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      Cassandra Atherton is a widely anthologised and award-winning prose poet and scholar of prose poetry. She was a Harvard Visiting Scholar in English and a Visiting Fellow at Sophia University, and is Professor of Writing and Literature at Deakin...

      Slow Burn My mother’s life was fire, a smoulder inching along the spliced fuse of her life. Among her first words were coke and coal delivered by the black-smeared coalman who emptied sacks on his shoulders into the cellar. The chunks glistened in...

    A.M. P.M. Step out into the day’s whiteness And breathe the bad air. The early chill reminds you you’re here. The sky is birdless, And planes chew through the sinewy clouds. The taste of coffee is dark In your mouth. The hot black shock Tore open the...

      Morning, Mister Magpie Think of all the chain letters you had to write, the time you were almost knocked down crossing to avoid a window cleaner’s ladder, the look on your face when I put that brolly up indoors. For you, 13 isn’t an ordinary...

      Birdsong in the playground   I asked a sea-gull on a see-saw what’s it all for, what’s it all about? He said nowt and flew away. I asked a crow on a swing the self-same thing, but he refused to say anything, he just hopped off to the roundabout,...

      She believes herself to be a field creature   Nessie is losing her mind boiling cotton with bleach all year long. She stalks lands and fields at twilight, fashions a dress from a beetle’s shell. The women in the dormitories don’t sleep a jot for...

  Holly Bars is a mature student currently studying at the University of Leeds. Holly’s poems have been published since January 2021 by The Moth, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Fragmented Voices, Porridge, Anti-Heroin Chic, Visual Verse, Runcible Spoon, and more, as...

      The Waiting Game Waiting is a great leveller. sitting in the waiting room, differences of height and status are almost invisible: we are equally powerless, subservient to the unseen list and the occasional calls of doctors and administrators....

      Garden I’ve woken at peace; it’s important not to think. I return instead to familiar images; steam rising from the boiler below the house, the pale leaves on the tree whose name I never learned. All I’ve ever done with these things is try to know...

      Consider the snowdrop How it toils through barren months, withstands snow and frost with alchemy of proteins and alkaloids in its sap. How it forges lance-shaped leaves hard-tipped to pierce frozen earth, gifts fresh growth to shaded places. How...

      Hope is for a smile. Not the cheery smile of The medication is excellent these days but the broad smile of You can go home now, everything is fine. Hope is getting up and checking yourself knowing that one day soon you'll be worse - but not today?...

      Forest Facial If I’m not rock, then I’m depth letters, If I’m not stone, then I’m clean persuasion, If I’m not dark, then I’m chisel and mallet, If I’m never cerebral, then I’ll be static weather. So blow in my direction, Wear down my features,...

    Self-Portrait as Road Runner You with your elaborate schemes of entrapment, your hunting parties, moonshine and shot-gun weddings, your Sunday-school socials for girls to glue birdseed and pasta on prayer plaques, sew aprons with Singers– this desert was...

      What Comes After Death? A duck stood on my grave the other day I felt my wits travel up my spine And settle between my shoulder blades Each one, pulling further from the other Until I am split down the middle After a moment the feeling is gone And...

      Hare Witch After midnight put your hand on your chest and wish. Call then to the pull of the moon. Wait to feel that shrink, that all over body tingle that takes you down. Let the wild one come the one that runs the fields for the cold soil, the...