mary anning, fossil hunter she wore her dead sister’s name as a cloak to ward off the sea’s icy wrath trawled stony beaches sought curiosities with cut calloused hands chiselled and hammered jurassic rocks to display ammon’s horns, snakestones, devil’s fingers, verteberries she sold fossils to survive a landslide buried her dog she discovered temnodontosaurus, dimorphodon and plesiosaurus dinosaurs georgian gentlemen covered her name with theirs at the british museum a bad reflection at the british museum georgian gentlemen covered her name with theirs dinosaurs she discovered plesiosaurus, dimorphodon and temnodontosaurus a landslide unburied the first ichthyosaur she sold fossils to survive ammon’s horns, snakestones, devil’s fingers, verteberries to display chiselled and hammered jurassic rocks sought curiosities with cut calloused hands trawled stony beaches to ward off the sea’s icy wrath she wore her dead sister’s name as a cloak.     Sarah Crowe...

      The Gods Are Addicts It’s better to be cremated, the only way to heaven is as smoke. Burials are the devil’s idea to harvest bones, to set them ablaze and raise hell. Volcanic eruptions are his failed attempts to ascend. Kerosene-lamps know this, throw one into a cane field, strike a match and watch it erupt into a flock of frightened crows. The Gods are addicts and the moon is a crystal ashtray; craters are where they press the tips of spliffs. The stars aren’t shards of a shattered sun, think of them as cigarettes at invisible lips. Perhaps bush fires are the Gods committing arson for a high.   Topher Allen is a poet and fiction writer from Clarendon, Jamaica. His work explores Jamaican geography and the island’s cultural and historical experiences. He is an Obsidian Foundation Fellow whose work appears in Montreal Writes, Pree, Poetry London, Magma, Ambit and elsewhere. Allen won the Poet Laureate of Jamaica: Louise Bennett-Coverley Prize in 2019 and was...

    How Young Bodies Work Grace…in that light was a promise of balance – Joy Harjo O timeline drop us here the moment you step from the subway on 23rd the boy spinning on his back / popping air O body sharpening skin into spin solo show staged on asphalt deep boombox as gospel / as call and response O instigator of moving level with the street insistence of beats joy on his face crowd around the B-boy / to see the freeze O spilling out of song spilling out the body at angles out in the open without pause / downrock not ever astray O living as we live never ready to stop O the shape of that moment A boy not seeing what he begins thank you balance thank you lightness thank you grace O the sound of breath without vibration is saying something without words it is the body saying look at what I can do it is synapse, reflex-wise noise not knowing just doing things naturally that here look unnatural in the spin flip freeze drop pause and we marvel at the body sharpening angles to...

      In love with You played Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga on vinyl, because it was on trend again, and not just for our dads, and we thought it was cool to know all the words to Judas, because we’d studied theology and we had PhDs. And we danced together in a way that was definitely not queer while our boyfriends smoked in the garden. We pretended to be adults, feeling like we were children, but knowing that we were adults, and in the morning it would matter. And we didn’t know the words then, not the words we knew later, only the words to the song, so we just sang to each other still in love with Judas. Judas. It would be years before I kissed you, and by then it would all be far too late.     Clare M Coombe (she/her) is a queer feminist writer of poetry and fiction, with a particular interest in mythology and the body. She lives in Kent, UK, with two cats, two rabbits, and a miniature dachshund called Gatsby....

      emerald earrings misfortune from nowhere stooped like a peregrine folded, weaponized slicing away before from after as clean as cutting butter or severing heads half the house is collapsed open to the weather defenceless, astounded the other half upright, its insides exposed like a doll’s house but staunch, refusing to fall I also refuse I will put on my emerald earrings the ones shaped like dragonflies this little rowan seedling I will plant for us all here, by the door       Mandy Macdonald firmly believes that poetry can change the world, even just a little. You will find her recent work in Poetry Scotland, Pennine Platform, wildfire words, and elsewhere. Her pamphlet The temperature of blue (2020) is available from bluesalt.co.uk.