Hello

      Bowled Over As I walk them home from school Sneaky Camouflage and Brave Barry train for The Big Fight, dangling from fence railings and fake-kicking brick walls in their black Mary Janes. They’re going to swap summer uniforms for shorts and...

    Birding at dusk On the shores of Mangalajodi: one of Chilika’s few undiscovered corners, the boatman welcomed me with warmth in his eyes. As these wetlands happen to be the turf of these poachers turned naturalists who know it like the back of their...

      Visit Your building is an early 2000’s monstrosity. Mini palm trees and cultivated grass embedded in studded concrete, sweat stained balconies a spit away from the diamond exchange where night brings out prowlers in business suits and lambs paling...

      because I’m a car mechanic’s son When Ed who’s a doctor’s son couldn’t start his car in the snow outside Salzburg after The Magic Flute, I got out to push saying “Pop the clutch Eddie after I get her rolling” which I knew how to do – * because you...

      And sit with the dark In response to Stand in the Light by Elizabeth Rimmer And sit with the dark, when it comes. Smell the wax and the wick – watch its small orange tip glow brighter then fade into black. See the ghost of its flame on your...

  Please join us on zoom for live readings from Carole Bromely, Raymond Antrobus and Catherine Woodward on Sunday 5th September  at 4pm GMT. This is part of  our monthly award-winning  ‘Live from the Butchery’ series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from...

      Water & Mud   The water in its lonely bowl beneath your bed, drawn from where? You were drawn from the mud in January. From the mud.     Robert Hirschfield is a New York-based poet and writer about poetry. He has been widely...

      Building a fire My mother is kneeling by the hearth tearing strips from the West Briton rolling them round her fingers. I see the Penroses had their Silver Wedding. She lays the twisted paper criss-cross in the grate, newspaper ink smudges her...

      Childhatcheries   Even I keep secrets shhh     I’m in love with fingers caressing my insides feeling coils fiddling with my fan I live by touch by brink a contract between      love       grief & up to elbows nurses in soapy rubber gloves...

      My Great Great Grandfather was a shipwrecked Swedish sailor, with sea legs and river hands, forearms like binding strakes. A stanchion of a man, he worked the waters of the bustling Thames, was ship’s labourer then Lighterman, loading cargo and...

      TALENTS The plaster statue of the benefactor moved, albeit slightly. The tilt of the head slightly altered its angle. Leaning more left. Or perhaps more right. Bereft of patience, I thought I could study it no longer, even should it move again,...

      Cece She brings with her an apple as a shield, after every bite she wobbles her tooth, wonders if the next huge bite will be enough. She tells me she is thinking of a giraffe, the giraffe she is certain the tooth fairy will bring. She picks the...

      Ceasefire We lounge in singed hotels seeking salvation in burnt pillowcases, mini bars filled with bullet cases. We swig gems down with vodka, rubies cutting our throats to remind us we are alive, somehow. So much for not eating our gold horde....

      While on Sickness Benefits I sit by a river in Pembrokeshire which is darker (so brown and foul yet, cold-cosy, like childhood dreams) than today’s dark discussion: riverside weekly venting, becoming routine for me and a friend, during our...

      Peace Pipe Now! she goes. He sucks hard, the bowl seethes, smoke shoots up the stem, down his throat, fills his lungs. He tries hard to hold it in, coughs, chokes it out in racking spasms. She laughs. What’s he like? He hopes this will bring them...

      Release This prisoner, isolation wing, wounded, clipped, in stutter nest, unfettered need, communicate, beyond the clamp, a grind of teeth, stumped, just left, ignored, but there. Light all night, the clock reset, sidereal, side-tracked from norm,...