Lynn Valentine

      A Bad Spell The rowan by the house is cracked in two, her bark ragged, grown good-for-nothing old. Fungi feed haphazardly and once, a treecreeper, his heart of white running like love on her trunk. A calligraphy of twigs marks wind-spun air, frail...

Matt Nicholson

      Cousin I didn’t know who the call was about, just that it was past my proper bedtime on that surrogate school night, Sunday. I think the grownups had still been up because the landing light was lit for me and it would have been dark if they were...

Karen Hodgson Pryce

      Islay: Your last holiday As he fixed scales in Port Askaig, paid in single malts and country charm, we loitered, impostors on an island farm. All at sea on a serenity of sheep, we played monopoly, box tatty and frail. Its missing chance cards, no...

Nicole Knoppová

      Bird of Prey Mami, I find myself wishing your memory were a bird of prey— red-tailed hawk or black vulture, just as long as the talons dig, long as edges curve into outstretched fingers. Oh to pierce through that final blur, I’d prize any...

Ali Murphy

      One Winter’s Line Between underpants and saggy bra, she hangs her fallopian tubes out to dry. They dangle like a pair of tan tights, dancer’s legs in the wind. She bends, reaches inside the basket, mistakes her vagina for an old sock. She...

Harry Gunston

      Night night knocks inside my dream at the end of the world death house where sawdust covers everything. i am fortified with evening rubble. there are even rooms that repeat themselves as poor excuses or after-dinner cigarillos in a bag of night...