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