Mark Rutter

    Well after Thomas A Clark when the people are gone and the wooden house has been burned down to recover its nails for a short while afterwards there may flourish a small orchard and a well blinking at the sky   Mark Rutter’s poems have appeared in...

Rebecca Cohen

      Why don’t you eat pork?    If you don’t believe in God, my friend says,  why don’t you eat pork? I have no answer for her. I have only the blue-tacked mezuzah stuck to the doorway of my bedroom, the dried wax still wedged in stubborn clots ...

Rhian Thomas

      Undertow   On my phone a newsreel shows a car boot lifting just above the flood. Tail lights like eyes caught in a comic gasp, while its body, like the carriageway, lies under sixty million litres of last night’s rain. Walking through town we...

Sue Norton

      Summer’s End Today I tipped the packet of coffee into the cafetiere instead of the tin. Caught myself in time, didn’t pour water in. I’ve started to write notes to myself: Shut bathroom window. Lock back door. Yesterday at the bank I couldn’t...

Steph Morris

      Summers in black Who’s idea was it? I think his, as I’d started wearing everything from Oxfam. Among my finds collarless shirts. There was I and my clique, ourselves fearfully fresh, seeking out lived-in things, clothing with more history than us....

Kathy Pimlott 

      Going down to do lights and curtains to fool any burglars Twilight: one after another security lights click on illuminating pathways, steps, empty front lawns, triggered by my benign progress, then, disappointed, click off. The sky is a layer cake...