The gravel drive seems longer now,
the knock feels like a split of skin
and out on the fen road, by now there are chalk marks,
diagrams and calculations, cones and contraflows,
plastic zips and silent spinning lights.
No more need for sirens there,
but here, here on the doorstep, every alarm must ring.

Hid some between hearing
and interpretation,
made a new alphabet.

Hid some between wit
and pedantic speeches
to fool anyone listening.

The mandibles look like the tusks
of some gigantic bull elephant bagged
by hunters posing for a photograph
in pith helmets next to a tent
and a wind up phonograph.

Aldgate had its usual smell of dirty metal and coffee. I jumped from platform to carriage. I squeezed beside a Tate Britain poster, clutched the grab-handle. When I chanced a glance, I saw I was the only one standing. Everyone else was wearing spacesuits.

we groan as the mercury hikes
climbing with the ball of fire
the Hot Weather Warning surrenders its flag
feels like 40 and it’s only May Day

-Winifred Mok

where geese balance on one leg
sleeping inside themselves
until they wake for hours of sun
and swimming

-Sandra Noel

You are walking in a half empty street. Carrying a rifle, you are hunting for canned food. Sultry evening falls like an electrified blanket, leaving you breathless. The world you know is long gone. The world has already surrendered to the heat waves followed by water wars, hunger wars. And hunger is a crazy carnivore in your belly. You turn a corner to see two rifles. Pointed at you. You shoot the air calmly.

-Özge Lena

I might eat more slowly, breathe more deeply the fragrance of nettle steep, be more mindful of
the miracle of vegetables of promising colour glinting in the oil of a pan, I might grind my molars
with the thought close that their substance, too, is borrowed from the minerals of the ground

-Alannah Taylor

I feel the sun, its love and anger,
a baked red brick rubbed
on the back of my calves.
Hiking in a binder was a shit idea,
My lungs reach to surface, come short.

It Starts Before Birth

Your tadpole-self, displayed to strangers for a thumbs-up.
Then childhood illnesses, faithfully documented.

We have our eyes on the chairs, ready
for when the music stops. Nobody wants
to be in the space where a seat had been

Sue Proffitt lives by the coast in South Devon, UK. She has an M.A. in Creative Writing and has been published in a number of magazines, anthologies and competitions. She has two poetry collections published:   Open After Dark (Oversteps, 2017) and  The Lock-Picker...