Alex Searle

        Something started you to wake, leaving sockprints in the parquet, there was only the dark, until a hair sliver of light softly glowed on your feet asleep. Behind the closed door, he was there, your father, smoking quietly with himself...

H.J. Thomas

      Black Cherry Ice Cream We ate it leaning against the rail above the harbour – black cherry, melting down the cone faster than we could catch it. And you laughed, mouth red, sunlight flaring in your lashes. I watched the boats move below us...

Stephen Keeler

      How to get here Among the joys of love was when we got our first apartment on a boulevard above the trams and tree-tops and the wires that cut the street like tangram puzzles and our friends would come with olives and cheap wine they found the...

Linda McKenna

      Smashing Narcissus We set about him with rifle butts and spades, waiting our turn alongside our enemies, the same sunburnt flesh, the same blistered feet. Met where our camps, the same badly pitched shelters, the same lack of meat, converged. Laboured...

Abigail Ottley

    She remembers the house of her husband He’s not, as they said he is: loathsome, most monstrous. He has a strange and sinister beauty. His eyes are obsidian, shot through with gold, a ruby burning in each. A noble brow, and magnificent cheekbones. You can...