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      What Matters Barbara Hepworth on politics After a long time with persistent, small movements, each one following the effects of the last, the shape becomes clearer, large chunks fall away, air is let into stone. Further in, planes flatten out,...

       Hauntings 1 After the funeral, the coughs continued. 2 Care homes regain life at night. 3 Wait. The morgue will reopen soon. 4 They came asking for more starch. 5 For them, lockdown has just begun. 6 He came back. “Forgot the mask”. 7 Sorry for...

      Rehoboth Bay after Jane Kenyon I was walking on the dock— the kind of activity I go out of town to do— where waterfowl float below with their young. My wife and I fell behind the laughter barreling toward the shore end and at that moment, we heard...

      Snow Fall Post operatively he is unable to drive when suddenly snow fills the street. It’s only ten minutes to walk back home. ‘Not in these shoes,’ he says, ‘not in this jacket.’ Why I agree I don’t know for the snow makes a toy of the wheel in...

      the hard animal of her body the woman next to me shows me her bones she delves into her bag and pulls them out to show me the strongest and how it was broken you know like a tree she says when they cut it like this and she lifts her hand at the...

      Religious Tack When you turned to God I turned away and in some sort of protest, a double-edged olive branch, I started a collection. Small at first: statues from catholic shrines, rude pewter pilgrims’ badges light-up Madonnas. A dome of the rock...

      Daddy’s Issues It’s Monday and screwed-up bits of paper hit her like rocks and bruise her inside and her wine (he said was his) paints the walls and burns like acid, droplets streaming ravines down her cheeks and a demon screams get out of my...

      Cage the ocean in a room sloshing against the walls a bee in your closed fist feel the fury of her tiny heart a mouth in a cage forced to speak a second language a rope of sand spun on a wide bleak strand press your ear to the cold wet ground hear...

      Giblet after Claudia Emerson’s on leaving my body to science Pack the forests away in this dyed night, I won’t need them anymore, hair of thin cigarette smoke, trunk of posed opium.                                            I is a liminal state....

      The Liminal Hours  A chase of messages illuminates my screen through the small hours. Did I just see you? I’m sure I glimpsed you dancing, that green dress, the way you tilt your head to admire  the view. These banshee hauntings my poor abandoned...

      The Cure I knew what my poison was I drank to more than enough I drank like drinking would give answers to questions I haven’t asked yet I built a cage out of the pieces of my bad self binding steel plate to hollow bones fusing old scars to fresh...

      Mute like attracts want – want ignites desire I wake up and my entire life has passed - I’m old and frail, limbs rigid, my breath appears in small puffs they’ve already chosen my gravestone, a chunk of fieldstone – small but quaint except it bore...

      “GOTHS AREN’T BLACK”   BUT YOU’D STARE ANYWAY, AND I CAN SMOKE TREE BOP ON THE CORNER TO BLACK METAL OR BASHMENT, IN PLATFORM BOOTS OR NIKE BLAZERS BECAUSE I AM STILL THE ONLY SPECTACLE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD. IT IS BRAIDS KNOTTED INTO NOOSES,...

    Man-Made For the victims and survivors of male violence and the system that enables it. CW: rape, sexual violence, police brutality, genocide, racism. Raised by West Indian matriarchs I was taught by Black women about whiteness and patriarchy where women...

      Blessing at Arms' Length  a setting-down ritual I can’t begin to speak a blessing any more than I can reach a coat hanger from my chair. I only know how to say come in,  welcome, dear Brigantia, into the home of my hand, my heart, my hesitation....

      Commodity Fetishization  Buy buy buy consume consume consume Faster faster faster harder harder harder Deeper deeper deeper devour devour devour     Rose Knapp (she/they) is a poet and electronic producer. She has publications in...

      Jobcentre Blues   The nights are full of broken sky sirens– of 2,000 stabbings and sexless promises– of hot dog food-banks, and either coffee or tea or pasta or rice. Do you have a cooker or a microwave sir?  No, I sold it in that withering...