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    Unbound It was so quiet she could hear her hair grow, heartbeat stretch across measures, nails twist into mobius strips. She unlatched the window so the hair had somewhere to go, tumbling and snarling like water released in spring. He came every day –...

      Making a new picture from another picture I cut a bright patch free sunlit ochre that I loved placed it high up in this picture ditched the grim grounding and from another picture salvaged the russet which had warmed me excised the violet shades...

      Village Mela In one of those colourful stalls A gentle man with golden fingers Carves a wheelbarrow from broken wood With fine wheels and spokes, A toy you hold with string And pull along the village green. You are the owner of the universe All...

      The Fly I’m not looking where the others are seen something closer focus intensely, a relief, maybe just a fly but look notice the gleam of its body how pointed its wings are its comic crooked legs it’s made of many elements a flying saucer for a...

      The poet disregards the soup she reencounters it on the hob at a merry boil not a slow simmer as instructed borscht like bubbling blood melds fingerlings, carrots, onions in garnet guise isn’t it enough that she peeled the beetroot palms, apron,...

Antonia Taylor is a British Cypriot communications strategist and poet. Her work has appeared in Propel, Ambit, Harana, Marble Magazine, Dear Reader, and Indelible Literary Journal among others. She is a Nine Arches Primers 2023 finalist. Follow her on Instagram at...

      Tulip You seemed to be born blind. At first in cracked pot, in frosted compost Your leaves pined – jaded limp swords Fingering in, I could find no core, nothing that might bloom. So we passed the days. You grew lankier with the light. But still,...

      Yours truly, If only my tongue were context then my teeth would be meaning and when I opened my mouth to eat I would find a story there each time. The one of the blue boy whose mother fed all the out-of-work-actors in the neighborhood but never...

      Municipal Pool That particular, chemical clarity, sun into blue, ripples on the ceiling. Rare days when water rests between the ropes, unbroken and the lifeguard dreams by the open door. You slip in then, quiet, smooth - thinking otter, thinking...

      Bulk I suppose this beautiful bright dawn is the sky trying to offset the wild gusts of last night like a rescue mission. We still don’t get what we thought we’d got. I suppose our serial wrangling to solve the weather we’ve caused is even more...

      Her Mother Quizzes Her About Fruit She says, Yes, I’ve tasted pomegranates and I know what they do. The sense of vertigo: happily dizzy at first, as if you’ve downed a bottle of Shiraz or Merlot. You live by night, dress like a Goth; dark bars and...

      With Grandad gone I had the back of the car to myself, listed the seven counties Dad drove us through every year, three of us boxed on the leather seats. How did we get there, all in one day? Under the gear stick, tarmac in view, open to puddles...

Father wound My sister’s father wound is the flush cut on the bark where she lost her foothold and fell, the trunk burning red between her thighs all the way down the tree to the ground. It happened in the fatherland where the sky is a rock of shale grey covered with...

  Waiting Room, Ward 5b Half five. The sky thickens to darkness through the grime on the tall windows, the claw marks of rain. Someone whistles in the corridor. The drinks machine hums ceaselessly. The TV bracket is an empty gibbet, a bookcase has only a...

  Cell Division Something is pulling at my T-shirt. Something is holding my hand. I can feel it walking beside me. It almost trips me up as its steps cross over with mine. Parked cars squeeze us against the hedge. I have to tread carefully holding my bag out at...