Sally Festing

    Their Prints Moths, ghosts, this house is full of them, we live with waves of silence but their life roars enormous through our rooms – hung on walls, stuffed in bookcases, leaking from wounded suitcases tied with string. So easy for them to get lost....

Jim Bennett

      the bluebottle died immediately on impact the crunch against the window unmistakable my father stood newspaper in hand the single wrist flick had broken the fly trajectory sent it to a splattering death it had buzzed around the room for hours...

Sarah Cave

  Moomin’s Dream Moomin bit his tongue a forget-me-not token of excess flourished his last night-terror a dark hallway an echo follows 13 steps an amber glow the sign of 13 Moomin’s ball and chain rhyme dissolves in an acid rain ephemera marking stonework he sees...

William Stephenson

      The Chocolate Parliament In summer the facade drips sweet brown sweat. Tourists like to nibble the carvings, especially the gargoyles speckled with raisins and almonds. It’s tastiest around election time when the walls soften in the heat of...

Milton P. Ehrlich

      I Never Had it So Good Floating upside down in my private ocean in a translucent body bag all my needs were met. Though my knees were crammed against my belly, I enjoyed slow-motion somersaults like the Apollo 7 astronauts. I kept my ears pressed...

Jonathan Taylor

    Daedalus After Knossos The maze is now a seashell’s spiral threaded by an ant, a miniature Ariadne searching for honey, as if sun-touching ambitions are drowned in an ocean and grief has compacted Daedalian ingenuity to an ever-diminishing point, the...