Surmaya Talyarkhan

      No mental image I have a friend who designs cards for friends every Christmas. She carves the pattern into lino, maybe a robin, or a heart shaped a bit like a beetroot. I often feel like a lino tile someone has hollowed – not in a violent...

Sally Spiers

      Windless Day Night’s white noise is over. Day arises to stillness. Light crouches behind windows, presses through chinks. Dawn’s chorus conceals a speck of silence that casts a shadow stretching vast across the floor. Double-checking in the cereal...

Louella Lester

    Unnatural Migration When Mom flew off with the Canada geese you made me promise that we would never leave one another. Ever. I wanted to protect you, even though you were an irritating baby sister who I had to bribe with candy and pop, so I could hang...

Tim Brookes

      Flock In the charity shop I try on a coat flocked with fake shearling, shaved-soft almost: fibres fired onto plastic to fool the wrist. At home I snap it. A dust of fur lifts, hangs, then drifts onto the draining board, the bulb, the bruised...

Kim Waters

      Letter to L You’re a character, a Roman numeral, an internet meme. Descendant from a peasant’s crook or cattle prod, you’re the twelfth letter of the alphabet, but missing from a baker’s dozen. You’re in every email I ever wrote, appearing in...

Sylvie Jane Lewis

      Comfort Queens “As usual, we are joined today by about nine or ten gay men who follow me, and a legion of young queer women with anxiety who find me comforting.” Trixie Mattel, via a Livestream Being quiet and easily tired by being...