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      There is a paradox of the irresistible that wonders what happens when it meets the immovable. * A man tried to sell a shield & a spear his marketing spiel had such a fatal flaw it triggered a Chinese word for contradiction. * There was a fox...

      The Way North After Paul Flora’s Der Weg nach Norden II The way north is a savage smile that zig-zags the whole length of the page of ice. You pause on the lip of its jaw above dumb unspeakable black. Across the void you dream the flickering...

      The Fool I am the man you see on a ladder square centre of a field on your morning commute. The rake in my hands clears a patch in the clouds for a clutch of sunflower seeds. Next time you look up from your paper a pother of songbirds have tatted...

      Demands   now a surreal residue lives on your hair you play with in a corridor checking out light fading smiles a verisimilitude of close hands evenings spent on waiting chairs creaked but that decibel silence torn by a stubborn bird outside...

      Break-out Session “I’ll stay here with the strawberries,” he said. He still supposed such droll remarks displayed his youthful eccentricity. The fruit in question, surplus to the buffet lunch, was resting, moist and fragrant, in a bowl, alongside...

      Birthday after Dorothea Tanning I can hardly believe you are real, come in the night with a present; here, at my door, in a snow-dappled coat, your hair illumined, your eyes small violets. I have doors beyond doors, canvasses propped against every...

      Sundays at Grandma’s Gran’s best friend Susan came every, single Sunday. Whippet thin, I often thought she’d disappear into the vacuum of her own cheekbones, she sucked so hard on those fags. Each week we sat through the drag of Sunday Mass, the...

      Mother’s Day Wrapped in her silks the blue and the dim and the dark, mists of scent, eyes closed against the half-light. Together we walk squares and shades, beneath spires like washed bone. We walk together faded streets hand in hand, we mime....

      Melyn (Yellow) I still thank you for making the daffodils grow outside my mother’s house every spring scared she’ll forget you   without reminders painted yellow spilling onto the block paved driveway the yellow trails into the house sits in a...

      Mud I’m a little girl wearing a floral dress and I jump straight into the muddy puddle I see before me. I am not even wearing wellington boots. I am unprepared for the dirt but I am sick of being ready for things. I want to talk my way out of the...

      Lighting Candles Odessa’s cemetery is a forest of granite, each grave with etched portraits. A football star rests by a famous burglar. We’re led to a few drab stones carved in Hebrew, rescued from the Jewish cemetery that was bulldozed for a...

      Beautiful Nubia sings And I remember my father dancing, A 2 step shuffle, Hips swinging, Palms face down, Elbow to waist, Lopsided smile. Seven mountains, Seven streams, And I remember my mother smirking, Face slightly raised, Back resting lightly...

      Maternal Audiology       Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex. Her work is featured or forthcoming in The Madrigal, Ekphrastic Review, Chestnut Review and Atrium, among others. Her first collection, The Colour of Hope, was published...

      pulling leicester from a plastic tube in a southbank market the marketwoman with tie dye hair flogs musty paper maps. spreads your hometown before us, slightly crinkled. in the crowsfoot creases your fingertips tease the contours, unfurl the...

      Hardly This little what called big These squeaks that think they are rules The drips that imagine themselves storming These less than nothing headlines or empty spotlights This barely hardly that struts so special Are what I call a pile of...

      Woman 2.0 Woman 1.0 had bagged half the market but further growth eluded us. Aesthetic upgrades! barked the CEO. We hired a consultant. The fur trim lacks thought, he hissed at the kick-off meeting. It needs moving HERE. THIS area screams for...

      Afterthought She knits something pink with curved needles, pauses only to check and recheck the lines of code that define the pattern she nibbles with her fingers. She casts off the raised levels of FHA, her daughter’s ovulation, the tantalising...