Stash Your spaces silently narrow - slowly clogging arteries, plaque formed out of photographs, boxes stacked and shelves furred up, records, CDs, DVDs. Kitchen stuffed with cookery books, spiralisers, coffee machines and avocado-half-holders; although you only eat shop-bought sandwiches. You just-in-case curator of paperclip collections, plastic bags in plastic bags, kooky cat-themed accessories, shrewd car boot sale bargains, teaspoon souvenirs, steaming pot plant jungles and perfume bottles just for show; although nobody visits you now. Your screams of anguish smothered, by piles of tea towels, never used, sheepskin rugs and blankets, new clothes with the tags still on, threadbare vintage jackets, jazzy earrings sifting dust, designer trainers for that trendy hip hop look; although you don’t go out these days. You stent the walls with vague talk of sorting out and getting rid but you are crushed beneath it all, your breathing becomes agonal. Only the stuff of...

      mary anning, fossil hunter she wore her dead sister’s name as a cloak to ward off the sea’s icy wrath trawled stony beaches sought curiosities with cut calloused hands chiselled and hammered jurassic rocks to display ammon’s horns, snakestones, devil’s fingers, verteberries she sold fossils to survive a landslide buried her dog she discovered temnodontosaurus, dimorphodon and plesiosaurus dinosaurs georgian gentlemen covered her name with theirs at the british museum a bad reflection at the british museum georgian gentlemen covered her name with theirs dinosaurs she discovered plesiosaurus, dimorphodon and temnodontosaurus a landslide unburied the first ichthyosaur she sold fossils to survive ammon’s horns, snakestones, devil’s fingers, verteberries to display chiselled and hammered jurassic rocks sought curiosities with cut calloused hands trawled stony beaches to ward off the sea’s icy wrath she wore her dead sister’s name as a cloak.     Sarah Crowe...

      The Gods Are Addicts It’s better to be cremated, the only way to heaven is as smoke. Burials are the devil’s idea to harvest bones, to set them ablaze and raise hell. Volcanic eruptions are his failed attempts to ascend. Kerosene-lamps know this, throw one into a cane field, strike a match and watch it erupt into a flock of frightened crows. The Gods are addicts and the moon is a crystal ashtray; craters are where they press the tips of spliffs. The stars aren’t shards of a shattered sun, think of them as cigarettes at invisible lips. Perhaps bush fires are the Gods committing arson for a high.   Topher Allen is a poet and fiction writer from Clarendon, Jamaica. His work explores Jamaican geography and the island’s cultural and historical experiences. He is an Obsidian Foundation Fellow whose work appears in Montreal Writes, Pree, Poetry London, Magma, Ambit and elsewhere. Allen won the Poet Laureate of Jamaica: Louise Bennett-Coverley Prize in 2019 and was...

    How Young Bodies Work Grace…in that light was a promise of balance – Joy Harjo O timeline drop us here the moment you step from the subway on 23rd the boy spinning on his back / popping air O body sharpening skin into spin solo show staged on asphalt deep boombox as gospel / as call and response O instigator of moving level with the street insistence of beats joy on his face crowd around the B-boy / to see the freeze O spilling out of song spilling out the body at angles out in the open without pause / downrock not ever astray O living as we live never ready to stop O the shape of that moment A boy not seeing what he begins thank you balance thank you lightness thank you grace O the sound of breath without vibration is saying something without words it is the body saying look at what I can do it is synapse, reflex-wise noise not knowing just doing things naturally that here look unnatural in the spin flip freeze drop pause and we marvel at the body sharpening angles to...

      In love with You played Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga on vinyl, because it was on trend again, and not just for our dads, and we thought it was cool to know all the words to Judas, because we’d studied theology and we had PhDs. And we danced together in a way that was definitely not queer while our boyfriends smoked in the garden. We pretended to be adults, feeling like we were children, but knowing that we were adults, and in the morning it would matter. And we didn’t know the words then, not the words we knew later, only the words to the song, so we just sang to each other still in love with Judas. Judas. It would be years before I kissed you, and by then it would all be far too late.     Clare M Coombe (she/her) is a queer feminist writer of poetry and fiction, with a particular interest in mythology and the body. She lives in Kent, UK, with two cats, two rabbits, and a miniature dachshund called Gatsby....