By Arran Potts Thinking about the end of the world, dad idly pours coffee onto an anthill. Perched against the peppered stones of a ruined abbey; he feels the sharp edges of endings that line his skin. Clouds of crows croak and bark in the air around him. Ravens rustle in the trees; while jackdaws and rooks settle like shadows on the yellowed grass. ‘We could eat them, I suppose. We could lure them and hunt them and farm them to survive. Pull out their black feathers, rip off

By Mykyta Ryzhykh We were stolen at birth and brought into this world. This world has robbed us. Cats will never again sing under the window about their nine lives in the nine circles of hell. We are no longer cats. We are no longer dogs. Only occasionally does one of us like to sit on a leash in puppy latex. We are heavy, sir. We are light, Lord, like fluff. We are airy, Lord, like chitin. We are homeless, Lord, like heaven. We are rich, Lord, like the poorest poor man. We a

By Hetta Jones 6.33 am. It’s raining. So softly, I cannot see or hear it, except where it pools on corkwood. Perches over the town. Air still, full of the thrum of dual carriageway, and nothing else. Later, people will rattle empty bins over gravel. Still air here, busy roads there. It isn’t cold. It isn’t warm. It just is. To the left, Jane Sandeman Court. Celebratory in purple-splodged scaffolding. I envisage my tense muscles embellished with purple splodges of pain. It is

By Isaac Thornton An old man—whose wrinkles are oft mistaken for blemishes, but are testimonies to the stories he could tell—cradles the hand of his wife and watches as she trembles in the wheelchair. There is not much to write about the wheelchair, other than it is made of metal, brown as dried blood, and turns in on itself, much like she does. Is it heartless for me to write so much about the chair, so little about her? Or is it the heart that moves me to look down at the c

By Philippa Greasley I don’t remember the clocks facing into the walls Or the light hanging so low, in this hall. Souring the air, cheese-butter fog, Treacle tendrils behind my eyes. I don’t remember these noises inside Breathing bruise-marked floorboards Moth-wing, insect-legs brush my throat Cotton-cracked ribcage bones. I don’t remember something growing Up in the ceiling fissures A larvae showing, twitching, shaking loose Landing – knick-knack wet-splat – in the rot below

By Gabrielle Munslow So I bend my knee— the faithful kneel in the presence of the greater good. The embittered Eucharist wisps away during the final benison. So I kneel on a bed of nails, much like your halo of horns— devotion shaped by punishment, grace barbed in its design. Hot black wax drips between my breasts, baptises me in blasphemy. I rise, ash-smudged, smelling of candle smoke and salt, mouth still sweet with disbelief. I turn my head toward the other mourners. I rea

By Robert Lipton The geometries surround us, the drunk boys on the frat house steps, industrially incapable of irony, are still morose about losing something, to someone, this has parallelogram written all over their pusses. Two infinite lines of frat houses on Euclid, an equilaterally elaborate taco truck with no outside angles, squats on the corner, gravity dripping off it like liquid gerbils, Seurat painted a pear the size of a hot air balloon, but I measure all human di

By Daniel Sowa I ran, of course— laced my shoes with someone else’s hands, chased horizons stitched from their thread. How gallantly I stumbled over roots they never warned me about. The dream was always a tenant, never an heir: it wore another’s face in the mirror, left its fingerprints on my coffee cups, whispered 'almost' in a voice not mine. At night, I rehearsed their victories with tongues heavy as unopened letters. Even my shadow grew tired, bent like quest

By VaadMyst Morning oozes with pus — I lie crippled by weakness, Twisting in bed, crying amid dead dreams. Under depression’s whisper, dawn proclaims despair, From the filth of being — poison seeps into my blood. Time doesn’t heal. The past still rots inside, Under the shroud of loneliness, my strength dried out, feeding necrosis. The awareness of joyless life grows like mold, And depression’s whisper is sung by a ghostly choir. Crows scream, taking off in a devilish swarm, I

By The Mystical Bard of Eire Three score and ten! They say that is about what we get. I wonder about that sometimes. Who will follow in my footsteps? Everyone I have known seems to have gone away. Faded into the silence. It seems the silence is the only one who has stayed with me. But the silence is a great listener. Always there with me, hanging on each word I say. Never judgemental, just perhaps a little cold at times. And never seems to have any opinions. Sometimes I screa

By Alessandro Merendino I shiver by the South Quay Footbridge as if sucked into the dark river. Small ripples lap my shins. Jump! It says I could step into the gelid Thames a little boat with a weak lantern patrols the Wharf; its beam searches for me. I wink. I shiver by the river. The pounding in my lungs keeps time with gulls and sirens; ventilation fans roar. It makes me sick. Jump! It says Can I touch the oil-slick water? just for a moment i smell the sheer drop just for

By Matt Mellor The sheer stone is far from silent. Broad waves – like words – wash definitions into me, meeting my meat. Telling sinews and fibers not to bother. Taunting joints and bones about outlasting them. The profound emptiness of trying, widened by the futility of resistance. My tears aren’t mine alone, they fall from countless others. Echoes of a pain that raged here. Lashed out and burst over the rocks. A red wave. A crimson squall. My face outlasted or came after th

By Ber I shed my skin and slip away A secret through loose lips Never to be caged again Let the mourners grieve Each reminisce the ghost loved and hated My laugh echoes in the hallway It rushes out the back door Caterwauling through the meadows The siren song of freedom calling My spirit pounds its feet on the ground Snaking around the trunks of trees Sighing into the mulch Watched by mother moon Howling with kindred kind Never to be seen by cursed human eyes again #DarkPoets

By Juno Guadalupe Leaping ahead— a fleeting thing, Through dead limbs Brittle brush and jagged thorn. Beneath black roots it slid— The savage inside pressed me on through rot and deep When my leg was torn, but blood pressed me on Scent—decay of flesh, bone— Stung the nose— I pinched it, Squinted forward so eyes could see An aching cave. “Show yerself!” into a hole I never thought could be. Only a knife— The blade belonged to me The lad tried to stick, but I stuck instead Stab

By Brendan Craig I understand that space-time reaches out in all directions like black silk. But that says nothing about the feeling that I am here and now where you cannot be. And I remember thirty years from here we met by chance on a Noumea beach tide because our travels crossed paths on white sand. But that says nothing about an 11-year-old boy wide-eyed at the curving mystery of porcelain-skinned young women. I have seen the way grey cancer eats the red organs t

By Joe Dolce We call on you, word mortician, to use all your skills. Let us remember it beautifully. Do not show us bruises and the settling of blood. Do not describe the sunken and shrunken birdlike bones or tissue skin wrapping dry vein. Do not tell us of fingernail becoming claw or dissolving lung or of pain hammered by drugs. Open your bag, word mortician, open your jars and bottles, cover the bruises with powder, pencil youth on the lips, brush perfume and wind for hair,

By Clare Marsh the Waddington quins died on delivery ~ their shared placenta burned by local custom their miniature bodies sent to Dr Hunter as medical specimens pallid flaccid ghostly water-babies hang in a tank suspended in solution their skin ridged like hands left too long in bath water liquor-steeped foetuses sightless eyes mere hooded slits ribs protruding wraith limbs dangle a chorus of stringless marionettes wailing mouths gape in soundless distr

By Ian Harvey i Tried. Guilty as charged. For shame that sweet toothed justice Swallowed the honeyed lies Of corrupt, capricious men With too much to lose. Lies. A sham. They cursed his name – a pirate Raped by falsehood in the dock. “I will not trouble this court Any more, for it is Folly.” And so the perjurers, triumphant, Slipped the noose Around the turned neck Of Captain Kidd “The innocentest of them all.” ii He died at sunset in Wapping On special gallows erected

By Geoffrey Beevers Must I compare thee to a summer’s day? You’re not as lovely, nor as temperate. There’s no competing with the buds of May And summer always has one perfect date, Sunshine is softer; when your temper shines The heat’s so fierce, the light of reason’s dimmed: And still the fairness of your face declines With deeper grooves and straggly hair untrimmed. It can’t be changed; your outward looks must fade, Crushed by possession of Life’s debt you owe, No lines of

By Frances Green You said I’d get nothing After twenty years, nothing! Enabling you to dress in suits, command respect, be seen, be heard While I stayed behind, washed your clothes, bought your food, scrubbed your house, was berated Weighed down by your mouldy seed, a growing weed, in my depleted soil once rich now crumbled dry The keys you took of my gilded cage You took my tresses long and thick, shiny blondness now grey and fallen; I lop them off You took my body once stro