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      A Rat Decides to Change its Place   Disgust springs up from the guts to meet a sprinting lump of furry muscle. Only to be ambushed by a brilliance of nose, a skittering perfection of racing claws, Sleek brown legs, pumping from the stewed-tea...

      Doppelgänger I’ve seen dozens of you about the Fylde, face all vape, fatigue, some wild sense of beard, black hair to border it all. Oiled up Kieran, out cold in the ring; pensive Kieran, pacing the promenade; I’ll have spent my own self in this...

      The Bird The bird crept up on him, threw its voice into an empty tree, he started to notice the aliveness of things, wondered how he had slept through his adult life without ever having inhabited a bush. The bird followed him into a glade,...

      Girl Awaits the Psychic Investigators They’re late. The table is laid with a clean cloth, all normal and neat. Our visitors, city men, may find it hard to navigate the path but we can wait. They hope to gather evidence of a haunting; whether he’ll...

      Love is… …inconvenient. Love is untidy. Love is relentless, ruthless and rapacious. Done well, it's hilarious, playful and redemptive – Gina Barreca (for Carrie) We don’t decide who we love. Who we hate, yes, who we’re jealous of, but never who we...

      Heartbust: (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave) Someone is taking a photo at a wedding of their baby at a celebration. There’s a roar of a truck the hiss of a missile the boom of a dumb bomb. The prodigal sun casts shadows in your cave of someone taking...

      Something (almost) understood Firle Beacon, South Downs These hills that look towards both weald and waves hold – in their homesteads, fenced and open land, trackways and contours – all that’s happened here, but hide their mysteries in riddles:...

    Sandra Noel is from Jersey, Channel Islands. Her work appears online and in print. Her debut collection is Into The Under  (2024) and she is part of Linger  first in a three-poet series (2025), both published by Yaffle Press.

      The Stirrups Of Genghis Khan   A decapitated road sign Spears the yellow verge, Meaningless as a symbol Of progress. A vain strut. The bus driver’s hands are folded As the stop approaches. From the fields, An algorithm of hooves enters the ears Of...

      Eels Anguilla anguilla I wrote a metaphor using eel for blue-light reflections in water on a flooded motorway and mentioned glittering scales. My writing group said skin which didn’t have the same feel for an ambulance’s race seen through...

      Because I don’t know any other way I replace my left hand with a hook, my feet with jackhammers, both my eyes with spangled mirror balls. I raise my right hand, and in its palm, I roll another’s choice of dice. I stud my scalp with stars, stripe...

      Some Things My Mother Forgot to Teach Me (Before She Died) A while ago I saw this prompt on Instagram though I added ‘before she died’ because mine did—long before anyway, I made a list How to think of rejection as a yellow brick one I could toss...

      The Biology Department Funny how Year 8 is doing bones now, of all the weeks. In the prep room we strip flesh off chicken wings, steep the bones in acid til they bend like rubber, and the girls shriek. Cardboard femur and tibia jointed with split...

      Memento Vivere We lived here once. The rain we heard fell everywhere. Silence except the wind across the ground. It’s best to keep quiet. Words are like dead seeds, they vanish when they’re said.   *   New Year’s Eve without stars or...

      Misdiagnosis   There’s something wrong with my head it’s too tight, it’s a round black shape on the pavement where the grand piano fell six storeys and flattened my skull There’s something wrong with the sky it’s the colour of a bruise and...

        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...