has shifted but the old problems remain. I was a fool to think that we’d been moving forward when we were only ever standing still. Weighing of the Heart When John Dark held … Continue reading Two poems by Degna Stone
for Phoebe Boswell The heart is circled by sorrows and bitter devotion – Derek Walcott Southbank’s Security guards wake anyone sleeping as if they don’t want us to miss who we might bump into like how I bumped into Phoebe today, sat at the tall window, drawing a man called Anwaar. I pull an extra chair and sit next to them and talk about maybe moving … Continue reading ‘Scratched Light’ by Raymond Antrobus
I’m bored by infinity. I want to sail a long time, paint my gums with lemon, sharpen my teeth on hard tack, slip over salted sheets of water, slide across mats of emerald algae, reach the edge of the earth’s table top and stop – to admire the thousand pounding waterfalls and the mouldy line of dragons employed as bouncers on the world’s rim, … Continue reading ‘Ode to a Flat Earth’ by NJ Hynes
