Margaret Poynor

      Sugar Daddy The week before Christmas, my friend arranged a blind date for me. In retrospect, she wanted to replace herself with me. Oysters, lobster thermidor, sherry trifle with silky custard in the Savoy Grill. He flattered, flirted, cupped me...

Philip Foster

      At Home with Long John Silver   My mother told me to never suffer fools. “Never suffer fools” she’d say and she hit me round the head. I had an intolerable migraine that stopped me getting out of bed. “Never suffer...

Roz Lester

      Dream witch Clearing out clutter before Christmas I pick up the figure my daughter made in October; clay skull on stick body yellow corn kernel eyes and crooked mouth pressed in by small fingers, dried brown corn silk hair under a crown of leaves...

Michael W. Thomas

      Spinning out      She sees but doesn’t as she spins her coffee out. Behind her, morning squishes wide against the station buffet. Train liveries drape across their line of travel, suffer the shunt and wheeze of doors and half-tumbled bodies....

Jennie E. Owen

      Glorious The problem with hotels, she’s found is that you cannot escape the mirrors the buffed marble polish of it all. She can swerve in oversized robes bath towels, sheets.  Do the dance of the seven veils, but still is destined to catch the...

Jean O’Brien

      Unscripted Surfaces The window frames a mirror-lake In the room, a desk, oak that still Calls to its sisters, it suffers the fate Of use and wear, the many hands That have laid on it, the careless cups, The lamps and trinkets and it is full Of...