Alice Frecknall and finally. The sky above your bed all squares and joins, white in an off way, your slack jaw spilling. Marionette of loosening  strings, you raise a finger – question or command? Conductor preparing  for the downbeat. Five days from now there will be  flowers, a carnation resting its head, and everything yellow will rust. Alice Frecknall is a writer and fine artist. … Continue reading You are dying for the third time

            Caroline Druitt The lychees grew sweeter,fleshier under their rouge prickled cases.The greengrocer, in smug blue overalls,sliced out-of-season watermelon. Rolledeach piece onto its back, side by side,their underripe meat just pinkingwhere the knife made its cut.Premature dribbles of juicepooled at the base of the tray,gathering with the seeds. Caroline Druitt is a poet and teacher in South … Continue reading She was having an abortion at the supermarket

            Alex Chernova I. Every night the stars were full of eyes    Blue figures rustled past the side of the bed, stirring the sheets just a little   I have stood atop mountains and felt the stars wrap around my head    From the summit of one mountain in Siberia, I saw a river folded like a ribbon in the valley    There … Continue reading Diptych

            Anne Caldwell We strip the fields and lanes, gather piles of wood, strawbales, rotten doors, lost chairs. It’s rained for months and the valley smoulders like a bad mood. The bonfire won’t catch light. I make a paper lantern from withies, tissue, PVA and an old tea light. Watch it rise in the dusk like … Continue reading November

            Lewis Buxton A good husband always has a zombie plancricket bats and local army reserve units,bottle neck points and axe throwing workshops,supermarkets, shopping cities, radio transmitters.A good husband will have thought of it all.He’ll have his outfit sorted: walking bootsand a warm coat that still allows scything movementswith the arms for successful decapitation.He’ll have done … Continue reading Plan

            Caspar Bryant with lines from Michelle Visage’s autobiography, The Diva Rules Everyone can help you Here’s how my quiet mind looks I dreamed of watermelons and halter tops Hot-oil wrestling rings I wore my leopard prints to work every day  You know now that I don’t believe in regret I dialled dead end after dead end … Continue reading Diva Rules

            after Shlomo Laufer and shut her eyes.She shut the sketchbook and snapped the elastic band round it.She shut the paintbox and put it in the drawer and shut the drawer.She shut her brushes in the pedal-bin. She shut the card the children made spelling both names wrong.She shut the fridge the oven the washing machine the … Continue reading When she came back she leaned against the door

            Vasiliki Albedo Lavender blooms thin,  its stems balletic in the vase. Every day I bless my cats. May they be healthy and happy and safe. Another earthquake could upset the city and its strays. I was twelve when the big one hit Athens and all I could think   was Sparky trembling by the cracked pane. My mother was delivering my brother and about to forever split town.Yesterday chopping … Continue reading On hearing the seismologist say there could be an 8.5R earthquake near Athens

            David Adger In April she’d ruffle through freckled pink stalks and skirts of poisonous green for just the right one.We weren’t to touch the bone-handled knife she used to cut through a thousand sour shreds in one crisp shoot. On the scarred formica of older Aprils, she’d divide the stem, in three parts, and unlid a bowl of casting sugar and lacy glass. We’d stir the fat … Continue reading Rhubarb

            Kari Pindoria the colour yellow will die tomorrow so we squeeze a yolk in the pan for the last time, before breakfast becomes silent. don’t lemons always look the best in still life paintings? how they carry the boldnessof a child on monkey bars in the park. we will never get another season of spring or the simpsons and daisies will hollow out in … Continue reading Yellow