Issue 37 | March 2019 |

  Post navigation Distillation Now I have the puddle Wax of a thousand Blessed candles burnt In a kitchen shrine Your last upright Embrace cushioning me Comforts to conjure No more sinewy Morphine cries or Muted...

PRACTICE RUN  I’m looking through a cold bedroom window hedgehogged with condensation at a rose bush pricked with autumn frost, though still glowing red like the sting that...

BERTRAGHBOY BAY Where the ironstone wall gathers fuscia and salt; where the swifts stitch blue air to the scrub-grass; where herring gulls mob the heron; where cormorants hang wings on the...

SIGHTSEEING Bellies sweet with prawns and Guinness, they dawdled back along the strand needing nothing more. A sea trout, eyes gone, body gleaming still, lay as if waiting for a...

Jean-Baptiste Bécoeur is dancing with the flamingo again. A waltz – the dance has slunk across the border into Metz, even as far as...

Lady Jesus and Other Poems Arathy Asok (Authorspress, www.authorspressbooks.com ISBN 978-93-88332-19-4, 70pp, 175 Rupees/$14) "Lady Jesus and other poems" is a collection of contemporary, unflinching poems that...

A SMUDGE OF CINDERS My teacher looked at me as if breezeblock wasn't a word she knew. I had pushed my sock down. It was itching the scabs...

Process of Detachment I expect my son will let go of me when he’s five. I will go back to just being Clara. So ready to unspool...

IN THE DARKNESS THERE IS REST In the wall above every bed I have ever lay upon there is a window so well hidden not even the night can find it, leaving...

  Jessamine O Connor is a Dublin born poet living on the Sligo Roscommon border in the west of Ireland. She facilitates The Hermit Collective...

strike The farmers held Dead rats in their mouths, Wearing green loin clothes Hiding what is left of their pride. They sit in the capital city Waiting for some eyes...

A LEICESTER TRIPTYCH The Change:  2.15pm, 15/3/2018, Leicester Royal Infirmary And so you sat down next to her bed, With the bag of toiletries and magazines, your...

Of Buses, Bombs and Bartholdy I love allusions – can’t get enough of them. Put it this way, if allusions were gallons of bath water,...

We were stuck. Stuck in our marriage, stuck in our lives, stuck in this fucking car. ‘How could you be so stupid?’ he said. Five minutes...

An Invitation Come, Father, let’s wander London’s dark skies, sit by the river, watch dusk silt and slide, salute and swirl a glass of ruby red wine. Let’s...

The structure rose up in front of us, like a giant, half-decapitated ‘X’ marking the spot. Of what, I didn’t know. This didn’t look...

  Chartreuse I regret, like coiled flowers I burst when loosed, but the loosing is part of who I am. I could never stop that sort of liquid: a river...

What makes for a good translation? What are the boundaries between translation and authoring? What skills should a translator possess? Beyond the mechanistic replacing...

"May I help you?" The woman, her phone stuck to her ear, was one of those businesswoman-types, discreet although expensive-looking earrings, dark hair smoothed back...

the midwest one broken white scale on a rubber dumpster lid hints; when opened, within and under peeks a takeout burger bag and styrofoam cup, probably full. last...

Empty Highway Home The road is clear, but for the weather lashing down liquid intermittently, my wipers doing overtime at midnight, after a John Mayall gig in Stoke,...

Mother tongue Pollen drenched, the rain in the bark, The roots deep in sepia earth, boughs And branches thick with green leaves The young shoots from the fallen...

Thomas Bailey is 21 years-old, and lives in London. He is currently studying English at Cambridge, and is editor of his college's annual poetry...

Slipping his moorings Less than an hour earlier, he’d knelt thumbs crossed; on failing to receive a signal he slid solo on a one-way voyage, slipping his moorings with no...

It's hard to choose which one of my travels had the biggest impact on me – I've been to 35 countries (36, if you...

A Stain the Shape of Italy It’s when I least expect it Stilled in a queue, perhaps, Or stalled at traffic lights, That the fingers of my memory Pick...

Rap, rap, rap, rap, ill tidings call It came like rain on windows a specimen in a jar, the lid too tight for breathing. I fumbled through the...

 Blue Atlas Tracing the grids of the blue atlas my finger runs down the page, charting the north Atlantic ocean, Lisbon, Africa with its Sahara winds blowing, Freetown. Latitude, longitude, lines criss-cross, I...

Love conquers all says the unbroken heart the playful, unbroken heart as love stands over me in a gas station restroom I dance before the mirror to an unfamiliar pop...

Hello, Goliath I will write you As I know you. Finally, I'm not afraid. Sharp light of your being, Come toward me. You can dance, laughing. You can tell lies. You can...

Burt’s Bees i.m. Burt Shavitz, co-founder of Burt’s Bees, d. 2015, aged 80 Weary of the push and frenzy of Manhattan, Burt lit out in his old...

My Therapist and her Bumble Bee It circles overhead, like a drone, as we revisit childhood wounds, talk of adult loss and all that lurks in the...

the art of casting shadow i love that age is slowing you i might can catch you now between the light and dark before it falls and the twilight that...

Evanescence You claim not to dream. But I know some nights, during REMs anarchy, your body jolts as if defibrillated, your whimpers chill more than screams. I do not wake...

Caron Freeborn 1966 - 2020 Arrhythmia When I was a little girl I worried about infinity –there’s a galaxy beyond this one and then beyond that...

Beached boats at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer He divides the canvas in unequal halves of equal size, a bladed horizon for skies and earth, for man and woman, rich and poor, birds and...

Christine Valters Paintner's "Dreaming of Stones” Paraclete Press www.paracletepress.com ISBN: 9781640601086 96pp $18 “Dreaming of Stones” is split into six sections, Hours, The Time of Our Lives,...

For a couple of days that winter it blew warm. Half our street, the south facing half, glinted with ochres and terracottas in the...