Category: 2017

Justine Kingdon   And so Religion     I turned     I walked     and I ran In such a way as to tell the whole church and then the village you would never again come close to catching me I ran and I ran     out into the world     long mane streaming all the…

Lesley Watkins   People, both ragtag and well-attired flee to some other place another land. Leaving everything they knew owned, once loved once a farm, now a war zone once a city, now a pile of rubble. Bags and coats, almost nothing carried across an ocean to a shore they…

Judith Lofley   ‘This is how you pour a glass of beer’ someone says every time I drain a bottle straight into the open neck of a good-sized glass. They speak of angle and approach finger placement and chill factor as I watch the ale rise toward the rim the…

Judith Lofley     Unaccustomed as they are to their own existence they tread without sound casting neither shadow nor spell from the pall of blame as they pass unseen exits skulking and sacrificing in order to comply with their own faulty bearings. The carnage of childhood and centuries stalks…

Mercedes Webb-Pullman   My story is lost in time’s fog. No gravestone have I, to grow moss, in the unhallowed ground of this swamp. Eternally silent, time is a drip of vinegar, pickling through layers of peat to my dark airless tomb. The chill   of this valley’s not nearly…

Mercedes Webb-Pullman   Her world of air and water turned to stone; on life’s great stage she knew she’d missed a cue. With timid steps she exited, alone.   Her words, like flesh, struck sweetest near the bone where blood runs hot, and pain rebirths as new her world. When…

Mercedes Webb-Pullman   Pidge, don’t cry! The box broke, but I am fine. Pidge, I can fly!   My head throbs. Blood in my mouth. I mustn’t smile, they tell me, or the gap shows. Not elegant.   Drainage-tube-in-my-cheekbone ache. The little red plane, diving to me at the Toronto…

Rachel Kleinsman   For the past 210 days, the prophet’s body has been inhabited by two conflicting universes: the Old Order and the New Order. AD and PT – Anno Domini and Post-Truth. She is stooped over with the pain of knowing.   In the time of the Old Order,…

Mary Little   ‘. . . leaving twelve dead. More news at nine.’ Steve let the studio door swing shut behind him as he dropped the latest bulletin in the bin. He drew a breath and blew it out slowly, eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, he was exhaling…

 Jane Blaikie ‘and not/one of the unborn will appreciate/freedom like this ever’ – After Liberation, translated by Seamus Heaney from the Dutch of J. C. Bloem (1887–1966)   Concert FM presenter, fluting in ear buds over the piping talk of kids on holiday, notes the composer’s repute may have suffered…