His Heart turned against him in a chicken shop. He said my heart is falling out as he slipped into dreams of his mother in Jamaica. He came through in hospital, longing for the woman, dead twenty years. His son visits and they spend half an hour holding hands. There is a needle in his arm and blood in his colostomy bag. He asks the … Continue reading ‘His Heart’ by Raymond Antrobus
The remembering business Today a truth was decided, | | Like marching ghosts, we rip seven centuries ago, that | | pages out of ourselves to tell you bread and wine could be | | all is well, that we won’t … Continue reading ‘The remembering business’ by Rishi Dastidar
In our Hearts By the old hospital the mini-cab drivers still say, everyone says, though there’s no hospital now except in the mind, only a high dark blue hoarding with Homes and Communities Agency stencilled in white, along with A new heart for East Greenwich. The demolition’s long finished and the vast space is closed by double metal gates, where today an object glints in … Continue reading Two poems by Fiona Moore
A Brock Geology Night falls & ………………………………………………fills the dingle with badgers badgers pressing grasses…………………………………………………to bent curves they feed & drink ………………………………………………& play, they trail their piebald noses low ……………………………………………..to flow of brook & deep below, taste all the cold ………………………………………….then warming rocks red iron beneath their ………………………………………………………paws & pads they follow glint of mica ………………………………………………….in their skulls unlock the parish scents ……………………………………………..fling back its soil behind … Continue reading ‘A Brock Geology’ by Jean Atkin
For every if, an else, a then. For every cursor, a loop that ends. Each open bracket must be closed; so single quotes must come in pairs and double quotes—ditto. Her joy is found in datasets, in structured queries and parsed syntax. Wild cards flourish within her fields, while table by table she builds her joins on left or right, eschewing Cartesian product for … Continue reading ‘The Data Quality Analyst’s Lot’ by Hilaire
The Red Shoes (for Karen) Dead on my feet, I watched those shoes flounce through the churchyard, dance on your grave, all vamp and platform. Flashes of red infected the corner of my eye as they tiptoed over my face. As I tried to sleep, I heard them clacking away the early hours like drunks stumbling on the cobbled streets. With nobody left to stand … Continue reading ‘The Red Shoes’ by Joanne Key
In supermarkets, strapped in a trolley, on the motorway, belted in the back of a car, under the foundered houses, open mouthed and fed by drips, in a box drilled with holes, in the hold of a boat, in fish crates and on cardboard, on pallets and straw, on a bed of needles on the forest floor, in the curve of a rosy scarf … Continue reading ‘Miracle’ by Stephanie Norgate
They have more to say Mud on their mandibles the wasps are carrying around my anger — expensive black limiting the gold. I am chewing paper, processing letters claiming that put in the wrong compartment these part bee part ant creatures of summer can bring down aeroplanes. The wasps take earth to air and build their stalactite organ pipe where they will choose … Continue reading Two poems by Sohini Basak
On Laundry Day on laundry day check the pockets, question them, make them tell you what they know. (for the washing machine won’t hear of it.) slip your hand inside—careful, don’t fall head over heels. eel-catch-catch a folded candy wrapper; looks familiar, doesn’t it? like an ear, dried & pressed in a blank book for hours; looks like a lonely Sunday morning multiplied by that … Continue reading ‘On Laundry Day’ by Florence Lenaers
Helgafell There is a quarry in my heart. The lovely lanes divide. One humps from Upperwood to Uppertown and Ember Lane, and Ember Farm (my family’s farm, which has not been our farm for fifty years). At Bonsall’s market cross the clot of stone sends tassels out towards the Barley Mow, the moor, and down towards the valley’s narrow chute that lands with laughing splashes … Continue reading ‘Helgafell’ by Tony Williams
And Other Poems 