I have never felt so comfortedas I have at the grocery store. I have been soothed by creme-filled cakes,by the gaze of gherkins in their jars. Bad feelings — I have left out in the carto overheat and die in the gorgeousJuly weather; among weatherless aislesI wander in serenity and ease. For I have seen…
Category: Magazine Content
Last Meals
1 The last unenriched food on Earth is a tin of dog meat. Like the chew toys that decay too slowly, this tin long outlasts its purpose. No more dogs in the world to call back to their dinner bowls. Few creatures survived the heat of those summers. It is a rich man who buys…
Delicious Life
I want to eat delicious life,Be able to bite rocks like breadAnd butter buns with glaze of marl,Munching mountains,Crunching cliffs;A lovely creamy lava drippingHotness of volcanic curry,Poured over whole fried islands, spiced,And after, cold, a shake — iceberg delight.My wine: a glass of glacier milkWhisked-in with freshing waterfalls,A generous lick of sprinkled stars,Finished with a…
The Horse From Pit 91
We pulled you from the ageless darkand embraced your bones in plaster—a hasty sacrament to noteyour restoration to the world of light.Now you stand in tribute to your kind:a breathless monument of when you lived.I hope you had some peace, a sip of cool,dark water before your hooves got stuck.You must have panicked, alerting wolvesto…
The Shadow Man Travels
At the time, he’s sick of it, the heavinesssettling in his shadow limbs. All those nightsmixing with the same old spirits in New Orleans,or rattling chains in windowless European castles.He’s tired of strangers who call themselves expertson him, then walk through his body on the stairscall out with cold hearted threats. So the Shadow Man…
Sunflower Heart
They say I have to write a story. It’s what I wanted when my back was breaking. You should be careful what you wish for. At least there’s a window and I can watch the evening primroses opening while I think. I lift the lid on my tea mug and smell the green tea. This…
Cascading Failures of the Heart
They will never know they are perfect for each other. Theoretically. Algorithmically. A solved equation of two strangers. Objectively a cosmic match. As objects moving through the universe are drawn toward each other by their natures. They’ll never know they should have found each other and been as beautiful and strange and full of fire…
Three-Second Storm
Sophie Dumont is a Bristol-based writer whose poetry won the Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize 2021. Her work has been shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize, the Bridport Prize 2019 and 2021 and the SaveAs Writers’ International Writing Competition. Her poems can be found in The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House, The Moth, BANSHEE and will be…
Amsterdam
Matt Pitt is a poet and screenwriter. He has previously published in Acumen, Ambit, The High Window, Ink Sweat & Tears, Prole and Under the Radar. His second feature film, Man of Sorrows, is due to start shooting in early 2022.
Gulliver
Nicholas Hogg is the author of Show Me the Sky, nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Tokyo, for which he received an Art Omi fellowship in New York. His short stories have won numerous prizes and been broadcast by the BBC. Winner of the 2021 Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Prize, and twice shortlisted…