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  Finland, December 2015 Illness had left me brittle as frost, icicle-thin swaddled in borrowed warmth that couldn't keep out the wind's chill, prying fingers, shivering in at every edge. The lake, frozen, feet-thick, immense, swathed in drifts of baby powder. My...

  Eating figs on the bathroom floor         on marble tiles bird like I am a pin measuring drops in the toilet bowl disembogued into this locked space with depressions of earth staring at me the bathroom keeps the history of my enclosures fake windows chewing up...

  Doors My parents’ house became a place of closed white doors, where sound hung spare and echoes found no junk or clutter to rest themselves upon. You move quietly, in a house like that, learn side-feet, stop-breath, corner-pause, learn to turn reverberating...

      Homecoming Winter dusk soughs in, dark clouds threaten, tangle her wool. She sets down his heavy gansy, the jumper finished at last. A memory, that memory, sharp as now, catches her. Him so handsome on the shore that night, her so forgetful - that...

      Black on Black Black is the colour inside      black light   on blackened brick and slats       coaldust  and creosote     those sightless eyes     black as his  coalman’s  vest  and   grimy    coalbent back deep in a shed where he stacks cold...

      Singing Lessons for Beginners Necessity, that scold’s bridle, held her humble and mean, So that she no longer spoke, just looked - Her world reduced to a search for special offers, Fluorescent beacons that steered her far from Shelves profligate...

      Astral Projection Mrs Norris had thought ascension would be whirligig rides in bright violet rays, as the training books all implied. She worked hard on her technique diligently preparing an inner world, a kaleidoscopic version of her garden, neat...

      All that unpicking at the mercy of wind The tide unpleats from her godet, zig-zags in running stitch round the base of the côtil. Her quick fingers unravel raw edges, unpin seed potatoes, rip daffodil seams. She pulls hems from fence posts, tacks...

                                  Matthew Caley's latest and seventh collection is To Abandon Wizardry [Bloodaxe, 2023]. He's made a Poem-Film with film-maker Jesse Adlam for Unicorn...

  Jenny Robb has been writing poetry since retiring from a social work and NHS career in mental health and children’s services. She’s been published widely in magazines and anthologies. Her second collection is Hear the World Explode, Yaffle Press 2024.  X:...

      Ballad of the Cobbler’s Shoes Rural Action Derbyshire charity reports children are doing P.E. in wellingtons. You try doing star-jumps, steps, or squats, in knee-high wellies. One at first, then in twos and threes as term ran on, turn-up for P.E....

      A Town of Shadows Ashington I was born in a town of shadows. The shadow of the black bridge, where boys would crawl, hand by hand, under rails in Beeching’s gaze, cheating teenage death by drop into the lazy Wansbeck. The shadow of the Charltons,...

      Crushed She was only a little woman five feet nothing in nylon stockings. If I stood sideways they’d mark me absent. Lightweight in her youth the heaviness came later. See what you did to me she’d say, scar stretching red across her belly, this is...

      The Language of Inflections When she said ‘could’, it was clearly in italics and when she said ‘one day’, the creak of glaciers shuddered around its edges. The way she said ‘yes’ was a stone dropping down a bottomless well. When he said ‘trust...

      ice cream under the sun   the days are long but the years are short. seconds are tiny kitchen knives in my back. i stopped reading Dickinson, her voice is a sad parrot. i often imagine myself drowning in her punctuated chaos. the grass is...

      BECAUSE When she is toddling small, she learns to hear real good because she cannot see. Faces, unless they come swimming up close. are a blur of piggy-pink and ice- cream. In the street, she doesn’t know, cannot be certain when to smile, when to...