Two haibun by John Irvine

Sheep or donkey?Sitting here at my PC at 5:48am, the sun yet to roll over the eastern hills, composing an obsequious email to the editor of some obscure online poetry magazine. Editors can be pernickety buggers given to flamboyant rejections, so pandering to their...

Two poems by Fiona Boyle

Speaking VolumesWhen it grabs you,poetry is a bookon a pinhead:pricking your soul,scratching your mind,dancing in your brain.Cheating Angel The wing of a soultipped the sunthat tilted the earth.The moon smiled,and a womanlit a candle for the babyshe never...

BLACK AND BLUE by Peter Asher

BLACK AND BLUEMaybe, it is a colourtwo shades darker thangrief black. It hasa blue cast to it.It goes through the hues:possibly; perhaps a littledeeper than black – and,perhaps; possibly a taddeeper still than that,before reaching its true self – a colour colderthan...

Sampierdarena – by Julian Stannard

Sampierdarena, 1990Do you sometimes remember the night you were born?Rosalba was our gynaecologist of choice.She smoked incessantly, little flickerings of ashtransforming her consulting room into a not unreasonable display of pointillismo.Her babies were born in a fix...

Coniston, Ontario – by Mike Montreuil

Mike Montreuil writes “The following was written in response to Andrea Porter's Coniston.  You'll see why once you start reading it…”CONISTON, ONTARIO, CANADA1.I pass byon my way to Sudburyand catch a glimpse of what remainsof the copper...