EMPEROR OF IDIOMS – RICK BLUM
Envy, how like a carnivorous tide you erode contentment, / unashamedly dragging the color green / (an otherwise pleasant hue) into your toxic […]
SPOIL – HARRY GALLAGHER
Come to me, my sooted boys, / my burntblack cindered lovers. / A million misadventures spent […]
ANIMALS – ROBERT STONE
I heard that 110 wood sandpipers had appeared at Cley. A bird I like to see. The largest group I had ever seen, I am reluctant to call it a flock, was 6. So, 110 was a draw. Was this climate change? Dunno. It is possible to […]
SELF PORTRAIT – LIESKE WEENINK
“I am a newly graduated artist based in Brighton. My practice currently focuses upon the themes of human relationships, health, psychological boundaries and time. The importance of storytelling and the power of an individual voice […]”
THE GREEN LIGHT – JOHNNIE B. BAKER
We sat on the patio of a bar / having a beer, seven months / since you gave up without trying. // Sometimes I […]
TRACK SIGNALS, TURNS GREEN – LYNNE SHAPIRO
Lean in to see out / as the train slows, glass becomes framed mirror. / Greenery becomes you, flannel caresses your one-time youth; / How liquid we are […]
CONCEALED – VANWY MACDONALD ARIF
Fatima wished she didn’t know the statue was there. Peeping Tom’s sallow, grimacing face twisted perversely. An untidy black beard could not hide how strangely […]
GROWING PATCH – STEPHEN KINGSNORTH
For years it was a briar patch, / the spittoon for my tar babies / where dog-ends crouched and mucked about, / a wasteland, harsh for lions’ teeth […]
ALIEN BABY – LOU SIDAY
It has been three weeks and my belly has swollen almost double in size. Sometimes in the dark I can see it glowing. I will try to sleep but […]
TEST-TUBE DAFFODILS – MARIE STUDER
In the dream there were no more daffodils / in gardens, allotments or fields / instead, a floating glass sarcophagus / of earth’s near extinct blooms […]