The Cord When I thought of what she was carrying I imagined it the colour of silt, and if it had eyes then they were the eyes of a fish long out of water. I imagined it soulless, like a stone (a stone cannot haunt one’s dreams), so that if it was taken from us, we’d be glad to be rid of it. I hadn’t … Continue reading ‘The Cord’ by Maggie Sawkins
Earplugs Some mornings I wake up, find them pressed into my hair, dangling like two small clumps of snow on the ears of a cocker spaniel. I’d like to ask him upstairs as he enters his flat, to please switch off your gristly cough and mute your feet. I know silence, I held it in my hands once: a one-sided 7” single – so blasphemous … Continue reading Two poems by Stuart Mckenzie
Hope is the Deadliest Sin Captured in profile, the bird-woman’s one startled avian eye glares at the painter of masks who contorts her, feathers her throat, bulges her crop. Sated with grapes, she is caught in the act of plucking a plum from the folds of her shot-silk lap, head tilted back for a bird’s eye view of his brush as it paints her … Continue reading A poem by Breda Wall Ryan
