from: Seize i. I fear my poor old soul may be a fixer upper. I strive to find out – it’s that forensic streak I have, I suppose – by too often drinking on an empty stomach. There’s a view afoot, I think, that a proper soul needs proper seasoning. Not the terse latency of an untrammelled youth, casually hopeful, a quietly relieved recognition of having skirted traumatic symptoms of a more reasonably catch-as-catch-can Freudian temper. My therapist now suggests meeting every other week. We’ve become nearly telepathic, anyway. The Greenland shark, lentissimo across human generations, is, I think, a cartilaginous fish of a more melancholy disposition. I think it knows itself its own tragic monomyth.     Chris Cusack is a writer and academic based in the Netherlands. Recent work has appeared in Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, The Manchester Review, The Honest Ulsterman, and elsewhere. Find him on...

      Home Front For days after the children leave for their homes in the South we discover unexcavated battlefields, nonsensical as Towton. Small formations of infantrymen guard the lower book-case shelves, lone snipers lurk behind the curtains, and the abandoned fort, its battered walls camouflaged with leaves and twigs, starts to gather dust under the spare bed. While on television we watch the bombardment of oil-wells somewhere, the final cavalryman, his leg twisted under him, waves his bandaged arm from his lookout on the piano stool, urging us onward. When I switch off lights to go to bed, the bayonet of the foot soldier hidden in our carpet stabs between my toes.     Mick Gidley has always written poetry, and in the 1960-70s some appeared in such magazines as Poetry (Chicago) and the Poetry Review. As a university teacher he concentrated on publishing scholarly works (see, e.g., https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk ). He hopes to see some of his newer...

      Roses The postman was my friend, rang the bell, wouldn’t leave until he’d reached me, handed me broken stems of roses — thorny with their heads at crooked angles, buds that tried but only turned to rusty paper. They’d found you by the postbox wearing just a nightie and your slippers, holding tight a watering can — to quench the thirst of letters and the roses you had sent. You were smiling, singing love songs, told the postman they were for me.     Alison Cohen lives in Glasgow where she keeps bees and an allotment. Previously a psychotherapist, she now works at writing poems. She was the winner of 2020 Hugh Miller Poetry Prize.  

      Voicemail Sarah is away next week so would like to speak to me today if it’s convenient and not too much trouble. She wants to go over some of the finer details and explain how things will generally go from here. Sarah needs to check she’s understood correctly and revisit a few points so we can move the process on. She’d like us to consider the options together and ensure I’m fully informed re: decisions to be made. Sarah says a number of procedures must be got underway, that she should be in touch asap with the necessary parties. Sarah tells me one or two loose ends need tying up before she leaves the office for a fortnight’s holiday. Sarah has written me an email to this effect on Monday. She is thankful and looks forward to talking with me. Sarah hopes to hear from me, this afternoon, preferably, and would be very grateful if I’d return her call.     Paul Stephenson has three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed...

      Seagulls They would shred morning open from 3 a.m, jangling keys in their beaks, an hour after the last scatter of drunks had sung their way home. Every layer of black plastic flayed, pavements strewn with rot, the week split open like the belly of a fish –     Olga Dermott’s debut poetry pamphlet apple, fallen is published with Against the Grain Press. She won the BBC Proms poetry competition 2019. Originally from Northern Ireland, she is a teacher and lives in Warwickshire.