Chocolate Factory   for Andrew McDonald   Like a natural outsider over listed cobblestones to this once mews-like stable block, then chocolate factory, hence its name, on […]

        Vital Organs   ICU, Easter, 2020   An outsider looking in might imagine they were seeing the interior of a space ship; ventilators, dialysis machines, monitors surrounded […]

  Emily and Jo write: “What follows is a six-poem sequence taken from the manuscript of a collaborative poetry collection, The Conversation. This collection follows a conversation held between three […]

          Dates with the Fates     i) Clotho   Her last date? Some chump called Pelops. She gave him the cold shoulder. With her men, she […]

        Cakes by Carol   It brought a strange comfort; somewhere in the folds of fondant she felt she had stowed away dreams she had held on to […]

Image: detail from cover of San Francisco Poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights Foundation, 2003)     John Gohorry       Lights   Poetry is the shadow cast by our […]

        Swimming   Jaan to meri jaan, my life. The ghosts of language sit at the tip of my tongue and sing meri jaan. There’s a tale about […]

          Icarus’s Mother   Missing from the Musee des Beaux Arts, a portrait of the slave girl, her name unimportant or forgotten, who gave birth to Icarus […]

        ‘Honeymoon’   from the memoirs of Helen, widow of the poet Edward Thomas   They fled, by train, to a poacher Edward named ‘Dad’. His own father […]

Photo by Daniel Burka on Unsplash              The Kill   In your room, holding the cartridge, you imagined flames packed like petals in a bud, poppy […]

    Neighbours   Grant was exhausted. I leaned over the shrub and watched him trying to hit a five-foot high stake into the ground. He isn’t a tall man […]

    Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash         Those days   There was always a simpleton as far back as I can remember her shit-covered hand through the […]

  The below poem is taken from Colin Falck’s final poetry collection, Leni’s Triumph, published by Shoestring Press shortly before his death in December at the age of 86. Copies […]

        Welcombe   Moonlight exposes a split ship releasing souls. One – naked torso gleaming – battles toward shore, arcing arms throttling breakers, eyes fixated on a cove […]

  The below poem is taken from Will Stone’s latest poetry collection, The Slowing Ride, published by Shearsman last autumn.           The Bunkers at Wissant   Once […]

      Witness   Once I saw my Masurian grandmother’s hair fall in pale amber waves over her left shoulder like a spell. She was half-facing the window, perched on […]

        Untitled Film Still   Cindy Sherman, 1979   A woman. A road. A suitcase. Synapses glitter, searching for the rest. Her body shoulders a hymn called nowhere: […]