Issue 35 | September 2018 |

The Skater at the local rink her skates cut trails fingernails scratch wooden handrails she clings on for dear life. out in the woods a lake mute swans skitter on floes mis-footed...

“I remember you,” the stranger sang, back handling the door

“Mattie, stop. You’ll burn the house down,” said Mam, prodding me in the back with the poker, the other day. But there’s no heat in...

Betrayal: short fiction by Kate Ennals.

Carolyn Jess-Cooke: Boom!   ISBN-13: 9781781721759 Published by Seren Carolyn Jess-Cooke Carolyn Jess-Cooke was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1978 and currently lives in north-east England. She is mother to four...

Looking Back The moment was a colossus we built up to, at first with wheelbarrows of sand to mix the mortar, simple bamboo scaffolding, then, as tension mounted,...

Stitching America (for Gloria) It started at Kansas, roughly centre, and two strands of blue for back stitches: the calm, smooth line of a river. At each stitch, it...

The idea for "Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge" (Five Leaves, 2015) started in August 2015 with a Facebook group bringing together the publisher, co-editors and supporters

THE CONFESSIONAL BOX Women cluck like hens outside the door, they interrupt Fr. Doyle’s thoughts. Joan doesn’t cluck, her voice a double bass, her laugh, a well-tuned string. He...

No one ever told me to stand in the woods and await dusk.

After the estate flooded for the third time, Clodagh determined never to return. The thought of the dank interior, silted and filthy, filled her...

THE DOLL At Marshall Fields that year When I was eight, They took a photograph to make A doll with my face, My wavy auburn hair. I unwrapped that doll On...

What I Didn’t Tell My Father mosquitoes swirl like ash in headlights& priests call bingo from pulpitsup & down the shorearound our table relatives...

We are a little over 13,000 kilometres apart, and we’re actually very thankful to the internet for

The Last Time We Saw Strangers, by Christopher Hopkins Clare Songbirds Publishing House  Chapbook Series ISBN 978-1-947653-24-5 In the new year in Issue 20, I was pleased to...

  What Vachel Lindsay Said What Vachel Lindsay saidin faithful song he shoutedfull-cocked, full-blownfull-throated,until his evening felland music went out of the bonein the blast of...

The Fates You sit and cry at her polished porcelain feetwith moss and gravel for a bedand grieve the un-lived life.Her frozen stare outstaring...

dear sisters our tree’s stretch of skyward is slowing as is their leaf fall, wrap of blankets, and hopeful reach again for spring breathless trips on summer stumbles of things forgotten upon faces fanned by noon to...

The Citadel Metal spikes made from blue glass and silver are unhooked – pierced inside shop entrances when closed like dystopian fly- traps laid out to deter...