Kate Hendry

      Burning the Years Lay down the worst ones – raze them like swathes of heather on the moor. So what if there’s a dead patch. Remember the havoc unfettered fire makes – flames twirl along the ridge, tumble down the gorge. Unbreathable heat and ash....

Claire Simpson

      Nobody’s daddy If I’d known it was him I wouldn’t have smiled so warmly. But he looked like any other middle-aged man taking a Sunday stroll. It’s funny what time can erase. The passing years had stripped away the parts of him that had once made...

Christtie Jay

      Petition For The Woman Formerly Known As My Mother My Lord, let the record show she remembered everyone else before this. If you must, take her in teaspoons. Temper justice with mercy. Let her forget the wrong men, sharp belts, winters with no oil...

May Grier

      That Three-Tusked Beast I wasn’t to know that it was a three-tusked beast; that there was not one, not two, but three that grew the seed of me. Back then, who’d ever heard of that unlikely jungle lore? In school there was room for two, no more: a...

Daniel Hill

      Pollarding An ancient art of tree management, in which the top branches of trees are removed to promote dense new growth, provide light to the understory & fodder for animals. On her first day home, she took to plucking the sky with tweezers—...