1901: The Interpretation of Owls (Four owls on a branch, and one on its own, all smoking long churchwarden clay pipes, and listening to the music of a songbird in front of a giant moon – like five patients waiting for wise Dr Freud.)   The First Below me is a field alive with khaki mice not expecting to be killed. Something else has risen, so I keep one eye closed, think back, and listen.   The Second With most efficient clay, and smartest plumage, I will be ready for the day, you miserable things. Our tree may be scarred but that young flapper sings.   The Third I will not be swallowed by light. My churchwarden, elongated and hollowed to amplify my dreaming truths, remains silent about all the screaming.   The Fourth I’ve given up, except to say: your call. Yes, my pipe has drooped. I would confess to nights of hooting wild, but not while she hits such heights.   The Fifth No room on the branch, yet I can see what they and she cannot, the...

      Vaccination Day At the surgery my mother doesn’t want to wait in the car, keeps opening the door. It’s deadly out there, and all I can think is she’s going to say Yoohoo! It’s Mrs … yoohoo! No one is actually warm enough. Mr Poole never does turn up. I find a tree and urinate on my shoe. Afterwards she says I hope you weren’t too cold? I say, Not at all. Later that night the garden stares back at the stars. How crooked they are. The distance between them. How they catch whatever light there is.       Carolyn Oulton is Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University. She is project lead for https://kent-maps.online/ in collaboration with JSTOR Labs. Her most recent collection is Accidental Fruit (Worple).

    A safe den When my girlfriends come we delineate our territories. I build a fence with a cradle, two chairs and a stool, a cut-out space that protects and defines against trespassing. Knitted blankets cover my baby dolls, rags are my curtains. I arrange kitchen tools and food toys in small plastic pots and pans, pretend to warm a bottle with fake milk, no hole in the tit. When everything is ready we trade a camisole with a spoon and comb or two small dolls against a big one. I dress the dolls up, comb their hair. Everything is neatly lined up, unedible. Then we sit and wait, rearrange our possessions and wait. There is a gap right at the end of my compound, between my side and my sister’s side, we squeeze out and play hide and seek abandoning our beloved things.     Carla Scarano D’Antonio obtained her Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and has published her creative work in various magazines and reviews. Her short collection...

    Something Boy, I see you, turn up day after day, crouch by the pond, assortment of snacks, hold out a hand or stand still as air. Trackies, oversized tee, slowly scattering feed, pigeons land on shoulders that carry the world, there’s room for a thing that touches and breathes. They peck your hair, your old man on a bench watches, chin merged with chest, look of a man who lost something.       Nora Blascsok is a Hungarian poet based in Brighton. Her most recent work can be found in Streetcake Magazine, Harana Poetry and the Babel Tower Notice Board and is forthcoming in Porridge Magazine among others. Her Twitter handle is @NBlascsok  

      moment Once upon a teacup, I woke up. The eyelids yawned and reality percolated down. This is not how rain starts, this is not how the world keeps on its axis. I had a hat to cover my sinful thoughts, and a mouth, to zip them in. My hands scribbled in the air, frescos of joy that would never be found. It was cranberry and I couldn’t keep up. Red stained and I was but a blurb of dust, with no carbon trail.   Lucia Sellars is a poet/writer, artist and film-maker. Her writing has been published in poetry magazines and anthologies such as Utopia (Hesterglock Press) and Repeal the 8th (Sad Press). Her film work has been selected and screened in many Film Festivals. ww.luciasellars.org.