Hello

      SELECT BODIES   We didn’t say it coming. Preoccupied  By interchangeable analogies (the jasmine Blossom burdening the Avenues, plus several other factors)  We walked to the library, anxiously Equipped. The afternoon  Swung on its tender,...

      Daffodils  Smarmy cunts. Hiding from me, in chattering spheres, year-round spectres of a season delayed. Budding in a darkness unknown - I will remember numbness. A yellow that melts, butter upon frost, their smooth openings jar in the aisles of...

      Snowdrops I remember you from my crayon days. Clung about the tree like children to a maypole, you held green secrets close, the magic of the changing seasons folded in your petals. In the months before my mother died I anticipated you with...

      Death’s Head Moth The effect is to produce the most superstitious feelings among the uneducated, by whom it is always regarded with feelings of awe and terror. ‘The Death’s-Head Hawk-Moth’, in Edward Newman’s An Illustrated Natural History of...

      Wulf and Eadwacer’s Daughter Make Meatballs after the Old English poem   Jessa Brown, a UEA creative writing MA student, has been an Acumen Young Poet. Her work has been published in the Brixton Review of Books, The Mays, and Young Writers,...

      Our Country   Our house was a country my parents founded but none of us were citizens. Nights, the corridor’s iron gate was a border, locking us in our rooms. My mother was both state and warden. I wrapped a hair around my diary before leaving for...

        Joanna Wright lives in the Scottish highlands. Her poems have been published in Northwords Now and Spelt Magazine.

      Bonding I carried you home as if you were an extra bag I might have required while taking my time over shopping — both of us newly hatched on the sun-filled hospital ward. By the time I arrived in the kitchen, the men had already begun on the...

This poem was first published on IS&T on 15th July 2018. Rose of Jericho I am waiting for water; do not blame my Father though he made me a curling spine of dried roots. In a home not built for foliage he did his fatherly duty to pass on only what is necessary to...

      Confessions to a neurologist When it started, I’d tip my chin down to my chest, loving the sensation of my body buzzing. I’d wake, fall to the wall, panic crawl to the loo, ask my wife if my palms were really burning hot I choke on nothing but...

      Sugar Daddy The week before Christmas, my friend arranged a blind date for me. In retrospect, she wanted to replace herself with me. Oysters, lobster thermidor, sherry trifle with silky custard in the Savoy Grill. He flattered, flirted, cupped me...

      At Home with Long John Silver   My mother told me to never suffer fools. "Never suffer fools" she'd say and she hit me round the head. I had an intolerable migraine that stopped me getting out of bed. "Never suffer fools" she said. She'd look them...

      Dream witch Clearing out clutter before Christmas I pick up the figure my daughter made in October; clay skull on stick body yellow corn kernel eyes and crooked mouth pressed in by small fingers, dried brown corn silk hair under a crown of leaves...

      Spinning out      She sees but doesn’t as she spins her coffee out. Behind her, morning squishes wide against the station buffet. Train liveries drape across their line of travel, suffer the shunt and wheeze of doors and half-tumbled bodies....

      Glorious The problem with hotels, she’s found is that you cannot escape the mirrors the buffed marble polish of it all. She can swerve in oversized robes bath towels, sheets.  Do the dance of the seven veils, but still is destined to catch the...

      Unscripted Surfaces The window frames a mirror-lake In the room, a desk, oak that still Calls to its sisters, it suffers the fate Of use and wear, the many hands That have laid on it, the careless cups, The lamps and trinkets and it is full Of...

      When You Become a Man's Muse don’t make the mistake of marrying him. You’ll end up in the kitchen facing the wall until he's ready, then dragged on all fours onto the canvas, dressing gown undone, pet dog following. stories shift in contours of...

      Cold is easy you know where you are with it. No lukewarm promises of what will never come. No ghost-friend who ignores you then tells you through someone else that it was your fault all along. This is no hair toss, shoulder-shrug. No brag in the...