Talisman I don’t need an amulet around my neck, don’t need a jade bracelet upon my wrist, a twist of string, blessed around my shin. I don’t need onions or jasmine above my door, don’t need to live on the eighth floor of this apartment complex, could take the fourth bed on any ward and not fear death. And I don’t need the Lord Buddha … Continue reading Four poems by David Tait
Her Grown-Up Dress When she came at last to that row of shops on the long road, having left behind the dirt track, railway-line, the sluggish brook and had fastened round gold slides in her mud brown hair, pulled plimsolls on her feet so the backs weren’t squashed she found the shops were boarded up, that the woman standing there wore a pale green cotton … Continue reading Two poems by Pam Thompson
(Deathflake was previously published in Under the Radar magazine). Paul Stephenson was one of the winners of the 2014/15 Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet competition. His first pamphlet will be published by Smith Doorstop in May. He was previously a Jerwood/Arvon mentee in 2013/14, and in 2012 won second prize in the Troubadour International poetry competition. Originally from Cambridge, he currently lives … Continue reading Deathflake by Paul Stephenson
Masts The air is not itself today: it can no longer rest. The last free molecule has just been put to use. Our alpha-waves are butterfly-brained. Sleep, in any normal sense, has not been possible here for months. I carry an egg for safety now. I came too close the other day: it cooked in my pocket, good enough to eat. (previously published in … Continue reading Three poems by Gregory Leadbetter
A Short Manhattan Lullaby, 1939 after S. Olds I see them tarting themselves up for the party where they’ll meet; she post-divorce from her approved-of Jewish ex, and all set to become a successful playwright. I see her pucker up for the brightest lipstick, slip her feet into lethal stilettos, bat blackened eyelashes in the gilded mirror, see it return her appreciative glance. He’s … Continue reading A poem by Wendy Klein
The Moment On the Penistone train derailment, February 1916. When I look up at the seamed sky, the black teeth of girders, the cracks of fresh air, I think this is not an accident, but a moment of refusal, a point I can look on and describe in bricks of words, then knock down again before it becomes too fixed, not an accident but a … Continue reading ‘The Moment’ by Julie Mellor
The Ferryman They were waiting on the shore, some with mobiles in their hands, the words they thought they’d have the chance to say sitting round and smooth like stones inside their mouths, some on hands and knees, feeling for spectacles, eyes tight against the sun, not realising the dark had gone, and some sit on chair-shaped rocks, as if they can still feel … Continue reading A poem by Kim Moore
