By LJ. Bleddyn I cut myself open and compare my heart strings to others read the blue and red veins like lines on an open palm mitigate the differences and twist at the similarities same same, but different in my vein paths I wonder why all I've done is chase my own tail for a decade circling in on each other like some destructive rat-king their paths show brick, foundations and funds: security I can scrutinise all day, until the young moon waxes across the sky but the realit

By F.G. Liauw Within the jungle, she runs. Tumbling under foliage, listening for bird song, knowing that any other animal, will only mean the end. Between the cracks, she waits. Radio pressed to a shuddering chest, Protected by a sling and a heart, the only means for a girl, learning to be a boy, learning to be a secret. Inside her home, she seeks. A memory of a smile, of a time when her mother worried about who she’d marry. Before, scissors met long dark hair. Before, sh

By Kiley Baker A user, I believe the term of choice was. At least that’s how I remember the sting of the alphabet arranged in a way like no other. Especially potent when chosen and uttered, by one’s own regretful mother. I thought my health problems were parasites. Turns out it’s me. I’m the bug that needs eradication from houses that aren’t mine, and places where I apparently take more than I give. Just don’t step on me – I might make a mess. I’m pretty gross after all.

By Georgina O'Neill The tears fall like blood, Thick, deliberate, unforgiven. She weeps the pain that almost died But pain never dies. It sleeps beneath her ribs, Waking when the night forgets its stars. A corner of her mind festers Black, swollen with hate, hurt, anger, death. No light dares touch it. If it ever broke its chains, Freedom itself would bleed. The paws of darkness claw through, Raking the walls she rebuilds in vain. Each barrier crumbles, Each scar hums with me

By Jess Chua The Queen gazed upon her loyal ladies-in-waiting selecting a trio of virgins renowned for their beauty unblemished skin and lustrous locks she concocted a powder out of their bones as part of her anti-aging regimen— they loved her, after all #DarkPoetsClub

By Isabel del Rio Daily deeds in self-defence have this perfect symmetry: they mirror what has been done and demand penitence where it is due. No sin and no surrender. What acts our own, which the harvest of persuasion? Guiltless by birth, we are born of old and if we are guilty of any sin, it is uniquely the oldest sin of all: I will not be bound. We sin for others, bear others’ sins, and each event is judged on its own failings: do we transgress, then, when we say rando

By Grace Asharah You were a gatekeeper to all that I had kept hidden. Hades inviting Persephone into her own depths. And in that underworld labyrinth I picked up all my pieces again. A broken little girl who longed to be loved, A priestess battered by too many lifetimes spent silent, An oracle with wide eyed vision and prophecy, A wild artist who breathes freedom and passion Gremlins and monsters of insecurity, The face of the dark Goddess standing before me, Whis

By Jenni Thorne Dig. Dig deeper. Not with hands, but with the hunger that consumes its host, with the black-toothed maw of want that tears at flesh without restraint. Do not fear the deep. Gold is not for you, no riverbed glitter, those pallid flakes that catch the sun for shallow hearts. You seek the pressure-born scream, the jewel that bites through silence, that learns its name in pain. Gouge deeper. Deeper still. Like time forgot your shape, like the earth owes you a bloo

By Elizabeth Reames Vines are crawling out of my nose. I am vomiting roots. I gag, and a taproot splits my brainstem, spears its threads through my synapses—out of my eyes where tears should be, morning glories. My sweat is petals. My breasts leak honey. Vines are slithering out of my cunt—I am birthing. A lotus head rocks in the bowl of my pelvis, it breaches the birth canal, my walls strain, I push—bog water splashes out, warm as womb— I bear down again, I am caught in th

By Liz Kendall I ride the wolves, nestled into the hollow of corpuscles, borne on their bloodstreams, eddied and swelled. Borne to the muscles for tension and flex, borne to the organs for satisfaction, borne on the breath, the chasmed tongue a wadi for blood. A wolf’s tongue is oasis, sand-rough sucking poolshielded by night’s ridged palate, each ivory tooth its own bleak law of gravity. Dark wet heat in the heart of the forest, ice melts at the thought. What is instinct

By D. Dea My most unsettling thought is not about death or monsters, but it is this question: what if nothing is real? Not the coffee cooling in my hand, not my hand holding the coffee, not even this poem I'm pretending to write. What if we are all phantoms living a dream or avatars in someone's game with no memory of entering? What if there is no god, no devil, just us, wearing many skins learning to live different versions of ourselves while the rest fills the void, s

By Poppi Hmlenitsky For Ellie It has been raining for eternity. Somber trees creek. Plumes of silver escape my parched lips, Cracked as stone ruins of a gothic cathedral. I creep from my crypt: Life-depraved, sickly-creature that I have become, Whimpering on the edge of oblivion. The air shudders at the sight of me, such a young thing with Ancient blood painted along my shackled spine. It gushes from my orifices as if engorging aqueducts. Great clods of molded leaves pi

By Angela Cheveau Pale pumpkins pall the streets and an old man hocks up a phlegm ball moon and bins spew condoms cans canisters of laughing gas and boys on street corners pass packages palm to palm and there’s kids with knives in their stomach their chests their backs but the blood is not fake and the appetite for true crime rises and rises it rises like the sewage soaked sea and costumes celebrate real life killers and the Menendez brothers are suddenly celebrities and the

By Scout Clancy Batreau Well, I say, sprawled out on the chapel floor, fragments of relics and rubble perforating ribs, beaming up at Michael entombed in blues, reds and gold, the good news, the only news, is that Earth is dying. You were right, his face remains nonchalant, but there is a flicker in his flames. My mother would sing here, I point to a cracked organ sprouting greenery, I’ve told him this before of course, but stories are all we have now, Alexandria has burned f

By Sticks & Stones Poet Yeah good, You know keeping busy, Getting lost in the hours, One day bleeding into another, Breathing amnesia, Adopting contagious resistance, To literally everything, Becoming adept at exchanging banalities, Isolating in solitary sweaty exchanges, Living on the outskirts of the consumer-driven dream, Constructing little hedonistic monuments, Dry humping the carcass of my last hope, Desperately trying to get a rise out of it, Carving idols out of shado

By Anthony Gorin (Beauty In Normalcy) A number I’ll never call, still have the contact on my phone; an email address and phone number. Both house and mobile. Long passed the house being sold on, I try to visit, have photographed once, for the memories, but not wanting to seem weird. Oh the memories I have down that estate, from the earliest part of my childhood, until close to the end.. Seeing the contact, the name, familiar but distant, and a number I hadn’t remembered. I on

By Roger Vickery Leaf blower in gloved hand, I speak into your intercom, humble as a serf come to tend the laird’s needs, explaining council can’t approve felling the oak that blocks you from a pristine view until I conduct an ‘arboreal review’. As we stroll your ample grounds, I’d love to ask if your mind ever strays to the Caesar stone dust that layered your cutters in silica snow? Some days my brother came home looking like a moulting polar bear. But you mustn’t catch the

By Brindha Shyamsundar Moody night without a moon, revulsed by the red-eyed owl’s perky hoots. A vapour lamp’s burnt-yellow hollow claps thunder into its widening bruise. Teeth clack in the dark, syncing with the mangy dog that growls at the scent of my regurgitated grief. What I swallowed returns now, looming, rising, a shadow finally disgorged. I search for eyes and find none, only his slender, bony fingers folding me into a wordless hug. Cold spills from his touch, and a g

By Marc Brightside One could call it darkness, you or I, that which churns below the plume, irradiated, lingering and unrelenting, bodies shimmering with textured sin, the fear that burns beneath your skin. Scarlet, electronic eyes close in. The eyes know if you walk, or drive, what you drink and where you buy, what medicines keep you alive. Who you think of, late at night, as your hands creep below the sheets. How to hit you. How to make it bleed. How many times you’ve tried

By Clair Mangan The morsel of frozen pastry sits on her tongue, her ears pricked for noise, hands stuck to the fridge door, as the last light of the day exits its ugly head through curtain folds. A packet of biscuits 3 birthday cake slices 3 donuts 6 mini sausage rolls Half a cheeseboard. Leftovers- she’s just getting started, a balloon fit to EXPLODE! Is it the thrill of eating stolen food? Or that her housemate Joanna has started to ask questions about her rapidly depleting