Ruth Lexton

Watching, January 2021 The new year slouches forward, unlovable, barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel. Pale moonlight streams through the blinds, watching the night in shiftless wakeful patterns, patience hardening...

Claire Booker

Dehydration Never has there been so much interest in the humble tongue. It peek-a-boos from my mouth like the little man in a weather clock. The consultant’s quick look predicts storms in its fur. She keeps pouring water into my glass as fast as I can gulp it down –...

Jacob Mckibbin

      weeks after being stabbed my brother saw his attacker at a petrol station my brother was alone & did not get out of the car even in the ambulance my brother said he wasn’t scared even when the white bathtowel we pressed against the stab wound...

Janet Hatherley

The night before their wedding, Dad tells Mum two things   I. He’s ten years older than he’d said, which makes him twenty-eight years older, not eighteen. It’s a bad blow.  What’s done can’t be undone.  Mum’s only choice is a hostel for unmarried mothers. She puts on...

Syed Anas S

      Child’s Innocence in Gaza We are the ones who see big crackers burst every day— still wondering why the adults hate crackers. While everyone loves simulation games, we live inside them— the most real simulation is the war around us. There...

Dharmavadana

      Tinkerbell on Queensway She barely glances at you when you chink your spare coins in her upturned cap, but still spreads a spell among the pavement footfalls, making her patch by the station a land you try not to invade. Not that you never see men...