By Heath Sutherland Walls closed midnight velvet. Doctors seared brands into my skin - depression, anxiety, psychosis —   The true word “autism” slept coiled in my marrow, a black rose waiting for its century to bloom.   I was the boy who “saw” music and cried too soon: Jeff Wayne’s synths exploding violet galaxies, Meatloaf’s bleeding crimson thunder, each note a living shape only my skull could cradle. Beauty inside the looping torment that later tried to drown me.   I lear

By Corrina Kehkét The girl sobs, and the birds sing and the birds sing and the birds sing wings tucked tight, the birds sing. Song and sob meet at a sun-stunned window screen, and the song slips past but the sobs bounce back, trapped with the girl who freed them. The trees softly sway to shyly wave limbs that bow and bend, that gently reach, Hers flail and fling, thrash and snap, crack upon impact with a cold patch of pale sky. The wind blows a breathy tune, a

By Zenobia There is a bloodletting across the land by an on-all-fours submissive obedience to a red knee-capped agenda drooling for greed and power. But to tell the truth, we are all being seduced, hunted, really charmed by the beauty of soft fat lips and are overworked, trying to survive distracted in a buzzed haze from what is really happening until drawn into the darkness of deep sleep. Wake. Up. Find your own voice without prejudice see past the heavy blur of sparkling fi

By Sam Szanto It’ll have to be the labour ward , the midwife says, wheeling the woman who is bleeding. There are no private rooms free . Having passed rows of belly-rubbing women the woman who is bleeding is left to heave her empty belly onto the hard bed. Her husband rests on an invisible chair. The woman clutches the bag that bulges with folded sleepsuits, nappies, energy drinks, jelly babies, romper suits, nursing bras, the birth plan. She silences the phone that fir

By Rach PS When she was small, she imagined her bed could fly away like in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, kneel up, tap three times and wish. There were other clues; mud mixed with piss launched at the neighbours’ cars unprovoked, a note in the spelling book signalled a bad influence. The boys exposed themselves first, but when she did there were consequences. Dad threatened to leave after every weekend row. ‘Divorce!’ bandied about like taking it for granted, leaving the tap run

By Oak Morse I have visions of a hammer swinging into my face sideways through a car window though strapped in a seatbelt, there I go there goes the rasp of Grandma saying she loved me the blueberries I pushed up my brother’s nose the Jenga playdate with the shrink in glossy building like an elevator to heaven the tooth fairy who never came back now teeth tumble down my chest, clog my throat there goes creeping out late to watch grown-folks dance Mama

By Melanie Weckert Connecting genocidal colonialism in two continents. I see a bright thread floating from cloud to watchful bird, catching at feathers of grey and white, slipping through claws of razor-sharp, threading the water of the river to caress a fish, then soar to the top of Eagle Point Bluff. A kiss for the boy who looks heaven in the eye and sees for a moment an angel is there. We wind around children at play as unending games are ended and aun

By J.D. Scève He is at my door to collect a debt owed, My obol where patina trespassed over diseased metal. I’d polish it, but the glint from my eyes ceased yesterday, and succumbed to the pupillary void. Ragged birds poise on the weathervane, My feathered witnesses, Oh, how I wish thunder would dethrone them, And tear out that curiosity. He hunches under his smothering cloak, Stench wrings from the folds of the mottled cloth, As he steps over the threshold to my rooms. Flaye

By Caroline Anne Pollard The sky has stolen the sea—thief of its hue. The sea is bacterium blue. The sky turns bitter as sloes. A gaunt tree stands with Wyllie’s spire— its poverty of leaves grieves. Coarse gorse and the bilberry stain of heather. Weather: force-six gales. Black-headed gulls sing as sirens, their wings fluttering like lost sails. Contagious swarms of midges cloud like black pollen of spores. The island weeps a brown burn. This seizure of seawater cannot heal

By Gareth Coombes When I freeze my pre-cooked meals I often think of you Squeezed into a chest freezer And turning very blue.   When I burn the garden waste I often think of you Sat upon a bonfire Until you're cooked right through.   When I dunk my biscuits I often think of you And hold them underwater Until they're out of view!   When I bury my autumn bulbs I often think of you Under the cold brown earth in a mound Totally covered too.   When I hang my washing I often think

By Lizzie Alexander Who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name   He is losing, involuntarily, his recollections now Falling sands pouring towards inversion Grains of ghoulish recollections downward draining Neurodegenerative erosion of remembrance   She is finding, involuntarily, wholer recollections now Falling sands piling upwards reaching Grains of ghoulish recollections mercilessly mounting Therapeutic exhumation of remembrance   Shared recollections shifting In estranged par

By Caroline Walling Unzip from center to crown; allow a slow un-bonding. With a shrug it slips the bones of my arms; rolls down the curve of hip, peels from the softness of thighs, the firm calves, the map of feet.   I step out.   For a moment it is        a cashmere cat,             a salmon skin,                 an oyster. I gather it up like a newborn, lay it on the table   Hair spread from the scalp as a peacock's tail. Close the thinness of the eyelids; brush a thumb ove

By P.S. Lynch ‘The home of Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz will soon welcome visitors. The house in Oswiecim, southern Poland, was “a great place to raise children,” said Grazyna Jurczak, 62, a widow who raised two sons there.’                            New York Times, January 2025     Monday, they opened the Höss House of Horrors. Eighty years since, and Footfalls thread each room in turn, Capturing silent snaps by iPhone. Forbidden miseries of hidden Hell. “Like on th

By Gergo Sastyin treetops soar as high as the clouds. mud and rocks weigh down the shoes. a butterfly crosses in front. the lake’s pellucid and invigorating— heavy drops of proleptic shadow disturb a reflection otherwise so pure, so perfect: now caught in a maelstrom of amniotic fluid, colostrum, and blood.   distant birds flutter—it must be real, otherwise a numinous sigh would accompany this scenery: god’s approved or doesn’t care. twin-tears follow the first effusion.   fl

By Glyn Matthews If you die before me, as hopefully, you will, (in fact I’ll make damned sure of it after what you did), I’ll extract your roving eyes and display them in the window as guidance for the curious. You’ll see. Well, actually you won’t, so, just so’s you know…   I’ll sell tickets at the local T.I.C. and advertise on Facebook and auction your bits and pieces, (especially your bits) which I’ll arrange on the settee where you ‘entertained’ while I was away, looking a

By Aidan Casey The bonds fail that link you in to the world. Now you scale new heights, now you test new lows. Take stock. Older than you ever were, younger than you’ll ever be, summon up your net worth. Multiply by zero!   Querulous, truculent, let your talent gather rust, set aside avoirdupois, size yourself up for the drop: the daredevil, nothing to it, nonchalant, i-dare-you-do-it, de la mort, a chanson, a swallow-dive swan song.   Into the forge of saints! Now you see me

By W. E. Ticas They said the earth forgets. But it doesn’t. It keeps every scream beneath its roots. Daniel was twelve, walking barefoot through the hills of San Jorge, a sack on his shoulder, the sun burning the names from his memory. He only wanted fruit— a sweetness to trade for rice, a small proof that hunger could be fooled. Then the ground opened in sound, a blast swallowing the morning, and silence came dressed in dust. He saw the child on the ground, the blood mixing

By Gabrielle Munslow Crows are women who embraced the dark and never came back— iron-winged, flame-eyed, their breasts like banners of defiance. They clatter across rooftops, spilling laughter like gin from a broken bottle. Their feathers reek of funeral lilies, their tongues stitched with moth wings. When they open their mouths, the night bends sideways. Men drop their cutlery in terror, prophecy staining the tablecloth. Open wings like iron overcoats, armour against the wra

By Elliot Chester Terror. This is me waking to the sight of an incubus masturbating at the base of my bed. The nodding Jesus on the windowsill shakes its head left and right as my sheet with smiling angels and cherubs convened in heaven is yanked down. It matters not that I’m male. Visiting women is just a myth. Paralysis takes hold as moths, now attracted to blackness, emerge from his mouth; heavy headed, light winged, clinging to screams that retreat like slug’s tentacles.

By Shannon Éilis The view from my childhood estate remains the same as I’m looking out for a black Audi at 3am.   Waiting to cry in that familiar back seat.   Trying to ignore the screams of a neighbour who drowned his daughter in the bathtub.   The sirens in the background as you drunkenly said that this place is a failed suicide net,   and I reminisce on how us girls just wanted to be abused in the ways advertised.   When we’re barely legal, on the back of mopeds circling r