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The Black Pool 14,000 BC Midsummer’s Day On flat plains of low juniper scrub monolithic, massive remnants of ice dwarf the land, draws the herds: mammoth, deer, horse watch calves, fauns, foals while people, wolf, lynx, bear wait in the shade. The ice fails, cracking,...

      Flat Holm Not the boring twin. Not even benign. This is a proper island: rocks, foghorn, lighthouse. Chinkle of footsteps on slate roof fragments – the detritus of war and peacetime paranoia. A glut of leadberries at the defensive ditch: juicy,...

      Jacob Burgess Rollo is a poet and prose writer based in Dorset, his work is featured in From the Lighthouse and Avant Cardigan, a zine he founded with friends. He has an English Literature BA from Durham and is going on to study for a master's in...

      a ghazal for Doggerland —after Doggerland: Lost World in the North Sea, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (2021) we walk through the exhibition hall lost amongst water-logged bones, a sunk haul lost grave-deep underwater, newly unearthed as North-Sea...

Time Travel Whilst the Kettle Is Boiling It is late at night and the kettle is boiling, a quire of steam fanning out in the white kitchen you are holding me as if I were your girl again you are speaking of how much you missed me. Late it is to be taking the outlines...

      Let me tell you about a house on the street where I live #39 It’s the house at the end. White paint flakes off the front gate, wood rots beneath. The rusted latch doesn’t shut it — when the wind changes it takes the gate with it. Someone forgot a...

      Willow Island Hey cat, you’re doing really well, three fields stalked and only one to go. I’ll wield my stick if cows come trampling the cuckoo flowers and clover. Let’s climb the arch of this willow bridge cracked by the wind so it bows its crown...

      In praise of commercial radio and local taxis After you’ve flung yourself inside with your rain-soaked jacket, broken brolly half-mulched paper carrier bags, your crap clattered all over the backseat and down into the footwells where you know...

      Excerpt from the interspecies internet, author unknown, circa 2036* My sky is a hole from which the bucket drops. Like all heretics, I am put to work processing stones. The task adds weight to our silence. Here in the half-light; a boulder rounds...

      Almost nothing To impress you, I became a seven-year-old son of Sparta. A little hard man, crayon marching down the page. Favourite colour – Grey. Favourite animal – Snake. Favourite food – Bread. Favourite drink – Water. Favourite TV show –...

      Seven days God had been playing computer games for a chunk of eternity when he became aware he’d left creation in the oven for a long time forgotten to check what was going on in there. And that smell of burning was no coincidence he saw when he...

      The View From This Hospital Window I admire an empty bench for hours – then a glum couple sit to share strawberries. A pensive man pats his Jack Russell. Yoghurt white sky; life’s brighter now. I slurp weak coffee, push away the lunch tray, read...

      The Speed of the Earth He sees a stainless-steel spoon burned off at the base, a bunch of wild flowers dropped, a builder’s padded glove plastered flat, a car slumped in black ashes and glass. He imagines his classmates singing out the bargain...

      Homunculus Explaining to my little man about proportion, he responds with feeling: a picture of daddy with thousands of fingers. Sensory and motor cortex guiding the felt-tip pen, big tongue lolling as he draws. A little man with huge hands,...

      What is this, a family outing? Yes, dad, that’s exactly what this is, I want to say to him as I open the car door, climb into the front seat, remembering those marvellous trips to the tip at Loscoe. My brother, aged nine, threading himself through...

      The Last Person on Earth I don’t know why I went, I’d already heard about the time a colleague’s husband turned up at the staff barbecue and punched him. We met at The Prince of Wales but he refused to go in because a sixth former was working at...