Gwen Sayers

      Simulacra I was six when I shifted a curtain in a dark room at the waxwork museum and peered through glass at a woman I remember hooks and chains her tattered skirts pale lips crimson stains I thought of her first time I lifted black tarpaulin...

John Bowen

      The Upminster Train We met on the District Line from Wimbledon to Upminster. Chatted all through Southfields. Hands held by Putney Bridge. Our first kiss at a sudden lurch near Parson’s Green. In love as we pulled in at Fulham Broadway. It was all...

Dennis Tomlinson

      The Lea at Hertford Around me everything is peaceful. The river flows, willows trail in it and children walk by. Nothing of her suicide abides.     Dennis Tomlinson lives in London. His poems have been published recently in Shot...

Rachel Wild

      Zina I remember your laugh, a cackle, irrepressible and sometimes never ending, echoing down the stairs. Wooden stairs, or were they covered in lino, scuffed by hundreds of feet up and down in that damaged old house. There were eight of us living...

Barbara Cumbers

      Because you’ve never seen one, you ask me about stag beetles What can I tell you now that they’re so rare? Every childhood May or June they came at dawn and dusk, mostly in ones and twos, sometimes formation clouds buzzing, black belly-drop, fuzzy...