By Ronan Collins Sitting alone at her Five Wounds of Christ where she feeds the pigs of her animal farm. Chippy manifestos of god’s purloin her husband’s soul, & the devil’s [steel ice] infernal son. Shaky heart physically rocking her brittle bones, prayers of Patron Saints: Colmcille, Brigid, & Patrick. I stand in lee of my bedroom window from the praying & saints, they never help. I postulate words Nikola Tesla proclaimed, ‘There are many fallen angels here on Earth,’ god’

By M. S. Marshall There’s a man at the door knocking to come in. He’s all recrimination and teeth dripping with sin. With the pallor of smegma and breath on a rattle, He’s got the walk of a man with an axe for the cattle, and the taste for sweet meats kept under his tongue, a dirty secret rotting in each pull from his lung. He savours the gelding peeling testis like onions docking tails, clipping wings not a man for a bolt-gun, too distant, too removed too lacking in rip. He’

By Daniel Sowa It doesn’t knock. It arrives as the last guest at the feast, wearing my face backward, a silhouette slurping the dregs of my wine. Call it amputated twin— the one I forgot to bury, now gnawing at the edges of daylight, stitching its name to the hem of my shadow. Oh, loyal as a bruise, it licks the walls when I pretend it’s not there, whispers through keyholes in the voice of a mother I never had. We dine together, always. It takes the gristle, the

By Tim Reaper The tracks don’t sleep. They grind their jaw all night, chewing distance, chewing names, chewing the metal taste of might-have-been. I stand by the platform edge and feel the air turn predatory— a cold animal with shining ribs. The rails hum their familiar hunger, electric and patient, like a dog trained on silence. In my pocket, my phone is a dead eye, your messages a museum of almosts. I imagine the train arriving with its mouth open, headlights like saints wi

By Tim Reaper She was small enough to still believe the world was made for touching— hot stove, sharp shell, the bright rule of what happens if. He was smaller, milk-breathed, a soft new noise in the house that stole the room’s attention the way flame steals air. The bathwater waited, perfectly still, a dark mirror with no opinion. It held the ceiling light like a trapped star and she thought: How deep does a star go? No anger. No storybook monster. Just the clean, blank wond

By Tim Reaper Morning arrives like a bandage pulled off too fast. The sky is raw, pink with damage, and the sun hangs there like a cautery tool— bright, clinical, unforgiving. You walk through streets still wet with night, past bins that breathe, past shuttered shops with their metal eyelids down. Somewhere, a siren threads the distance— a thin red stitch trying to hold the world together. You think of the person you used to be— how easily they laughed, how loosely they lived

By Tim Reaper In this country, we inherit metal the way others inherit cheekbones— a birthright you can hold, cold and certain, with your finger resting on the future. They call it freedom and hand it to you in a cardboard coffin, foam cut to fit the shape of a decision you can’t take back. The classrooms rehearse lockdowns like hymns. Small hands learn the grammar of hiding: corner, silence, the holy text of don’t move. On the news, grief is weather— rolling in, expected, me

By Tim Reaper The ceiling light stutters like a guilty witness. In the socket, a nest of copper tongues licks the dark awake. You press your ear to the wall and hear it— the thin, bright choir of current dragging its chain. Somewhere inside you, a smaller room fills with smoke. Your name is written in melted insulation, in blistered plastic prayers, in the soft-pop of a heart overloading. When you finally cry, it comes out as sparks— brief, bitter stars that die before they r

By Tim Reaper One: a toothbrush with your bite in it, bristles bent like prayers that gave up. Two: the last shirt you wore, still holding your shape— a soft absence folded into cotton. Three: a glass with lipstick ghosting the rim, a tender bruise of colour. Four: your name in my mouth, heavy as a coin I can’t spend. Five: the silence after the door, after the phone, after the last sentence didn’t save anything. I line these items up like evidence. I tell myself this is what

By Linda Burnett Covert glance. Late to leave. Mustn’t flinch. Mustn’t crack. Gone at last. Something’s off. He suspects. He must know. Almost done. Suitcase packed. Uber booked. Must keep cool. Landline rings. Checking up. No-one knows. Had enough. Make a break. Don’t look back. Pray I’m safe, won’t be tracked.                                            #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Philip Youden signature carved in hesitant flesh agony & ecstasy have the same effect sharp gasp or snap of a switchblade intemperance carved in tender flesh body trembling to a lover's reflection intensive glare from a lustrous edge delirium carved in yearning flesh agony & ecstasy have the same effect   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Julie Shackman Wizened heart, Its black ash, Bleeding contradictions, Pomposity and entitlement, While I searched for answers, To why your narcissist poison, Tried to rob me of my optimism.   Your dark deceit and river of lies, Stand testament to your foul soul, An ugly, twisted monument, Bathed in bitterness and resentment.   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Redde Michaels Memory fades out from behind the lens where shutter sounds capture light to file away for the rainy days.   Echoes of laughter decay when not caught midair they leak through my hands sand on the wind as I try to bottle the remains.       #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Glen Wilson He is moonlit blue, contact-graph-paper wings, tapered asymmetrical weights for limbs, the foolish look burnished when aerial, what each of us worship is seldom simple. For woven in each wing, is a map of rivers the heavens wept, seams burdened, criss-crossed with beauty and risk.       #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Sumaira A Silence expands between us, A black hole's sucked me in - To its vacuum, infinitesimally small, In an utter spin.   I dust off your marble-esque curves, Recalling inner aloof, Thinking together was forever, Eyes meeting the truth.   Nothing lasts forever, This graveyard communicates, Infinite is nothing, Not even regrets of mates. #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Doug Jacquier Your healing, seemingly random, barely understood, as you intend. Finding that fluttering life muscle behind my dead eyes, you palpate gently until wisdom’s heartbeat returns These words, these iron filings of my secret armour, seek your magnetic orbit and the grace of your embrace.   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By J. Sawyer The poet: Defined by a mockery of feelings, Pretension holds him back, From feeling - Anything at all,   Make it into verse, Create something from normalcy,   Then -   Die, Unknown, forgotten, In dusty tomes, With no folded pages.   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Bethany Jade McDonnell It comes in waves, they say— not the kind that kiss your feet. No, these waves devour.   They wear faces: a song, a scent, memories before the storm.   They come at 3am. In silent screams, dreams turned nightmares.   A whisper of water, but it’s a tempest waiting to drown you.   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Ella Alsop To some, love is giving someone your heart,  and trusting they won’t break it.   I am praying that you will.    That when you’ve grown weary of it.  When it loses its shine.   That it means enough to you,  to gently take it-   and shatter it.    I won’t have the strength.   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge

By Mike Everley I'm just a footnote in your life's story. An afterthought. A parenthesis. Written in feint, low case.   #darkpoetsclub #smallspacedeepimpact #50wordchallenge