Zannah Kearns

      The Farmer’s Prayer He lies across the cow’s prone side and prays for healing. Smooths her flank, half-expecting some bright heat, a glowing surge to match his prayer, a vision of angels, a chorus of song. Beside them lies her calf, warm and...

Anna Kisby

      Faceless extinctions A moth arrives like a small hand passing over my face and when I open my eyes a heartbeat thuds against my bedside shade. Leave your window ajar and your lamp lit – why, that’s an invitation, says he. White ermine, little...

Shelley Tracey

      Under Fire The job I needed. The job that contempted me. The job on a Loyalist housing estate in a blank end-terrace house, a crime scene smeared clean. The house impossible to hearten or heat.  The job that started each day with lighting a fire...

Sharon Larkin

      Waiting I am in the room, waiting to be called, with several ahead of me in the queue. Vincent’s iris on the wall droops from a vase of others, not much perkier. With each buzz and change of light from red to green, someone gets up, approaches the...

Hélène Demetriades

      Placenta Laid flat on the floorboards it’s an autumn tree crown with boughs rising skyward from a severed trunk. It’s a glistening viscus grown by mother and daughter, brought home in a carrier bag, preserved in the freezer, planted out in spring,...