Arlette Manasseh

      Seventy-one Things Paulie Should Know Farewell to the mountains, high-cover’d with snow, Farewell to the straths and green valleys below; Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods, Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods. My...

Lynn Valentine

      A Bad Spell The rowan by the house is cracked in two, her bark ragged, grown good-for-nothing old. Fungi feed haphazardly and once, a treecreeper, his heart of white running like love on her trunk. A calligraphy of twigs marks wind-spun air, frail...

Matt Nicholson

      Cousin I didn’t know who the call was about, just that it was past my proper bedtime on that surrogate school night, Sunday. I think the grownups had still been up because the landing light was lit for me and it would have been dark if they were...

Karen Hodgson Pryce

      Islay: Your last holiday As he fixed scales in Port Askaig, paid in single malts and country charm, we loitered, impostors on an island farm. All at sea on a serenity of sheep, we played monopoly, box tatty and frail. Its missing chance cards, no...

Nicole Knoppová

      Bird of Prey Mami, I find myself wishing your memory were a bird of prey— red-tailed hawk or black vulture, just as long as the talons dig, long as edges curve into outstretched fingers. Oh to pierce through that final blur, I’d prize any...