Mary Ford Neal

      Jane Jane shapes the town to herself. Of the spire, the pond, the iron bridge and the bandstand, she is undoubted queen. She cooks and eats, she feeds and clothes the world, folding bodies and souls into comfortable communion. She is a ladle,...

Tim Dwyer

      Social Distancing   March 2020 A lone kayaker skims through smooth waters of Belfast Lough. Yellow legged gulls circle his blue craft, their cries echo along the strand. I want to believe these streams of late morning sun will purify the sea...

Oscar Stirling Payne

      woof! You are a Rottweiler and the hand holding you back straining your voice and collared throat, wanting to rush into the long grass of desire. You are aware of ticks, the inevitable choice: do you love yourself enough to pay the vet’s bill? Or...

Richie McCaffery

      Going without It’s only when I heave myself out of the bath that I begin to feel wet. It’s only when you come out of the biblical rain I see you’re crying. It’s being apart from you makes me see all the time I thought I was depressed I was...

John-Christopher Johnson

      Picking Blackberries My grandfather told me to look under the leaves as many of them were hiding like fugitives. Protected from the spines wearing a coat or thick pullover, he’d nonchalantly part the brambles so that we could enter a...