by IB | Mar 27, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
You always ate oranges I am peeling an orange at the end of something At the end of a line from each time you took up the fruit Dug your thumb in, hooked out a chunk of skin Pulled pith from flesh from round heralding its colours so loud no one could...
by IB | Mar 26, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Mum’s Skull Contains a Vacuum Cleaner Every five minutes it does its job, hoovers every inch of her memory, declutters all pains and sorrows. It booms, roars, heats up, leaves no space for nostalgia. When I ask her if she’s had dinner, she says she...
by IB | Mar 25, 2025 | Featured, Prose
Animals I didn’t think too hard about the personality of the meat on my plate, until I bought Organic. The rack of ribs I was tucking into was born the first week of February – it was three months younger than my baby son. The label told me the breed of...
by IB | Mar 24, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
The Work of Hands And once the father frowned As the boy struggled to fasten The drawbridge on his fort. ‘He’ll never be any good With his hands’ he declared, As if the boy wasn’t there. And once he beat the boy For palming a Dinky toy His mother refused...
by IB | Mar 23, 2025 | Featured, Flash Fiction
Fisherman After a long, dreich day in the firth – soaked gansey, torn gloves, a few sorry mackerel dangling from the lines – I hauled up on the beach. Thick smell of wrack. Bird cries. Night. I lit a kerosene lamp, stood at the sea’s edge,...
by IB | Mar 22, 2025 | Featured, Poetry
Afterlife Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon or rush to hear the tales of that beyond they hoped and feared to face. Perhaps some cried or shook and got themselves quite drunk by noon. Or had the...
