Philip Dunkerley

      Flying Away I sit watching the green line on the screen, your flight moving relentlessly onwards, away from me. Everything feels hollow. So many people here didn’t want you to go. What have we done to the world, how did we shrink it to allow us to...

Paul Connolly

    Winter Thorn Before the bend he remembers what he usually sees at the bend even in mist-less and anemic days the thorn’s bespoke glow, a hazed corona of frozen smoke its branchlets weave and hold working the air with web, a murk his rallentando steps of...

Owen Gallagher

      The Neglected Partner Love the way your bones keep you upright. your skin a raincoat. Don’t neglect the beauty of all those organs working ceaselessly. Let your body and mind flirt, have a constant honeymoon, swear vows regularly. Praise the...

Dick Jones

      In the Days Before they Came What interests me so much more than those pages of scripture foxed with turning is his choosing of a blue gown over a white; his weighing of two stones in either hand, the one mottled like a perfect moon, the other...

Colin Bancroft

    Looking out on the Menai Strait The viewpoint is deserted. The sky a pastel chart. Beneath the bridge the Swillies gargle, Fish traps bob like U-boats. The glaciers are gone but the air is deathly still. Text messages haunt like Ouija. This age has...