By M. S. Marshall There’s a dead man at this party lurking around the balloons   He eats conversation Talks to the cake Stares  ...

By Janelle Standish She opened her mouth and the room emptied. Chairs scraped. Eyes dropped. Words fled. A woman in pain is a vanishing...

By Ewen Glass Bending at the waist, chaste, chased around a playground, performing in the round   by lighter-burned see-saw or a carpark...

By Brigitta Barath We met in the dark Our demons played well They’ll live forever As angels in hell #darkpoetsclub #SSDI

By Annie Fisher They‘re all along my path today, trumpeting their purity— a flawless, beaming sisterhood. But I know how they clutch and...

By Carmella de Keyser If you are male You aren’t a producer. As soon as you break through the mother shell Into the beckoning light of...

By Donna Faulkner      He and I are well acquainted. I    hear   the  knuckles of  his  finger    crack. See his breath    blow...

By Ells It's her, The dancing monkey- Clutching rusted tamberines, From when she performs her suppositions On bruising, red knees- She...

By Freya Metcalfe When I die In twenty seventy five When my lungs have had their share Of dust and tar Skin scarred and burned and...

By Alberto Arecchi Birds flying above death chimneys recall an era that will never return. Men fighting under a thousand flags whose...

By Charlotte Mary Smith I want to eat the lilt in your tongue, Curl my fingernails round your ringlets till they snag And I can’t get...

By D. E. Johnston The woods display a chilly light when blanketed in icy white. In sleep, they portend the silence of eternal...

By Glyn Matthews Lightning in the wires welds their bodies, fries their silly brains to scrambled eggs in cranial pans.   Pompeiian arms...

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 ...