Giraffes It’s the way the dark between stars is filled with light that may never reach us. It’s the way our local Running Man is accompanied by his imaginary friend who keeps up a lively conversation. It’s the way my one-year-old grandson looks at me sometimes, as if he knows more than he will ever remember. It’s the way a vivid dream can take me over, so that on waking I must find a quiet place to stay within its landscape. It’s the way a poem will sometimes write itself, leave me wondering where it came from. It’s the way, before rain, there’s a moment of silence that shushes the world for the coming downpour. It’s the way, after rain, my sense of smell is enhanced, and I get to know the earth, cement, grass, in a more intimate manner. It’s the way walking in a wood will heal, will slow the rush of the body to its end. It’s the way giraffes are silent creatures until left to the night, when they will hum secretly to each other. Mostly, it’s the way I don’t know...

      Déjà Vu   Once more I'm caught on the sly hook of your voice and hauled out gasping into a toxic world. Lifetimes billow and vanish like haunted clouds: I race through the woods, but your word-arrows find me; I soar overhead, you shoot me down with a glance. The end is always the same. Gutted, cooked and carved, I'm served up steaming on your table. The inexhaustible banquet, your cut-and-come-again daughter.     Gemma Harland lives with her family in the lost Yorkshire town of Cheswich. She is currently working with singer-songwriter Alistair Cumberford (of the band Real PD) and Texan artist-animator Joseph Devens to bring her poems to life in different media.   https://www.facebook.com/Gemma-Harland-poems-319189402106183

      An Orphan’s Progress               Geoffroy, no longer young and a man of importance, could have ridden in a luxurious coach.  He chose to walk, because he enjoyed walking.  If Zarafa was going to walk he would walk with her.  No strolling, though—her long legs would require his most vigorous stride.             Fond of Zarafa, Geoffroy fancied she had grown fond of him, too.  He walked a lot, often in exotic and uninhabited places, but five hundred miles would test his stamina.  He and his beautiful companion, accompanied by a well-supplied retinue, would be cosseted.  She had already walked farther than they would walk together, and he looked forward to sharing this last part of her journey.             They made landfall on Tuesday, the 31st of October.  All passengers went ashore for their first night back on terra firma.  After the shortest possible obligatory ceremony, Geoffroy and Zarafa retired to their respective quarters and avoided the public...

      Doctrinal Shuffle In the nakedness of civic planning a few secular aims overwhelm whatever any god could have deemed the key components of human subsistence— none of us knew what was coming next, not being privy to the lofty paper-pushing that informs such distilled machinations. But a sense of brotherhood issued an imprint of unity and so kept enough of us content and out of the way. The next step wasn’t clear but conditions were ripe—since it didn’t completely crush anyone the ground was laid for proceeding into thicknesses none had the basic skills to sift through, so we decided to just leave it on its own.   Hassan Melehy lived all over the United States before settling in North Carolina in 2004. His poems have appeared in The Hat, nthposition, and Prelude, among other journals. His first collection, A Modest Apocalypse, was published by Eyewear in 2017.

      PHEW! WHAT A SCORCHER Headlines regurgitate last year’s “hottest since whenever” claims, two-page spreads bulked out with photos of lolly-guzzling toddlers, sun-worshippers already reddened and some TikTok wannabe in a string bikini. Meanwhile, back in the real world, most of us are squashed into nuclear reactors cunningly disguised as family hatchbacks, sweating through the commute to our own cubicle-sized portions of the ninth circle of hell: Dilbert as the wicked witch of the workplace, melting … melting … what a world!     Neil Fulwood has published three collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere and Service Cancelled. His new collection, Mad Parade, published by Smokestack Books, is a volume of political satires. Neil lives and works in Nottingham.