Heat Wave
Reculver, August 2022

Whipped by flowers, the cliff begins
to crack. Gulls blunder. The sea
is skinned along sand blades.
Towers of the imagined dead
slide downwards in a grip
that is harder than ice.

Carolyn Oulton‘s poetry has been published in magazines including: Acumen, Artemis, Dream Catcher, The Frogmore Papers, Ink Sweat & Tears, Obsessed With Pipework, Orbis, Poetry Village, The Moth and Stand. Carolyn’s most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press.

as a child, I learn to eat words

fill me up with words
brittle like sugared almonds
they crunch in my bones

Amaleena Damlé is a poet and an academic literary critic, who lives in Durham. She writes scholarly and creative pieces about bodies and beings, and has poems in Acropolis, After, Atrium, Dreich, Dust, IceFloe Press, The French Literary Review and Sarasvati. Twitter: @AmaleenaDamle.