Alice O’Malley-Woods

For the Peregrines of Offham Chalk Pit The quarry holds your eyrie like a grateful palm. You – indelicate gobber all gape and gum-pink circled in the beach white like a mouth stuck in wonder. O spit-shrieker coming back for yourself, tearing fur so diligently,...

Lori D’Angelo

Give Me Some Sparkle, and I’ll Pay You What You Ask For The cat puts his paw on my hair, and I think about where we could go if we weren’t here. Maybe the nail salon, which seems like a good destination for kill time Saturdays. Except that the proprietor always...

Lucy Wilson

      Dear Fish, Forgive Me Dear Fish, you swam from life and gave your flesh; forgive me. In your ice-tomb, your scales a rainbow of tiny glaciers, frozen in flight; like you, I let myself get caught, sank my heart in a false sea. Factory-ripe, hooked...

Amirah Al Wassif

When I Met God for the First Time The God I know works as a baker in a local shop. From time to time, I see him feeding the kittens bread crumbs soaked in milk. He is not as huge as the religious men tell us; his hand is small, a normal size like all of ours. He even...

Cliff McNish

Heaven For starters, the standard works everyone gets: three trumpets blown in unison; your name acclaimed to the galactic hegemony of stars; plus assorted angels with ceramically smooth hands (the nail-work!) casting wholesale quantities of petals (flowers of the...