Weird

Thank you for the knickers
but I think I prefer the ones that cover my tummy
and how the elastic feels round my waist.
I started last summer.
I was wearing my white indoor jeans
and feeling kind of both tired and sparky
so I lay on my bed and pedalled my legs
and Eddie went all quiet and said I should go to the loo
which was an odd thing for a brother to tell a sister.
When I opened your present I felt a bit weird
and thought everyone was thinking of me in the knickers
with Ho Ho Ho across my bum
so I twisted them to hide the red words
and wore them like a halo.

Em Gray is a neurodivergent poet living in Brighton, UK. She has been highly commended by the Forward Prize, shortlisted for the Creative Future Writers’ Award and won second prize in the Mslexia Poetry Competition.   em-words.bsky.social, insta @em.k.gray.

All I’s

do what work they can
to piece together a world of
small differences

constructing from them a
single truth
promoting one I’s point of view.

Some I’s are made faulty
apt to misinform
innocent of outline and detail

see Christmas trees
glorious with smudges of colour
are saddened by batteries,
wires.

Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance in Cornwall. Her debut collection, Out of Eden, will be published by Yaffle’s Nest in May, 2025. instagram.com @abigailottley.bsky.social

The Reindeer

Imagine a hippogriff behind a wire fence
at Chester Zoo and no-one bothering to stop
but hurrying on to the Meerkat Experience,
or smelly llamas. But there you stood, marvelling

as reindeer cropped grass, shook nuzzly antlers,
bellowed air. You were six or so, not fooled by elves,
and, as I discovered years later, assumed it was all
fairytale, bedtime stories. Made-up baby stuff.

And now you’re half a spin of the world away,
somewhere I’ve never been, like Narnia
through the looking glass, where Christmas,
is always sun-screen and surf-dudes, never snow.

Dearheart, don’t ever forget how sometimes
you’ll look up and something or someone astonishing
will step into the ordinary. Remember the reindeer.
They are real. They are real. They are real.

Emma Simon published her first collection Shapeshifting for Beginners last year with Salt Publishing. She has published two pamphlets, The Odds (Smith|Doorstop, 2020) and Dragonish (The Emma Press, 2017). She has been published in numerous magazines and anthologies and has won the Ver Poets, Live Canon, YorkMix and Prole Laureate prizes.