Traffic Your name kicks my arse nearly as far as the roundabout where Jenny and Kim lounge on the grass trying to get a tan. Fate gave them their pasty skin, or their parents did anyway, emoting shut-eyed karaoke in the snug of their local pub. That’s where I heard your name mentioned in connection with… never mind what else I heard. Jenny and Kim fade from grey to grunge. I become invisible. It’s the only way to survive the brown-aired traffic whipping up a grainy whirlwind that knocks over the empty cans of Red Bull. None of us can fly off this island. We cordially detest each other. The rest of the city growls on. Gritty bodies make space, shuffle uneasily round your name, roll up and light up against the soot. This is how friendships form.     Gillie Robic was born in India and lives in London.  Her first collection, Swimming Through Marble, was shortlisted and published in 2016 by Live Canon  who also published her second...

      Does it hurt? You were lying when you said it wouldn’t – the measles vaccine, the own brand tampon, rows of dead jellyfish on Dyffryn beach. Leaving that place to come home each summer, leaving home at the end of that summer and never coming back. Mainly the time you were in the hospital – there was a gift for every day of your disappearance which only made it worse. Now I ask myself what would hurt the most – sketch a choked reading of this inadequate poem at your funeral, the cleaning of your room when you’re barely even gone. Plan how I’ll roll myself up in your deep pile rug, doused in your last bottle of Anais Anais like a pagan ship burial – and wait.     Ruth Beddow works in the heritage sector by day and writes poems by night. She is interested in the relationship between physical place, home and writing, and has studied with the Poetry School in London for several years. In Summer 2020 she was shortlisted for Write Out Loud's 'Beyond the Storm'...

      In a moment of absence The road whispers in a language not heard these seventy years the sea eats only its pebbles and can be heard calling its kinfolk who listen can listen now the sea can be heard and all the candy floss falls strangely silent hoping for some tongue some lips to stir and noise the blue of this place which insists once more in singing the lapwing a curlew’s song       Julian Brasington lives in North Wales.  His poem 'Home to the Hebrides’ was published by Ink Sweat & Tears in June 2020.  Further poems have appeared recently in Stand, Channel, Dust, Black Bough Poetry, and in the newspaper Morning Star.  He tweets @littorallines

      Back to Work This morning I made eye contact with myself for the entirety of a 48-minute video interview. My manager asked me where I see myself in five years’ time. My Mum says I am careless. I forget to switch off the hob, walk around with my phone on 6%, windows propped open when I’m out, Marmite sucking in its lid, only part-way screwed. ‘What are you trying to do’, my Mum says, ‘Kill us?’     Rachel Cleverly writes and worries. An alum of University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA, she’s developed work with BBC Radio, Rich Mix and Apples and Snakes. She’s been published by Ache Magazine, SPAM Zine, Filler and other places you can read about here: www.rachelcleverly.com.

      ’Twas a long summer of thin air after Vera Iliatova’s ‘Cruel Month’ (2010) Of a drier Sahara. Of the sun living late into the nights; waking before dawn. Of cattledeaths and heatstrokes. Of brown cities in a gas chamber. Of distant, trailing hawkcalls. The green leaves wilted and yellowed without water, trees paler than most autumns. The mileaway forest nothing more than the sound of matches striking before fire. Of silent roofs. Of lesser friendly-visits and evening strolls. Of hiked up refrigerator sales. Children visiting more icecream parlours than classes at school. ’Twas a summer when one afternoon I was brown bamboo sticks. I was salted chips. ’Twas a cruel summer of starved deaths. Of dead lakes. Of ORS’s and electrolyte imbalances. ’Twas a lazy summer of wasted time. A long summer of a sixty-day July.     Jayant Kashyap is the author of Survival (Clare Songbirds, 2019) and Unaccomplished Cities (Ghost City Press, 2020). His other ekphrastic...