By Darryl Houston Smith They promise us fresh, tender skin, A chance to cleanse the spirit at dawn, But birth is merely the beginning of sin, A carcass replaced, a grave withdrawn. To cry again! To taste the bitter air! To feel the heavy weight of lust and time! This earth is but a slaughterhouse for prayer Where souls are dragged through centuries of slime. We are the compost of a thousand lives, Recycled through worms, wombs, and mud; The Wheel turns ceaselessly with knives

By Maddison O'Donnell In my younger days I thought horror was the looming monster in my closet, or the gargling ghoul crouching under my bed, or the skeletons I dreamt marched down the road towards the house and climbed up the scaffolding to sneak inside my bedroom window. I thought it was corpses reanimated in the cemetery across the street and hungry vampires waiting in the woodland and mischievous ghosts clanking around with the bats in the attic and naughty neighbours thr

By Charlotte Smith I went into the sea again, long strides against the incoming tide. Playing fate with the sand with bare feet. I howled into the waves and they roared at me. The way we knew each other was insane. From the shore only underbellies, The ice-cream bodies domain. Here we are only water, and come water again. Nothing can cut me as it drags me around: It buffers, it bruises, half drowns. Ahogada like a hollowed-out sound, It is endless till I surrender. My Limbs