Tim Dwyer

      Social Distancing   March 2020 A lone kayaker skims through smooth waters of Belfast Lough. Yellow legged gulls circle his blue craft, their cries echo along the strand. I want to believe these streams of late morning sun will purify the sea...

Oscar Stirling Payne

      woof! You are a Rottweiler and the hand holding you back straining your voice and collared throat, wanting to rush into the long grass of desire. You are aware of ticks, the inevitable choice: do you love yourself enough to pay the vet’s bill? Or...

Richie McCaffery

      Going without It’s only when I heave myself out of the bath that I begin to feel wet. It’s only when you come out of the biblical rain I see you’re crying. It’s being apart from you makes me see all the time I thought I was depressed I was...

John-Christopher Johnson

      Picking Blackberries My grandfather told me to look under the leaves as many of them were hiding like fugitives. Protected from the spines wearing a coat or thick pullover, he’d nonchalantly part the brambles so that we could enter a...

Carolyn Oulton

      Pandemic The windscreen’s dusty, I forgot to turn off the lights and now the car won’t start. I won’t I assure the man by phone try to hug you when you come. My mother comes forward, I take a few steps back. She cuts the fish and chips in half...