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 back on itself to reveal a wet heart, all of … Continue reading Two poems by Holly Singlehurst
Laminations I Amid the crashing, you missed next door’s soul shooting free of rubble deflected off the skip with a clunking blue flash towards Croydon. Perhaps it meant to go elsewhere. They stack salvaged bricks in wobbly columns out back like a garden in Pompei. A pyre gyres plastic black cremating many decades of botchery by innocents with hammers and laminates, as cheap as chipboard. … Continue reading ‘Laminations I’ by Mark Fiddes
The Dark Smoothness of an Old Revolver Oh, those Audrey Hepburn sunglasses! A man should get drunk now and then out of principle, like those of us here, defeated by life, scorned by the Trouville set. I’m sorry, I seem to have momentarily mislaid my muse, and am therefore inclined towards a certain delicious depravity. It is a little dear here, but the climate is … Continue reading ‘The Dark Smoothness of an Old Revolver’ by Catherine Edmunds
rain cows do have best friends and become stressed if they are separated how do they know who their friends are really or if it’s going to rain but still they lie waiting bent at the knees (First published in Obsessed With Pipework, November 2014) the sweat bee he had this craving never wanted to hurt you only to lie … Continue reading Two poems by Laura McKee
Yellow Sheets Afterwards, I swaddle you in plastic sheets; yellow and crumpled as an old raincoat, they will protect you from the rain. Today is the first and last day. I will not look at your face, tiny and still-pink, I know it will accuse me. But I see your little fingers, cold and stiff as icicles in the morning air. It’s better this way. … Continue reading Two poems by Louisa Adjoa Parker
GaZeBo Muggy afternoon in class, a word, an inky beetle that scuttles across my open book. I come to with a slap across the page. The teacher squints at it, sari bristling, then sends me out of class, to the principal for doodling dirty words in geography. Booby-trapped, it rolls off my tongue in triple beat; Ga Ze Bo. It’s the Ze that did … Continue reading Two poems by Amali Rodrigo
The Nudist Beach What we musn’t ignore, says Dad, are the difficulties and responsibilities of the Penis. We mustn’t ignore that. Mum looks up from the Catholic Times, tuts, goes back. I look out toward France; the hazy line of sailing boats, stocky, athletic calves dividing the horizon. The old men want me to see them, hiding behind rocks, grabbing themselves whilst no-one else is … Continue reading ‘The Nudist Beach’ by Dorothy Lehane
Honeymoon I wouldn’t call it a honeymoon, those muffled nights in mothballed rooms. With cake in the boot we pilgrimmed north, taking a young marriage to old widows, my father’s brothers dead, their crucifixes still hanging. In each house we were given the double bed, my aunties inviting us to fornicate on concave mattresses containing dead men’s seed. Had we come one week before, you … Continue reading ‘Honeymoon’ by Josephine Corcoran
