David I. Hughes

      The Cartographer He does not shout. He charts. Where treaty lines once hung like old nets, he inks the deep, the dark, the yet-unmade. The map bleeds where his stylus rests. Tested: the pipeline’s buried nerve, the cable’s woven thought, the...

Anne Stewart

      03:41 Downstairs    a poem for insomniacs Huddled on the cat’s blanket, hyenas crying through the night. Scribbled notes regretting tea, the need for light. Time passes, shoulders settle the hyenas to a quiet shout. Everything goes cold as energy,...

Mark Czanik

      Scavengers I loved the tales Luke told me of starving writers, and the sacrifices they made following their hearts. Philip K Dick eating dog food. Bukowski’s candy bars. A forgotten Fitzgerald’s writing How are you? postcards to himself in the...

Stephen Chappell

      At the Barbers She has a way of tilting your head as if lining up a thought. Neither rough nor tender—decisive, like someone used to responsibility. She remembers names, gently enquires after sick wives, errant sons, daughters who never phone,...

Tristan Moss

      Faith … without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.   John Keats I try not to think about my daughter’s condition when I hug her as all I have to do is think about how I walk down the stairs to lose my feet.     Tristan Moss...

Susan J. Atkinson

      If It’s Really Love, Then You Have To Accept This, Too I tell you my heart is breaking but the heart has four chambers and is not shaped like a heart at all so unless the fist squeezing my chest is a heart attack, my heart is not actually breaking...