A Cauliflower Farmer Fabiyas MV He still standsin the back rowwith the traditional misery.His plantsalways get his carbon dioxide.But his hopetrapped in the collapsed pricesuffocates.Farm Aid Package orbitsover his lifelike a malfunctioning satellite.His debt thrivesamong the dream debris.The farmers’ dry voice flamesin the street.He toothrows his produce.His cauliflowers scatteron the roadlike the baton-charged protest.
The Snow Hulk Ruth Taaffe I’m in the front, Mum sits behind with both my sleeping sisters, flaked from Auld Lang Syne. Snow scraps hurl like curls of peel, fling themselves into the windscreen. I can’t believe how secret the cautious, clotted streets appear. The year is closing. The world’s transforming. Our garden, dressed like […]
The Butterfly William Lythgoe The other night, or possibly around three hundred years BC I dreamed I was a butterfly, free to follow a random breeze yet always landing on a flower. I don’t know why. It could have been because I know, in China over two thousand years ago, a man whose name […]
Happy Birthday William Lythgoe Birthday, wedding day, death day. Trying to tame the torrent – to make the sound and fury signify something. Gestation, procreation, A rainbow arches to the whirlpool below. You cannot know your destination so let the wine flow. Lose control and merge with the one who makes you […]
A modest crucifixion Millicent Stott I saw Jesus crucified on a lamppost, rosebud lips painted rouge. Rotting pink petals and cigarettes adorned the soggy pavement by his bloody feet. The savage decadence of those unkempt seams of skin shimmered playfully against the edge of that Tuesday night, Heat haze. Cheap neon glamour, his leopard […]
Transience Katie Mason I sit on the rocks and watch the tide go out. My mother has died. She has been dragged away from me, Like the waves heaved back by the moon. Along moving platforms, I’m conveyed, Shell-shocked, forward, always forward. I must move on, leaving her behind. Pain swells like the […]
Up the ladder Jack Cooper We fed the tree for six weeks, heaping nettles at its base as we bared nearby forest, clearing paths to afternoons spent in high branches while you lay sunbathing on salvaged wood, not hearing dog-walkers when they passed below us, like when – on our first day spent building – […]
Christmas Morning Beatrice Hughes My mother is immortal in the way she holds her cup of tea; in lamplight, before the sunrise, with her eyes shut. Her hands could be housing a baby bird, and through years of love, my father has learned not to fill the mug all the way to the top. […]
The Broiler Chicken Fabiyas M V Her comb is no longer red.It’s meaningless to preen.She stands hunched as a deadpan mushroom.Only flesh matters in her man-made coop.She cannot forage in freedom.She’s not a living thing.There isn’t any wax to seal the pain-pores.Bedding absorbs her vibrancy.A dust bath, she longs for.No cluck.Nothing hatches.Her thoughts transform […]