Lucia Dove Sunday lightbulbs a fruitbowl of potatoes aspic downright grizzly two trips one trip three but no potato masher. It's maintenance day for small cars in Amsterdam and my hand swollen my days swollen with wet leaves mulched trodden embarrassment confusion the central sin of all sins it's crushing how delicious the potato and … Continue reading Inventory

            Lucia Dove Mid-March I'm on my feet and running. I have been living with the spidersI used to be scared of but now they are companyI don't mind them so much.I wish writing poetry came as easily as it used to. I think this is not a poem but shame. Some would arguethat shame makes … Continue reading The spiders

            Roberto Salvador Cenciarelli And we are walking hand in hand by the river now.I occasionally move my arms over his shoulders ashe slides his behind my back. We keep discoveringpieces of clothing, new bones. It rained and then the sun came out. I wanted to tell you something like I am carrying an umbrella under my cloak … Continue reading from “Theseus’ notes on Asterion”

            Hetty Cliss When my grandmother dignified, I couldn’t spook italoud. Not even when a colleague asked three timesif I was ostrich, or was something wrenned? I couldn’t say what went hush hush in my bonnetto get me through the working day. The distractionis gosh, I told myself and otters, convincing no one. What’s left to … Continue reading Thingamajiggied

            Phoebe Gilmore Giddy up leather fillythere’s no use in lying down like a dead bookour appointment opens me to the hillsthe secret once found is grainy and blackburied under gut and a disposable mini-skirt of blue paper doctor in the fieldgive me an answer clear and thick as coldlubrication so I may slip prescription into … Continue reading Gynaecology Ranch

            Troy Cabida       after “Inventory // Personal” by Sophia Georghiou  I’m not as effervescent as I look online. I slept with your husband. I didn’t have to question your existenceyou and the kids just showed up, a streak of light  on the phone he turned downwards on the bedside table. Before he climbed in he opened the hotel … Continue reading No one wants what I want

            Riwa Saab it so happens i’ve failed as a daughter. i don’t callenough. i left, and i don’t plan on coming back soon. they said i can only meet god in my homeland. such a shame,all the people that will never meet god, because they’ve never been to my homeland. because of the stressi’ve begun grinding my … Continue reading night guard

            Helen Bowell I wouldn’t want to be murdered around hereNeither would IHe’s such a nice guy, you’d never suspect itI didn’t realise you were that closeI’m trying to gauge what the consensus isIt’s another bloody layer to unpick and I’m not very good at unpicking themWhat is frustrating to me is like I know who … Continue reading A little game that could result in death

            Kate Wakeling came scolding. It thoughtno one was listening anymore.It scratched at every surface,setting down the frost, over andagain like a grievance.It shook the air to crystal;how stiffly we had to breathe.The light was ruinedand the black trees terrified.They could only shoo us away.I knelt before winterand said, winter, let us be.I showed it the … Continue reading Winter

            Michael Naghten Shanks interrupts my favourite TV weatherman, mid-sentence, folding him neatlyinto his own shadow on the hot sand.Death pleads with us lunchtime viewers—Save the Goliath frog!Like a flag planted in the sand, Death’s scythedraws a drunk, plump, ham-toned manto emerge from the thronggathering to see what ice pops are for sale.My kingdom for a … Continue reading As we eat our Greek salad lunch Death