Tim Dwyer

      Social Distancing   March 2020 A lone kayaker skims through smooth waters of Belfast Lough. Yellow legged gulls circle his blue craft, their cries echo along the strand. I want to believe these streams of late morning sun will purify the sea...

Oscar Stirling Payne

      woof! You are a Rottweiler and the hand holding you back straining your voice and collared throat, wanting to rush into the long grass of desire. You are aware of ticks, the inevitable choice: do you love yourself enough to pay the vet’s bill? Or...

Richie McCaffery

      Going without It’s only when I heave myself out of the bath that I begin to feel wet. It’s only when you come out of the biblical rain I see you’re crying. It’s being apart from you makes me see all the time I thought I was depressed I was...

John-Christopher Johnson

      Picking Blackberries My grandfather told me to look under the leaves as many of them were hiding like fugitives. Protected from the spines wearing a coat or thick pullover, he’d nonchalantly part the brambles so that we could enter a...

Carolyn Oulton

      Pandemic The windscreen’s dusty, I forgot to turn off the lights and now the car won’t start. I won’t I assure the man by phone try to hug you when you come. My mother comes forward, I take a few steps back. She cuts the fish and chips in half...

Bojana Stojcic

      In My Dream You are Not Cold I’m not shrouded in a blanket of smog as the first of the winter’s heavy pollution hits the city schools don’t shut and there are no warnings for pregnant women (in my dream, there aren’t refineries and power plants to...