Witch Burning After Sylvia Plath ‘My ankles brighten. Brightness ascends my thighs. I am lost, I am lost, in the robes of all this light.’ – Sylvia Plath Her mouth makes the sound of a kettle whistle – high, sharp, spinning into air like smoke. I watch. Everyone around her watches. Her body peeling … Continue reading Two poems by Holly Singlehurst
Category: Poetry
Two poems by Joe Carrick-Varty
Tree Shaping In our alphabet of trees you chose the first. Apple, a gravel path leading through a garden crunched over, turned left down a lonning the previous tenant never knew existed. Then Ash. 1928 we chased helicopter seeds through summer and fields backed onto by suburban patios with children playing and the … Continue reading Two poems by Joe Carrick-Varty
‘real boy’ by Thomas Stewart
this is a true story: they said you’re not a real boy until you cut the wizard out of the tree, it’s a question of which tree: real boys might pick oak, birch or beech, and then boys that pick alder, elm or hawthorn are unreal, unreal boys hold the axe and … Continue reading ‘real boy’ by Thomas Stewart
Two poems by Lizzy Turner
Waiting for the thing to lift It's like the weird pink in a painting of Nordic dusk, which to anyone would look like daylight but because of you I know it is the night. There is so much stillness in something held down in an image, the weight of distress is not always … Continue reading Two poems by Lizzy Turner
Two poems by Mel Pettitt
Mermaid There was a time when I did not live like this. There was a time when I was the ocean’s whore. Now I am a hopeless man-pleaser, kissing those small rubbery toes, arching my back to let them stroke me. Some of them want to ride me around in the chlorinated water, buttocks up, … Continue reading Two poems by Mel Pettitt
Three poems by Geraldine Clarkson
UNDERLAND (after that man ‘Lewis’) Towards winter solstice, Alice can no longer cope with groping down blind alleys, being groped by creatures she doesn’t comprehend, in places obscure to her. She has issues with size, this human yoyo, no permanence and issues between her thighs, no liniments. No malice. Just a sweet intrinsic no to … Continue reading Three poems by Geraldine Clarkson
‘Ironing the Spider’ by Sasha Dugdale
My most violent act: once ironing a spider. She had climbed between sheets on the ironing board And was resting in the pastel scent of laundry: A large spider, slightly prim, self-assured. I can’t abide violence. I can’t even swat a fly. The death of this meaty widow left a creeping stain And a horror … Continue reading ‘Ironing the Spider’ by Sasha Dugdale
Two poems by Rhiannon Auriol
Pink Cream he baked pink cream pies, down in Cornwall, summer of ’05 with the brushed milk sky and their shouts in my eyes. this was the last year, the last of all time, and he made a batch of nine while I burned on the side: the fruit came apart like a … Continue reading Two poems by Rhiannon Auriol
Two poems by Alasdair Paterson
Two poems from Silent Years Bleak House Dickens was in the house. Bleak to me, we’d say, jostling for bed space, warming up, while fog roiled off the monotype. Bleak to me. Whose turn is it anyway? I think it might be yours. I’d thought the sound of you hardly existed now, except … Continue reading Two poems by Alasdair Paterson
‘The Mermaid Aquarium’ by Cheryl Pearson
A month or two at most, I told myself; a place to catch my breath. The long, dry haul of my body’s bulk along the shingle, up the beach, the dragged slug of my tail a mess of scrapes. A wake of salt and scale all the way to the waterline. I can’t complain; it’s … Continue reading ‘The Mermaid Aquarium’ by Cheryl Pearson
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