Yago Soto Somewhere in a forest, a glass leaf curlsinto its frost. Like someone trying to sayimportant things underwater. Or a loose hairlearning to swim in a sink.Selfhood is just another kind of bonethat needs sharpening. A spider resting on your chinwhile you sleep. You can hearsome career deity burningyour resume to stay warm. By morning, small … Continue reading Patient

            Lydia Unsworth  Nothing we do is right but nothing we do is wrong either. We trust the leaves to perform new vines all over our spread-about carapaces. We’ve never seen the sea. Twice a year it comes in. I am under the skylight. There is sun on my limbs. Even though I have no sky … Continue reading There’s a Calmness, Isn’t There

            Mims Sully I received a single artificial red rose,its knobbly green stem stuckinside a vase of frosted glass.I liked to stroke my nose against the velvet petals, take a deep breathand pretend it smelled like the flower.It came with a heart-shaped card:Because you look like my mumwhen she was younger. Be mine?I thought of his mum … Continue reading Valentine’s Day, Age 6 and a Quarter

            Ben Verinder Winter carried ice oncethe small concerns of frost, a clear sky’sslender furies.                           Fields collected the sound of uscrossing.                 Feather, pellet, spike… many forms of pause now melted midgey and loose, ravenous wavesinfesting our shores. A childI walked a frozen harbour. Ice boomed                                               the way whales sang. Ben Verinder lives in rural Hertfordshire. His poems have been … Continue reading Ice

            Allen Seward the old and new dead pass flowers from mouth to mouth the boneyard rubs together we living ones live only for a while we trade our newspapers and cigarettes in for roses to clench in our teeth the mingling is almost a dance someone says you can see Venus in the sky tonight but no one looks you only fall for that trick once. Allen Seward is a … Continue reading flowerpetalbonemeal

            Nicholas McGaughey A town has slept in a hillside for a century. Men who left their livings for the Kaiser:butchers, teachers, a clerk of works;some two and a half hundred  stooped in feldgrau, where blue-firs have canopied the craters   and spoil that tombed them.There have been looters herebent on old coins and trench-art,on watches that looped ona week after the air expired.Deep in … Continue reading der Stollen

            Tim Love Not all infinities are equal.Cantor proved that in 1874. He went mad.All your days are impossible now,some more than others. So now you dream.It's that simple, you say, like goingin a sauna and watching yourself sweat,or bodysurfing beyond the breaking dawn,searching the horizon for the perfect wave.It's only the drugs, they say, the … Continue reading Side Effects

            Cathy Grindrod You stand on bathroom scales to weigh your feet,cry outside the carpet shop, that red square in your hand too small to fit your bedroom floor.I point out the new moon. You ask me where the old one went.You want to know where space is. I tell you, ‘Everywhere.’ ‘There must bea case round the space,’ you say.You ask … Continue reading Worlds Apart

            Sarah Gibbons To be honest, when I took the bone from his side,scraped it clean to whiten in the long daysI didn’t think it through. It was one of those timeswhen I saw the joins in everything I’d made and as for the man, he did nothing well,lapping at the rainwater that festered in a hoof print, … Continue reading The Afterthought

            Yanita Georgieva In this version we are marriedto other people. You get the classicAmerican home. Paint it a crisp white.Get into country music. Considervoting red – then reconsider. I settledown. Marry up. A man I despisebuys me watches. I sell them onlinefor a profit which I use one day to fly someplace warm and uncharacteristic. When I … Continue reading Side Quest 371