Moira McPartlin

      Riddles Outside the Berber tent the poet and I contemplate the boundless Sahara sky. And I wonder how I got here. No bedtime stories, children’s classics neglected, just weekly comics I learned to read myself. My curiosity deemed dangerous in...

Matthew James Friday

      Elegy for the Caught Fish I Over the Salem highway flies A bald eagle carrying a fish like a weed out of the Willamette. We totem our empires with the raptor, weave into flags, fix on coins but what of the victims? How come no one ever glories the...

Ansuya Patel

      Venerate Her Husband’s Image As A God Think what it must have been like for her fasting from sunrise to moonrise, to wake up three hours before dawn, bathe, apply sindoor on the parting of her hair line, decorate her hands with henna, dress in a...

Chris Beckett

      Bob & Moses Zerihun drove him over the dead-cow hills and Bob’s long hair stood up with shock at what he saw. Every time they stopped, a volley of shepherd boys attacked the Landcruiser with stinging hands and their weightless voices echoed...

Angela France

      The Cloud Driving into low cloud everything fades to a blur, all colour and definition leached so that trees and buildings become vague shapes. The glimpse of a house light is a spark, a blink like the flicker of the broadband router and it seems...

David Van-Cauter

      Lifeboat Two calls this morning – flood of tears… She cannot eat a single thing they give her. Instead it’s up to us to ship it in like cargo: bananas, sandwiches, pork pies and now consommé soup – remember that? These are the things that bind us...