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…
Tag: Poem
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…
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…
Huge Rat Comforts Himself With Lies
The rat engineered to grow to the size of a humanhas only two hours left to live. The laboratory has burnedto the ground. The rat suffered burn wounds, but theseburns will not be what kill him; it’s just that his physiologyis unsustainable when detached from specialized machinery.So he has stepped out of the burning building,…
Pretty Little Chestburster
face-hugged from the black then ditched like a flesh vessel, the worst of it now is wondering where you are. who you’re with. glowing on every grimy corner, I wear you so heavy it feels impossible you could be anywhere but curled beneath my ribs, preparing to pop. Stephen Ground is a multi-faceted writer and…
On Certain Days
there is inside my house a flightof rooms removed by halfan inch in a directionthat I can’t quite nameoff a little at an anglelike in the drawing of a childbut how to get there seemsimpossible to figure out. I sometimes feel the wallsand listen. I wonder ifthere’s something hiddenin those rooms. A cornerwhere the puppeteers…