Birdsong in the playground   I asked a sea-gull on a see-saw what’s it all for, what’s it all about? He said nowt and flew away. I asked a crow on a swing the self-same thing, but he refused to say anything, he just hopped off to the roundabout,...

      She believes herself to be a field creature   Nessie is losing her mind boiling cotton with bleach all year long. She stalks lands and fields at twilight, fashions a dress from a beetle’s shell. The women in the dormitories don’t sleep a jot for...

  Holly Bars is a mature student currently studying at the University of Leeds. Holly’s poems have been published since January 2021 by The Moth, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Fragmented Voices, Porridge, Anti-Heroin Chic, Visual Verse, Runcible Spoon, and more, as...

      The Waiting Game Waiting is a great leveller. sitting in the waiting room, differences of height and status are almost invisible: we are equally powerless, subservient to the unseen list and the occasional calls of doctors and administrators....

      Garden I’ve woken at peace; it’s important not to think. I return instead to familiar images; steam rising from the boiler below the house, the pale leaves on the tree whose name I never learned. All I’ve ever done with these things is try to know...

      Consider the snowdrop How it toils through barren months, withstands snow and frost with alchemy of proteins and alkaloids in its sap. How it forges lance-shaped leaves hard-tipped to pierce frozen earth, gifts fresh growth to shaded places. How...

      Hope is for a smile. Not the cheery smile of The medication is excellent these days but the broad smile of You can go home now, everything is fine. Hope is getting up and checking yourself knowing that one day soon you'll be worse - but not today?...

      Forest Facial If I’m not rock, then I’m depth letters, If I’m not stone, then I’m clean persuasion, If I’m not dark, then I’m chisel and mallet, If I’m never cerebral, then I’ll be static weather. So blow in my direction, Wear down my features,...

    Self-Portrait as Road Runner You with your elaborate schemes of entrapment, your hunting parties, moonshine and shot-gun weddings, your Sunday-school socials for girls to glue birdseed and pasta on prayer plaques, sew aprons with Singers– this desert was...