Falling Angels For my mother with love Peter Branson The conjuror behind closed doors, she mine, me hers, she scrubs our mangled family life starch-white; stems tears, irons creases out, darns holes; small miracles – makes money stretch the week. Her present tense is all I know and we are doted on, consumes her […]
Job No. 1621 Gaynor Kane Once, a carpenter on the Canberra. Now, Rheumatoid anchored aground for years. Got thrown off after a week, you said – caught having tea and a fag. Shipped to a tanker, as your own boss you skipped off early on Fridays to smooth talk girls and dance. I […]
When My Mother Was a Giantess Avra Margariti She let me sit on her shoulders, fed me spotted eggs plucked fresh from mountaintop nests, flew me like a girl-plane through the clouds to gather their moisture on my tongue. When she got sick, she shrank and sank while I underwent a stretching metamorphosis, […]
Overdue Ruth Taaffe This was the date that should’ve been. It catches me every year like the gasp of a plot twist I almost forgot. While all the world waited on an inhale for your first big cry you were reserved, belated, biding your time. ‘Not yet cooked’, your Grandma joked as […]
Waiting Sue Morgan I was at Crewe station between trains. I had a call to make from one of the old pay-phones. After, I went to sit on a wooden bench to wait for the onward connection. A nun came to sit beside me. An omen I thought. I wondered whether to […]
CAL ANDERSON PARK Charles Leggett The water tumbles down the conical Coal-dust-coloured fountain; after trickling Between up-jutting stones it stands, a pale Penumbra, rendering a flickering Of streams of light from the nearest of the lamps. This park’s guitarists, lovers, frolicking Dogs. Its shirtless would-be Frisbee champs. Its joggers, strollers, chess combatants, […]
A Home for Christmas Kathryn Ratzko Socks and a hat, a scarf, thick and bulky. Throat sweets tucked down the side. Wipes to wipe away dirt; nothing to take away pain. Room for a razor, or maybe not. A torch for wakeful nights. The tiny space left; soap or shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste or chocolate or […]
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 […]