Jenny Mitchell

      Poison Takes the Place of Food   There’s no one in the flat when I come home from school, my dinner in the fridge – poison on a flowered plate, covered with tin foil, surrounded by full shelves of poison. I warm mine up, dust with salt but it...

Sarah James/Leavesley

      A mouthful of stones The sister I don’t have has pockets bulging with silver-foiled chocolate and popping candy, rustling- wrapped strawberry surprises and infinite packets of unopened love hearts. She leaves me the pocket full of stones, ones my...

Andy Humphrey

      Cine Reels On screen, Dad was the radical – the introverted pen-and-notepad kind, donkey jacket, beard, betrayed. Another time he played a photographer eyeballing Liverpool – statutes, pigeons, couples out to lunch. Thieves snapped in the act. Our...

Nigel Pugh

      My Story Will Be Perfect  Rain like it was Biblical. Sidewalk empty, just me and a happy drunk with the weather-hardened look of a rough sleeper sauntering down the hill from Victoria Station in my direction, shouting out his joy to the world. As...

Chrissy Banks

      Some of This Is True Sun comes out, my body opens all its folding doors, its windows. Sun comes out, my body floats – like feather, cirrus, floats across the grass. Sun comes out. Under the apple tree in the hammock, my body lays me down. Sun...

mulika ojikutu-harnett 

      Monocle remember when we lived in the shrubs? stewed in a shared room. its stench. our own ripeness torturing lungs scored elastic. remember as well as thieving, together we hauled the laundry of our bodies pretty-with-dumb into a service kitchen...