By Kate Hamilton the first time a grown man wants to fuck you is a baptism soaked in your mother’s blood.   you are pimple-skinned on the...

By Richard Humphries When first I loved you it was too soon And I had no heart to steal a rose that was yet to bloom   When next I saw...

By James Everest …the earth, full of roads, opened under her…   Yes, my darling, turn, degraded, To the darkness you have seen, To the...

By Peter Kay Unmistakably a crow, dark wingbeat, all portent and doom, hope riven out of the day, forcing studied reflections on a...

By Hetta Jones The autumn night is cold and damp The souls are quiet in their graves In churchyard and cemetery, at ease While somnolent...

By Robin Hutton Under siege from glossy girls With lips that plump in good time For others to desire but never attain And drive the...

By Duncan Abel The scars are not literal, still they catch the corner of a glance that politely looks away – and so does not see the...

By Rumbi Draw me in your lightest pencil So all my errors can be easily replaced Change me, effortlessly I will not resist And I will not...

By Colm Lennon There’s a man standing on the corner of my mind Who never smiles The night girls whisper him their secrets Crying all the...

By Michael Charles Auty in the blue grey, silver sleeting day walls of solid water make white the lawn, the way of hail, no longer...

By Samantha K. Collinson I wonder what will lift this siege of suffering, quaking inside my shards.   You betrayed the depths of my...

By Amanda Andrews The day her father died, she laid at the beach with her back pressed to the sandy shoreline and the soles of her feet...

By Anthony Watts Windows thrown open in vain – indoors and out the same breathless density of heat (nightfall bringing no relief) and...

By M.M.Wake In chrome-lit streets I drink despair, love’s ghost warm on my tongue. Your eyes, twin knives, unravel me a martyr to...

By M.M.Wake I wanted stars, got an empty pint glass, cigarette ash and a stranger’s coat. They left at closing, I stayed watching...

By M.M.Wake The rain’s black tongue licks the roof raw. Pipes rattle with ghosts of women who left and never came back. My belly...

By M.M.Wake I buried my name in coal-dust soil, fed it rainwater and grief. Roots coiled round my marrow, petals pressed prayers to a...

By M.M.Wake I wake with dirt in my teeth, hands smelling of fight. Last night’s liquor still growls in my gut. Love? That’s a joke ...

By Alexandru Gabriel Piron I'm dying to ask you: If you were the one in my head, Would you have coped with the evil echoes? Would you have become their corypheus in the end? I can't wait to admit it to you: I find a sick pleasure Inside my abject mind.. I like violence, I have never known anything more familiar. The desire to break objects and Disfigure disgusting faces, Faces defined by inelegance and arrogance. People like you certainly wouldn't understand, What it's like t

By Kerry Willis You watched me bear my heart and soul over something that was out of my control Sitting there, so majestic on your high...