Mix & Match but what if we mixed the smoke of my incense sticks & the smoke of your rolled-up happiness in a room only suitable for two? what if we mixed & matched your hundred fingers with my four fingerprints? what if we let my kundalini meet your ever-hissing snake? what if we allowed my stars-wisdom match your rationale? what if we introduced my kindness to your ancient shield? what if we mixed my akashic records with the records of your past lovers? you should be able to forget... but what if we mixed the smoke of my incense sticks & the smoke of your rolled-up happiness in a room only suitable for two?   Antonela Pallini-Zemin is an English Language and English Literature Teacher with an MA in Creative Writing Poetry by UEA. Her poems have been published in different newspapers, literary magazines and journals across the UK, the US, Mexico, Argentina, and Spain. Twitter: @PalliniZemin

    do not eat you dry out my tongue, dry off, dry off, wither in my mouth like the ripe white leg of a lamb breach-born, caught dangling between guts and dew, fingers of mist still laid in the valley biscuits in a long cardboard tube sticky with crumbs, the dry wafers grandma kept at the back of the pantry, dry off, dry out, it hurts to eat you o my desert, my desert we are the swallowing kind, second-placers, we are the hot gravel standers, eye-shielders we are the grim reminders, the half-forgetters, we are the stand, the regret, the watercourse unswum stand and reflect. in those days i would have impaled an insect on a straw or a thorn, cast about like a ritual magical gesture, life threaded, as if by my command the lock-gates would rise and fall teeming with fish, fish teeming around my legs in green-brown wreaths, teeth like shrikes dry mouths, dry eyes, blind and half-dead in the court of monsters, brain-damaged, gasping caught in the throat, we were the hot asphalt...

    Winter solstice 2020   13/12/2020 dream haiku small hours of Sunday morning family’s little strength guarded for mourning   17/12/2020 still growing on old apple tree— mistletoe   21/12/2020 the peanut feeder disappears — flap of crows wings   21/12/2020 scuffed oak leaves muddy track futile acorn hunt   21/12/2020 above Amroth soggy cornflakes skeletal oak leaves sprouting acorn     Helen May Williams formerly taught at the Warwick University. Publications include: Catstrawe, The Princess of Vix, Before Silence, a debut novel, June, and Native American Literature. She is a Cinnamon Pencil mentor and offers Poetry Surgeries through The Poetry Society. helenmaywilliams.wordpress.com

    The unsheltered places The unsheltered in their places might remark if asked, that a pavement at close quarters is like the surface of the moon just before the sun disturbs itself to snuff out, one by one each florescent streetlight’s fizz that crowds out deeper stellar harmonies. And paving slabs, when seen up close are crusted in a skin-deep film of ash and shallow breaths that blur the craters worn by sleeping bags, which only the dislodged perceive as they move between their havens footprints captured in the lunar soil of crumpled blankets seared by solar winds that rise from a blazing paper cup of tea steam whirling like the telescope that sends the stars’ song home.     Katherine Collins is a poet from Bristol. Her writing has appeared, or will appear, in The Rialto, Shearsman, Finished Creatures, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Anthropocene Poetry. Her debut pamphlet, For the Apocalypse Team, was shortlisted in the 2020 Rialto competition....

    HELL IS REAL Travelling southbound on Interstate 71, motorists pass a sign which reads HELL IS REAL. It stands in a plowed field and serves as a reminder to all God-fearing farmhands that they must indeed fear God. I am not so easily influenced, I could never be a farmhand for the Lord. In fact, I frequently shoplift and have thoughts about holding hands with you in public spaces. The HELL IS REAL sign is one of many roadside prophecies erected in the midwest. Amongst others, there is Jesus Saves, Jesus save My Soul, I Need u Jesus. I do not believe in Jesus, but I do believe in believing. And though I could never be a farmhand for the Lord, I have to love Him. Look at all the signs He gave us.   Charlotte Knight is a British-Ukrainian poet currently studying a Masters in Creative & Life Writing at Goldsmiths. She has been commended in the National Poetry Competition, shortlisted for the Outspoken Prize for Poetry, and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. Her...