Melissa Collin has gone tilling

by | Apr 23, 2010 | Prose & Poetry

Tilling I work the soil with my own hard handswhile my neighbour, his sky-blue eyesringed with granite, stalks the fieldslike the elements that close hard fast around me. The deep furrows in the raw sienna mudare waterlogged with bits of the sky.A rook swims...

Myra Connell is thinking of jars of jam

by | Apr 22, 2010 | Prose & Poetry

Her China SeagullIt is smooth like skin but cold.When I lick it it tastes like salt.(We must be careful at all times and know what we want.)When I see it, I think of my grandmother,I think of her house and the cellar with the jars of jam.I think of her house with the...

Brian Cole remembers soup

by | Apr 21, 2010 | Prose & Poetry

Soup  In winter he made soup, taking me down the garden to draw parsnips from jaws frozen by the night stars,   then to the scullery to defuse an onion, chopping off its squib, peeling  away the casing.   He’d slice its acid spheres and pore over...

David Mohan is nursing a star

by | Apr 20, 2010 | Prose & Poetry

Nursing a StarI wanted it to be mine.They said it was just a pieceof broken rock. I said a meteorite.My dad threw it upand let it fall, a dead weight,but I knew it merely slept.At night I felt the echo of its radiancefrom the mantelpiece. Inside, I knew,an ember lived...