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The archive is a separate site formed from all the posts from that original Ink Sweat & Tears website, it consists of everything we have published up to the end of 2019.
Recent posts
Claire Allen
Now She can't remember why she started recording their FaceTime calls. Now, when she's lonely, she scrolls through this small library of conversations and chooses one. It took a whole February weekend to transcribe and learn her lines before...
Anna Chorlton
The Act Summer began with a bike, its frame painted red, one thin wheel. The focus was balance, hours of clinging to walls and doors; fences and fingertips, pigtails and ears. It became about a clown; greasepaint mouth sadways striped dungarees,...
Millie Light
Ballet audition Bent, a teapot, arthritic neck its handle, lips protruding from the spout she’s irked because I fail to retain the enchaînements. She sees a lazy teen – she doesn’t see a girl walking London each night, imagining death more...
Christine Eales
shallow breathing the pulse of the moon haunts me still * how heavy the scent of rain longing for home * between clouds the blue notes of a skylark * past midnight she rocks her new doll to sleep Christine Eales lives in Surrey, UK....
Jonathan Kinsman
45rpm heart block is a slowness or abnormality in the heart’s rhythm due to a fault in its electrical conduction system. tread wrong here and the needle jumps — skrt-skrt-skrt. iggy pop plays the songs on christmas day, picks from discs wrinkled...
John Chinaka Onyeche
Portrait of a country What is your country in a definition? When the first ship anchored on the shore of the Atlantic. My country became an experiment of - forced marriage. As with guns, plough and religious wars, they wedded three adults...
Sapphire Allard
Memory of Water When you told me once that grief comes in waves, were you referring to your own death? All of us still living trying to dissect our own meaning as if it were pooled in our hands, slipping through the cracks of our fingers. Perhaps...
Jake Wild Hall
Alanis Morissette small dark speck on the window looks at me says you are lonely small dark speck on the window laughs says you are surrounded by joy small dark speck on the window stares at me how it stares small dark speck on the window refuses...
Anne Symons
Golden Shovel after Gwendolyn Brooks ‘We real cool’ A tribute to Khadija Saye 1992 – 2017 Gambian-British artist and photographer She bubbles laughter and we are captivated, caught by real joy in her happiness. So cool – I’m an artist! Rock my...
Andrew Blair
I want/do not want my daddy He is screaming and crying and wants Me and doesn’t Want me And is not sore and does not want medicine But does not want to stay In bed or get out of bed or go Downstairs or to the window And wants me to go away and...
Jaden Pierce
Bath Soak me in an acid bath As I seek to test my limits For pain I do not fear And want to conquer Like the great warriors who have Come before me Performing magnificent feats Showing mind over muscle Sitting in the midst of a blaze Yet calm and...
Jamie Woods
PTSD / IET Guidance Notes for Registered Electricians Too many residual memory devices Trip again, over and over Breaking circuits with synaptic transmission Neurons activating Molotov cocktails She says: Love yourself Be kind to...
Michael Durack
How Way Leads On To Way Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. (Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken) Knowing how way leads on to way, lane to avenue, boreen to boulevard, It is unlikely I will get to go back, take...
Sarah Terkaoui
Elegy for The Tumbledown Dick It burnt down twenty years ago. Landlord’s stealing ran it down. New management couldn’t fix a sticky-carpet sea of broken glass each night. Nor dare to clean the toilets. Dealers’ trade kept high in cisterns. Punters...
Shaniqua Benjamin
The Village after Ryan Calais Cameron A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth, skank around flickering amber hues that singe eyelashes of a soul cracked and popped, barely a speck of him to sign-point that he was...
Jay Mitra for Father’s Day
Lockdown Hospital Visit I’m used to seeing my father’s frown— he’s always been an angry sort of man. He demands respect, silences others and takes control whenever he can. My father and I were never close— there is a lot he hasn’t apologised for....
Michael Forester for National Flash Fiction Day
Fallen Hero First furloughed, then declared redundant by the Justice League, he is asked to hand back his cape and boots. His instinct is to seek immediate solace in the Fortress of Solitude, but it has floated away on a rising tide of...
Robert Hirschfield
Automat Chicken sandwich widow in a cave Edward Hopper edible so lonely it wants to bite off a piece of itself and eat it. * Nothing More To Say The stout aunt says, His coffin is small. He was small. Heaping upon him her scoop of dirt. ...
Sally St Clair
The Road Our father taught us kindness, bringing home speechless men to sit watchfully at the table, their wild hair and swollen fingers mysterious on the white damask, staring as our father gestured with the family silver, leaning in towards the...
Pletts & Berger
Chernobyl : past, present and future tense It all feels sepia; liquidator-faces filling the coach windows dust in the air, that grainy hue that will etch into their bones, scrape its mark on their lungs, turn their complexions a...