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    Afterlife Perhaps the friends of Lazarus, who died and slipped his shroud, on seeing him might swoon or rush to hear the tales of that beyond they hoped and feared to face. Perhaps some cried or shook and got themselves quite drunk by noon. Or had the...

  The Memory of Lives incarnation. God in his worn, greasy jeans like a car mechanic is lighting a new life from an old one. a new cigarette from a cigarette butt. and you are merely a flame between the two worlds, smoked on an empty stomach. while he breathes...

      Erato It takes ages. Tell me what it is you’re after she says, when finally I get through. Rain, I answer, rain that falls softly in a garden, and on the Aegean, the noise they make together, trees in the rain, and the way rain brightens the green...

      Olympics I devoured the Olympics, filled my mouth and scrapbook with sticky ephemera. I stalked a torch, seized my shining, perforated prey, and stared into the void of Wenlock and Mandeville’s eyes. Sometimes, I am in the Olympics. I crawl from...

      Craftsmanship beneath night’s skin he unearths raw stones serrated     encrusted    enigmatic    cold tumbling them in two-twenty grit wears away the dull four hundred    six hundred highlights the delicate garnet’s exposed seam     agate’s...

      Morning Outing with Mum we are at a cafe        just round the corner from hampstead heath                     & sipping berry sunrise smoothies    out of soggy paper straws        we are watching tangles of cockapoos too many       north...

      Old Master Goya was an octopus that smelt of funerals on Mondays. Sundays, the scent of getting ready. Goya liked to swim with sensory stimulus. He would splash about his palette. Goya made two circles on a first encounter. His grip was firm, a...

      Herb of the Sun The pain comes plucked from a field in garlands of sunlight. So many women weave aches into strings of marigolds, with bent backs from children, livelihoods of pouring orange petals, scents of sweet incense and the sunlight is...

      Honesty Lunaria annua Honesty has her green season, her red season, keeping the next generation in her purse, close to her chest, held in. After many moons I am perhaps readying to speak. All the windows in my house are broken, my feet cold, the...

      Jess Phillips reads the names, again Each year in March, on the eighth day, the one we’re allowed to call ours, slowly, Jess reads our names, not the bitch, slut, whore we died hearing, but the gifts from our parents. Remember us now in this careful...

        Julia Webb is a neurodiverse writer from a working-class background who lives in Norwich. She has three poetry collections with Nine Arches Press: Bird Sisters (2016), Threat (2019) and The Telling (2022).  She is a poetry editor...

      Ice Maiden speaks whale, speaks star breathes in  — tight as a tomb breathes out — splintered crackle snow falls  — a silvery kintsugi fooling no-one she wants to be alone with her ice shroud to think slow thoughts drink from snow’s thickening...

      Anne Askew & Amber Heard Plain speaking a woman of few words, is a gift of God (Sirach 26:14) Rack and stretch her, loosen flesh from bone. A jointed bird will not squawk. Each turn and pull will tighten the denial in her lips. Pop the sockets...

      34 Symptoms of the Menopause   A woman somewhere is typing on the internet             my heart wakes me up like clockwork. Now, another woman –             my whole body feels like a bee box too small for the bees. At 3am, a woman Googles    ...

    By the Horns At breakfast my man sticks a purple magnolia bud in my soft boiled egg. The flower opens, distilling to lilac. On my autumn birthday he wrings the necks of seven swallow-wings to gift me the witch’s butter wobbling like an orange nebula...

      The Lost Light Sometimes I’m surprised there’s light in dark places, those corridors, those alleys where you wouldn’t stray if you didn’t need or here in this prefab house I walk past once a week with the dog—left lost at the end of a lane to go...