Maggie Mackay

      She believes herself to be a field creature   Nessie is losing her mind boiling cotton with bleach all year long. She stalks lands and fields at twilight, fashions a dress from a beetle’s shell. The women in the dormitories don’t sleep a jot for...

Holly Bars

  Holly Bars is a mature student currently studying at the University of Leeds. Holly’s poems have been published since January 2021 by The Moth, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Fragmented Voices, Porridge, Anti-Heroin Chic, Visual Verse, Runcible Spoon, and more, as...

David Hensley

      The Waiting Game Waiting is a great leveller. sitting in the waiting room, differences of height and status are almost invisible: we are equally powerless, subservient to the unseen list and the occasional calls of doctors and administrators....

Ryan Norman

      Garden I’ve woken at peace; it’s important not to think. I return instead to familiar images; steam rising from the boiler below the house, the pale leaves on the tree whose name I never learned. All I’ve ever done with these things is try to know...

Iris Anne Lewis

      Consider the snowdrop How it toils through barren months, withstands snow and frost with alchemy of proteins and alkaloids in its sap. How it forges lance-shaped leaves hard-tipped to pierce frozen earth, gifts fresh growth to shaded places. How...

Richard Leise

      The Ewer Once upon a time, a young man and a young woman almost discovered a genie in a bottle.  The Genie, trapped inside a ewer older than Narmer, was a steal.  Set on a shelf inside Endwell Antiques, the artifact, competing with pretty vases,...