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      Leadbelt Trends of lead, silver, copper, and zinc vein the middle of Missouri. Precious or base, the DNR holds dominion. For centuries, Missouri lead fed the muzzles of European wars, then American, then world. Across the river, in Alton, where a...

      Kiss me quick Often, we sad creatures for peace of mind, pleasure, possibly, perhaps, travel at speed through swathes of green lawns, tall trees, meadows leafy stuff, to reach something, cold wet and bitter, saline sided by yellow sand, pebbles,...

      Observer Effect V Ephemeral should be the default – Evan Spiegel I said, “This is wrong” and they said, “No, it just is,” and I said, “I understand,” and I did, ishly, “But isness isn’t a valid method of mensuration. Presence, maybe.” “You mean...

      Thirsty Shadow the kind of being that won’t post an image of what they look like but wants you to love them to praise them while they lurk behind a grey thumbnail without features using mantras fierce hot feel the heat just a little sip  ...

      The city asleep Street after street, ears bright to bass and tune of two thudding feet, gradients of breathing. But rain is brooding. Sparse headlights, ambient drone of cars kissing tarmac, merging — but rain twists senses, fractures distance,...

      Milk break, lunch break Working the land on good days, after Easter, people would hear the breaks occur at school, children calling as they ran into the playground, familiar skipping rhymes rising from the babble. An ample fence stood between them...

      Patience Some days, the privilege of living isn’t enough. The weight of the kettle is unbearable. You leave the teabag forlorn in the mug, unpoured. Cooking seems too great a price to pay for eating. Instead, you sit and you look at a book without...

  Funeral   Slowly, ordinarily, the unimaginable happens, lowering the past into the dark, covering it. You’ll live to receive the haunts of jagged occasion blunting to dust and dream in the sift of going on. Till then, though, this keeps you. The bleak clothes...

  Clive Donovan has three poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021], Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and Movement of People [Dempsey&Windle 2024] and is published in a variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Crannog, Ink Sweat and...

      The Last Train Home We left the play early. It was the last day before the start of secondary school. Dad told me off for slapping the seats, wanting to see the dust rise like smoke. Floating to the ceiling, dirtying the lights. The doors hissed...

      Creation Radio   There was a time when I took my radio into the night wood and tuned its pyracantha needle along the dial through noise jungles to silent darkness at the waveband’s end. First there was nothing, or at least my ears couldn’t...

      Greylags Find yourself by the lake, its icy membrane split by the long arrow of a skein, reflected flurry of wings, cries bawling. Knit yourself into a parcel against its shriek, the force shaping your bones, steering you somewhere off course, way...

      Early Morning   The terns lift as one from the salt-pools behind the beach – a thick undulating line the lazy ripple of a shaken-out duvet. They dip, rise and swirl like cream stirred through coffee and dissolve into the mist.     Sarah...

      Spring is in the Air Winter soil is hard and hoar crusted, birds peck with blunted beaks, pushing up are the blind green pods of what will soon be yellow daffodils, given light and air. I wait to hear news about you, hear that you resurfaced,...