Inside the camphorwood chest – forgotten treasure: a pair of leather cowboy boots with metal toe caps. How they shone. As loud, proud and polished as the men they sparked a trail through. Three decades of dust can’t hide the cracks. A genie-rub conjures up swirls of dry ice, the wink of the glitter ball, … Continue reading ‘High Society’ by Ian Humphreys
Tag: The Complete Works III
Two poems by Momtaza Mehri
Bars Bars Bars how it was is half the fun. half the story. the grit underneath nails. the last bit of meat left on the bone. a clinging of years. yaa the years. softening like plastic. hoarded in narrowing closets in the coldest of spare rooms. mothball mama. all the how it could have beens. … Continue reading Two poems by Momtaza Mehri
‘The Outing’ by Yomi Sode
Onlookers witnessed your wrath that night how your fist rose to the heavens, striking down as if Ṣango[1] lived within you. Thirty going on thirty-one. I wasn’t sure what to say. I’ve never been here. The papers described him as tall. They said his neck broke before he landed as if his body was a … Continue reading ‘The Outing’ by Yomi Sode
Two poems by Degna Stone
Blackface Live Theatre, Newcastle. 3 December 2016 It’s the sucker punch of an actor walking onstage wearing blackface; the roar from the audience as they piss themselves laughing. The vocabulary has shifted but the old problems remain. I was a fool to think that we’d been moving forward when we were only ever standing still. … Continue reading Two poems by Degna Stone
‘Scratched Light’ by Raymond Antrobus
for Phoebe Boswell The heart is circled by sorrows and bitter devotion – Derek Walcott Southbank’s Security guards wake anyone sleeping as if they don’t want us to miss who we might bump into like how I bumped into Phoebe today, sat at the tall window, drawing a man called Anwaar. I pull an extra chair … Continue reading ‘Scratched Light’ by Raymond Antrobus
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