A defence against all sabotage I shake out the creases from my coat, and climb the hundred steps leading to the feet of a bronze giant, its right hand raised, welcoming. I’m meant to lift my eyes, to take in its magnificence, to be stirred up into believing a myth— I tell it, No. It finds nothing to say. In the early morning, the city feels large and spacious. I watch the few people I encounter. I am training my mind to perceive, not the flash and bang of a pistol, not the white gold in a jeweller’s window, not a man’s taut muscled arm or a woman’s long neck, but to imagine in their place the myths that pull these things into my thoughts: myths of masculinity and femininity, money guns and ownership— I tell them, I cancel all myths. And then I laugh to myself, thinking that complete freedom is just another myth. Leafy branches wave above my head while I read a magazine, turning the flimsy pages with fingers stained and sticky with butter and honey. I see through the...

      The Slip Hold on tight to my writing hand, darling boy. Who knows how many words I have left. Don’t let me give them all to the page.   Holly Conant is a new writer and mature student, currently studying at the University of Leeds. Her poems ‘Suspicion’ and ‘A Door’ will be published later this year.  

      Groundhog Bachelor and Drunk Ganders Before the art opening, over appetizers downtown, leisurely and expansively, my aunts Evelyn and Jane swapped stories availing the phrase “it’s true, it’s true” too frequently. According to their testimony (not quite requiring sworn affidavits), when they were kids on the Martinsburg Road farm, the Riley Place, they boarded a groundhog. Tame as could be, he was an essential fixture in an already too generous Catholic family bursting at the seams – a peculiar but tidy, rather urbane bachelor who had the run of the house but took his suppers in his room and each night burrowed beneath the parlor davenport. No one found this arrangement at all unusual as Grandma took in Old-Pat-McGogh, an ancient farmer neighbor from down the road who had nothing, no place and no one. And the geese, who oddly resided outside, sipped from fermented squeezings oozing from the base of the corn silo, their own tall distillery. They wobbled, blasted...

    IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED We have detected a trojan virus! I have developed affinities for dying in peculiar ways such as being choked by the moonlight’s shaking hands or swallowing a cup of live rattlesnake babies Personal and banking information is at risk! I can’t sleep because I keep thinking about God covering me in a salty ocean with lots of shiny urchins To avoid more damage, click on ‘Scan Now’ immediately! I keep thinking about God giving me starfish lungs and muddy seashells as eyes Our deep scan will provide help right now! Subhanallah alhamdullilah allahuakbar is for all the times when I want to be an angry octopus poisonous oozing fakecruel misandry Press OK to begin the repair process! I want to be reunited with my mother in heaven away from my piranha sins and wrongdoings Your computer has been infected! I have stopped recognising myself in the bathroom mirror Install our software to clean your MacBook of clutter! I want God to tell me there is a house...

    Vanishing Mother A jar of Pond’s cold cream glows in amongst her female debris on the dressing table; talc sprinkled with a lipstick smear across a comb. Tissues fluff out of a slit – half-done magic trick beneath a heart-shaped mirror, picturing the mess made of her room: a king-sized bed stacked high with queen-sized blankets. It is like her clothes – layers but too small; skirt hitched at the back; hinge of bulky knees. The open jar displays her haste, a shield of foil jabbed into snowy peaks, in contrast to her shade – the lightest brown for someone black; called dundus growing up – Jamaican for albino: a throwback to slave masters troubling our family line. I long for it, the cream, to smooth her blemishes. In adverts on TV, white women own the miracle of cheekbones that never sag as they stand tall to gaze into a pond, reflecting back their pristine skin.     Jenny Mitchell has won several poetry competitions. A best-selling debut collection Her Lost...