Thank you to all 101 writers, from 15 countries, who submitted.
Feature editors: Katherine Parsons (text) Howard Timms (audio),
As usual, we are looking for writing on your own choice of theme that grabs our attention, pulls our heart strings, leaves us open-mouthed or holding our breath, makes us think, make us laugh or cry, and/or is strikingly original. In short, poems or flash-fiction that excite us enough to share them with wildfire words readers.During this submission window, each writer may make one submission as a single file containing a maximum of 3 items — poems and/or prose. Each item can be in any form, but no longer than 50 lines or 300 words, including title, stanza breaks, dedication or footnotes. For all submissions to Wildfire Words, we choose only content that follows our inclusivity policy of respect for all writers, regardless of their background, beliefs, ethnicity, identity.
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Submitted writing must be your own original work, in English, and unpublished in print or online, including your own website. Where an original writer teams up with a translator into English, we will consider publishing the work, provided biographies of both writer and translator are provided.
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We aim to include writers worldwide. We respect all people and their well-being, beliefs, individuality, and free speech, and expect the same from writers. We’ll publish any work that adds fresh creative spice to this feature. We’ll evaluate your jewel, whether it’s a cut and polished dazzler or a rough stone with interesting lustre.
Open Submissions 8 Anthology
Anthology Authors
Adelaide Gifford
, Anisa Butt, Antje Bothin, Atma Frans, Beverley Duguid, Catherine Ronan, Christian Ward, Christopher Cuninghame, Damaris West, David Ashbee, David Birch, David McVey, Derek Healy, Diana Hills, Dmytro Simianyk, Elizabeth Davies, Elizabeth Maia Graviotto, Ella Walsworth-Bell, Eugene K, Frank Johnson, Frank William Finney, Gavin Lumsden, Helen Anderson, Helen Percival, Iris Anne Lewis, Ivor Richard Frankell, Jacqueline Inglis, Jacqui Stearn, James Goddard, Jaymz Lea, Jeff Skinner, Jesse Wilson, Jim Conwell, John Bartlett, John Ling, Jonathan Chibuike Ukah, Larry Winger, Louise Boddy, Lyra Button, Maryam Alsaeid, Michelle Smith, Mike Everley, Nick Cooke, Nina Lewis, Nina Nazir, Paul Connolly, Phil Kingston, Philip Rösel Baker, Ping Yi, Ridwan Tukur, Sandra Galton, Sandra Howell, Sean Tate, Stafford Cross, Trisha Broomfield, Tony Bradley, Vaishnavi Pusapati
means one audio
Derek Healy
To Have and to Hold
Faltering through their nineties,
reason and memory frayed by age,
they take to ranting at each other,
fight over niggling faults
repeatedly.
So their carers,
reasonable, kindly folk,
do as Solomon might –
keep them together but apart,
split their cosy new-built flat
into a His and Hers,
single beds in separate rooms,
some light touch policing in between.
Yet – even as dignity,
manners and forbearance
are strewn around like clothes,
baring raw red hurt
and never-used rebukes –
still love lies hiding in the flesh,
buried in the bone,
unremembered but unforgotten:
and morning finds them
inseparable in one narrow bed,
what once went unspoken now speechless;
determined, so it seems,
to cling together as they fall.
Derek Healy grew up in Cheltenham and now lives in Great Malvern. His third collection of poems is Uncharted, Graffiti Books, 2022). He has been published in a number of journals both here and in the USA, and has read on several occasions at the Cheltenham Poetry and Literature festivals.
Michelle Smith
Road Map
Let’s buy a big house in the country
where you can twirl me around in the hallway
we can kiss under apple blossom boughs
and get drunk on the symphonies
of our different kinds of hearts.
When it’s time for bed we can smoke cigarettes
between down feather pillows and shiver
to itchy guitars rehearsing sugar paper melodies
that fade around the edges
of our different kinds of brains.
While I sleep you can collect the stars for me
and wake me to ask what to keep them in
we can search the house together for a big enough jar,
with only the moon outside to light up
our different coloured eyes.
Fire on Foam
Through lemon green
and sun kissed rocks,
my feet follow yours,
lost and anchored.
The earth gets down on one knee,
dipping an elbow in the vast Atlantic,
one arm hugging the shifting of green to blue,
the other holding out cushions of pink thrift.
Jagged spines of ancient slate puncture the sky,
striated and scarred like rusted wood,
layered in time, the shifting of red to brown.
I feel small.
So wonderfully small,
next to what feels like the bones of the earth.
Between the beauty and your gentle hand,
a sweep of quietness I can’t quite place
ebbs and flows.
The sea breathes,
wearing the last light,
like fire on foam,
waiting for nothing in particular.
Our hearts beat.
Michelle Smith teaches English in South Yorkshire, where she finds endless inspiration for her wide-ranging poetry. Her verse delves into the intricacies of daily life, human nature, and the unexpected moments that shape our world.
Antje Bothin
Thirsty
I head to the kitchen
Open the fridge
And in a corner I see
Yellow liquid
Turning into orange
My eyes twitch
The glass filling up
I hear the sweet music
Of pouring
This flowery scent
Immediate pleasure
My heart feels loved
The cold icy feeling
Of numbness
Hits my tongue
My body refreshed
With this unique joy of
Drinking orange juice
Antje Bothin has a passion for writing and her poems have been published in several international anthologies, e-zines, poetry magazines and journals. She has an academic background and lives in Scotland. She authored a novel about a treasure hunt in Iceland – ‘Annika and the Treasure of Iceland’ and ‘Quiet: A Poem about Selective Mutism’.
Sandra Galton
Insight
Should I be hanging upside down like a sloth
masticating on the world from underneath?
Something tells me I should get out more, walk
a tightrope like Blondin, across Niagara Falls
but peering down as well as up brings comfort.
I fancy those Wallendas or that Phillipe Petit
grew bored with upholding flawless poise,
staring straight ahead at a point of single focus.
I love to loll on the underside of the canopy –
my view, maybe, is skew, but I see what I see,
few know I’m here – fewer still get my smile
as I roll my head through a half-moon circle.
Sandra Galton is a London-based musician. She holds an MA in Writing Poetry (Poetry School, London/ Newcastle University), and her poems have appeared in a variety of publications. She has read at Poetry in Aldeburgh and, in 2020, her pamphlet Shadow Selves was published by Green Bottle Press. Her first novel is being published later this year by tsl.books.uk.
Jacqui Stearn
sitting in one queen’s square
shadows cast dark shapes across limestone tides scratches, scrapes, snatches of marks by tools long laid to rest the tip tap ring of their tones fallen away embraced into the fashioning of this placea filigree of webs crafted by generation upon generation of spiders dwelling in the cracks between clothing the air their lives stretching back to the placing of worked stone upon stone as the cottage was added to the washhouse tooled timber frames formed the way in and out and windows onto the map-vanished square a stone-chiselled groove suggests shutters for holding heat dampening shouts from overcrowded dwellings I hear the click of the catch
Jacqui Stearn found her way into writing poetry later rather than sooner. She has pamphlets published by Yew Tree Press, Steel Jackdaw has published her poetry and her thoughts on the relationship between coaching and poetry. She was a 2021 Waterland Writer in residence and is studying an MA in Creative and Critical Writing.
Jeff Skinner
What My Life Coach Says
Breathing’s hot right now.
Sleeping is so last year, likewise napping –
don’t get caught doing that,
nor dreaming, its free associations.
At Goldman we’re all about blue sky thinking.
What’s trending? The forecasters say
dusting, the meaning of cleaning, or tidying (again)
decluttering personal space with Marie Kondo.
Poetry had its moment in the sun.
Locked-down when we were solitary –
desperately seeking consolation –
laureates, new and old, came to our casements
but has it got legs? Feet, yes.
Frost’s staying power? Nature cure? Not sure.
Perhaps you want the other Maria,
she’s here forever, has history
on her side. Is Jesus coming back?
Push me for the outlook, I’m saying
death cafes are the next big sting,
all the rage, our future #ending.
Jeff Skinner’s poems are widely published, most recently in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Paperboats, Black Nore Review, Spellbinder, London Grip, Wildfire Words; before that, in Poetry News, Acumen, The Alchemy Spoon. He has work forthcoming in Stand, Amethyst Review, Fragmented Voices, Allegro. He volunteers at his local food bank and in an Oxfam bookshop, listens to music, watches football, reads, writes.
David Ashbee
Birdwatchers
I admire birdwatchers, even as they twitch,
for their patience, persistence, how they
lug and twiddle tripods, settle for the long haul,
lenses lodged in sockets, lunchpacks overlooked.
I like how they freeze, become snailshells, shrubs.
I admire their knowledge, their online sharing ,
how far they’ll leg it to not even curse
the bird that’s flown.
I like how they admit me, ask what I’ve seen
pretend not to notice, though they’re masters of small signs,
my scratched binoculars
I admire the unerringness of finger
pointing out the eyebrow sketch of harrier
or white tuft in the scrub
but I could never join them, won’t splash out
on waders to trace waders,
waxcoats to chase waxwing in.
I knew I was not of their ilk when
they caught me tossing breadcrumbs,
shouted hotly, then apologised,
and explained about the rats,
softened and consoled me with
hopes of a phalarope.
David Ashbee has lived most of his 80 years in Gloucestershire, writing poetry for over 60 of these. A founder member of Cherington Poets, and a long time member of Cheltenham Poetry Society, he has 3 full collections to his name, the latest being Poems from The Mind Shop (Dempsey and Windle, 2021).
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
My Mother’s Dreams
In my mother’s dreams,
she roamed everywhere, felt everything,
where her heart touched gold surroundings,
swirling through obscure clouds shifting the sky,
where the sun’s light would not burn.
It was born from her desire for unreachable beauty,
timeline a rarity; dimensions dissolved in her mind;
she marched through a landscape of white and blue
ensconced by tall, waving green trees,
she was not within her bounds.
There were sunlit pictures in her mind,
oceans rushing to meet the sky,
that created ethereal consciousness,
penetrating her veins and arteries,
and making her blood congeal
like ice cubes in a plastic bottle,
as though there were no rocks and pebbles
littering her heart’s shores and beaches.
My mother watched us through such terraces
without forests, fires and fortresses.
Though the sun burnt sand into ashes,
smouldered wood into iron and melted metals,
healthy trees collapsed in the middle of the seas,
though the river swelled above the shores,
breaking barriers, boring into borders,
though the oak fell at the strike of thunder and rain,
stricken with the disease of time and grief,
my mother never felt lonely in the vastness,
but clung tenderly to her visceral dreams
like a drowning woman gripping the slippery end of a rope.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah lives in the United Kingdom. His poems have featured in Lucky Jefferson Literary Magazine, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023. Jonathan was the Editor’s Choice Prize Winner of Unleash Lit in 2024, Second Poetry Prize Winner at the Streetlights Poetry Prize in 2024 and Winner of the Poet of the Month December-January 2025 at the Literary Shark Poetry Contest. His Chapbook, A is for Anfang, is forthcoming from Island of Wak Wak.
Christopher Cuninghame
Choir training
Crossings made, to come, a bustle and a settling of buntings, bulbuls,
Swallows, ouzels, warblers and, across the narrow mountain valley,
The too-perfect bell of cuckoo. All here for warmth, height, crumbs,
For what they’ll take and carry, the twigs and grasses for their nests,
If not here, managing somewhere else, to find their sometime mates
If not here. Pasts and futures ringing with song, sharp eyes, keen shot.
Christopher Cuninghame lives in Walthamstow, London and has had poems, flash fiction and short stories published recently by Route 57, The Sheffield Review, Walk Listen Create, Wildfire Words and others. He won the 2021 Urban Tree Festival poetry competition.
David McVey
Coffee and Silence
The front door opened and was quickly slammed shut again – Alice. Hurried fabric rustlings as her coat comes off. She bursts in and snaps ‘Make coffee!’ and sits down. The clock ticks. Traffic rumbles outside.
‘Make coffee? Me?’
A dark look. ‘Coffee, coffee,’ I mutter and scurry into the kitchen. What do I need? Milk. A half-empty plastic bottle in the fridge. I place it by the sugar bowl. A jar of Kenco decaff in the cupboard. Do we use that? Must do.
Silence in the living room, no telly, no rustling of newspaper or magazine.
Cups. No, mugs. More comforting. She seems to need comforting. I put them next to the coffee ingredients. Wait! I remember that boiling water is an important part of the process, so I fill the electric kettle. The whoosh of the tap-water really shatters the quiet. I return the kettle to its base and click the switch. An increasing rumbling agitation of the boiling water, and then a click and it all settles down. Back to silence.
Hot water, sugar, milk and coffee, all there, everything I need for the warm and comforting beverage, but how to connect them, combine them, bring about the desired result? I return to the living room.
‘I’ve got all the things ready. What do I do with them again?’
She snorts, stands up, and pushes roughly past me on her way to the kitchen. At last some veil in my memory is torn away, some connection is made, some neurones fire. That was where she’d been. Today was the day. I ask, ‘How did you get on at the hospital? Those tests?’
She stops at the kitchen door. Still she says nothing. I can’t see her face.
David McVey lectures at New College Lanarkshire. He has published over 150 short stories and a great deal of non-fiction that focuses on history and the outdoors. He enjoys hillwalking, visiting historic sites, reading, watching telly, and supporting his home-town football team, Kirkintilloch Rob Roy FC.
Ella Walsworth-Bell
Blue as innumerable goods
I have filled the caverns of myself with lost dolls, brine,
and the ink from cheap black biros,
I have found myself mid-ocean
staring at a humpback’s breach,
the purple luminescence of by-the-wind-sailors
tracking winds and currents
washed up on beaches,
kelp stalks like the barrelled husk of a boat.
I have snorkelled brave sea grass, searching for seahorses in dark shallows
armed with an old torch and some iffy batteries.
I taste coffee grounds, cigarette smoke,
ration packs of chocolate and crumbling biscuits.
Here is your face, staring out from every wave.
Your face, other and older
your eyes, blue and wild
the baritone of you sirens me awake.
I am the width and curse of your blurred horizon
and I shall not sink into sickness and dream of apple trees
though it is cold here
alongside the ripple and furl where hull meets wave
and there are dark places under the jetty
where sea-lice and crabs go fossicking.
I have made you supper, my love.
Prawn curry with coconut cream –
I have baked you the bread of myself
risen to a crust, flour fields golden in twilight.
I have scuttled myself mid-ocean for you.
Unexpected reefs, the bite and claw of rocks and
coral heads, the sharks are hungry here
and we are but flesh.
Let us unclip the old oak box,
soft blue satin under our fingers,
the heft and weight of our sextant,
let us sight the sun together,
my bronzed boy.
Proud mums
go online and post
photos of successful children
jazz concerts Great to Hear Her
exam results Well Done Darling Daughter
at the beach Lovely Day out Walking
smart school uniform Day 1 of Secondary School
foreign holidays Lush Out Here
in a relationship So Happy
driving licenses You Hung in There
degree ceremonies Here’s to All the Hard Work
of course, nice kids do well at school
Mummy’s little helper James wins cross-country Isaac fixes the car lol Amelie composes her own music Harley gets the grades he needs
my son cannot be measured in
click smiley face, click thumbs up, click like, like, like
he does not fit into insta-ready markers of success
throws cap in air, violin bowing faster and faster, canoe paddles blurred speed legs pumping, raises glass of wine, smiles, smiles, smiles
there is no applause
wink face, cheered your post, shared
but today
he came downstairs
made himself toast
happy
and my heart alchemized.
Ella Walsworth-Bell is a speech therapist who lives in Falmouth and sailed the Atlantic as a child. Her credits include Leon Literary Review, Annie Magazine, Mythic Circle and her short story “Knitting for teenage boys” placed second in the Perito Prize. She leads Mor Poets, a women’s poetry collective that write about the sea. @ellawbell @morvorenproject
Frank Johnson
Helios
The points of light we see on looking up
on a starry night are principally the stars
of our own galaxy, the Milky Way –
up to four thousand five hundred visible
with the naked eye. But there’s billions,
and that’s not to mention other galaxies –
estimated at up to two trillion –
where the light’s too diffuse for them to be
visible individually, nor inter
galactic stars. All hurrying away
from each other, pulled by dark energy.
A cosmic mathematical mystery.
Next Saturday we’ll see Luke Jerram’s sun –
a mere two hundred millionth of the real one.
Frank Johnson began his working life as a postman and ended it as a translator (from Czech and Portuguese). Interests include painting, poetry and learning Irish. Poetry publications: Boscombe Revolution, 2013; AUB International Poetry Competition 2023 – highly commended; Frogmore Papers, 2024; Swerve, 2024; The Locofo Anti-Trump Anthology: Poems For Freedom, 2025.Website: ashortspell.com
Ivor Richard Frankell
Berlin 1927
my father looks cheekily at the camera
linking arms with a lady
in a fashionable hat
my uncle in his sober suit
dwarfs the younger boys
with his intellectual presence
my grandparents at the centre of the frame
comfortable yet reserved
three lively girls at the front
are blurred by movement
enjoying the moment
escaping the camera’s gaze
their expressions haunt me
like half remembered faces in a dream
they already seem to know
their life in Berlin would not last
they were already refugees
preparing to leave
and posed for a photo
to show that once
they all were here together
Poetic Arts
A poem should be just what it is
unless it’s something else –
a floating dream
a leaf skeleton
a bent reed
where the snipe breeds
and the seeds
of meaning are sown
in a field of words.
I imagine John Clare
Immersed in the fragile lairs
of nesting birds
as I watch the curlew
among the estuary reed-beds
long beak shapely as a quill
the writer uses
to turn a phrase.
Ivor Richard Frankell is an auteur, amateur, writer and participant in St Ives Wordsurfers, Falmouth Poetry Group and the St Ives Poetry Group. He enjoys writing about language, life and history, despite feeling ill-qualified in all three areas. English and Russian with a dash of Cornish, he revels in contrasting cultures and languages.
Jaymz Lea
At the tearoom
we sit down
arms folded, fingers on lips.
I catch my shadow
on sugary white walls
and I’m dumb.
Skin bound shadow meets
too much emptiness –
the not me.
Silhouettes of marbled fault lines
who yell sureness
in orangey yellows,
like my Nan’s nicotine’d hair.
Clenching my thighs
for terra firma
I pull in my chair –
opposite his broken biscuits.
Bourbon specks trace a doily
silver spoons gossip.
He fists sugar glue, demands
me fix and make house.
I unclench, lean back
away from his crumbling emptiness –
also, the not me.
Jaymz Lea (he/they) is a queer human, playing with words for the annoying joyful jostle. They are a mental health professional, published academic and poet. They are chewing on this experience to write about human interiors – at the edges – those othered outed & ousted. He is an excitable nature geek.
John Ling
Beavers make dams, lions make corpses
Opinions founded on prejudices are always sustained with the greatest violence. Francis Jeffrey
We talked of a school full of children killed.
What would the military do in response?
We knew, of course, it was written in the sand.
Blood will have blood, it’s a cultural thing.
Fathers tell sons, give as good as you get.
So it goes, so it goes, always did, always will.
But, I say, everyone has a choice,
We can choose not to do what we always do.
We can break the cycle, can be the change.
Ah, he said, but people never change.
Always hate, always did, always seek revenge.
So then, I said, does it make it better?
These people, he says, by which he means
people like them, not people like us,
People like them don’t want to change.
But what if they are afraid to change,
through fear, or habit, or ignorance?
That’s it, he says, they’re ignorant,
because that’s the only thing they know.
So if they are afraid of learning,
might this be the key to change?
Get to know their enemy, lose some
long-held prejudice, old ideas,
unlearn half truths and lies.
Ah you will never stop these people.
People like them will always be there.
But we are here – are we all the same?
What would happen if I did something
different to what I have always done?
Offer my hand and not hit back,
Listen, try to hear their story.
Will they still then want to hit me?
People like them will refuse to change,
says he, and the conversation ends.
Are we what we are, we always were,
people like him, people like me?
Because
Because Danny believes
an eye for an eye
a tooth for a tooth,
because he can’t remember
having a father or
much of a home,
because he can’t find
words for his feelings,
to talk about them
would be to lose face,
because his girl left him
and he can’t see his kids,
because no-one came
at visiting time again,
because he trusts no-one
except for his mum,
because he says screws
don’t listen to him,
because everyone shouts
but no-one listens,
because he lives in fear,
with no self esteem,
I will keep going back
to try to persuade him,
he does have a choice,
there is another way
to turn things around,
if he can find courage,
he does have the power.
John Ling is a mediator for neighbour disputes and for SEND cases, (children with special needs). He has published six books, two of poetry, two short stories, and two Social Stories for SEND children.
Louise Boddy
Don’t Worry About Me Now
Don’t worry about me now.
I eat when I’m meant to eat.
I remember to pour milk into my tea,
to brush my hair and put the rubbish out.
I even sleep, sometimes.
Don’t worry about me now.
I smile when I greet people,
make eye contact, nod at the right times.
I hug,
resisting the urge to pull away too soon,
to keep my skin from remembering
who it really wants to feel.
And yes, I can laugh,
a thin ribbon of sound
sometimes it even feels real.
Don’t worry about me now.
I show up to work,
say “I’m fine” like a rehearsed prayer.
The house is tidy, the garden trimmed,
the laundry folded with mechanical care.
I remember birthdays, reply to messages,
check in on friends
like someone whole, someone complete.
Worry about me later, in the dark,
when the world goes quiet
and there’s no performance left to give.
When the mask comes off.
Worry about me when the ache curls through my chest
like smoke with no fire,
when her name is the only word
my heart wants to say.
Worry about me when I lie in bed
staring into the black
pleading with the silence to
see her again.
But don’t worry about me now.
Now, I am seen to be functioning.
Now, I am invisible in my sorrow.
Now, I look like everyone else.
Now that I am acceptable.
The Sheer Weight of it
I am trying to learn how to carry this grief.
It is oppressive and unyielding and I want to be free of it.
Can you take it for a day please? An hour would work if a day is too much.
Carrying love is easy
light as a feather,
warm like sunlight on my skin.
Grief is love too, so they say,
but it’s heavier and sharper.
I struggle to hold it without collapsing.
It presses down on my chest
so that I’m gasping for air and my heart screeches in agony.
Other days it’s still heavy
a weight strapped across my shoulders
but I can function.
I can make dinner,
make plans,
answer emails,
even laugh.
But it never leaves.
It waits in the quiet hours,
in the spaces between words,
reminding me of all I’ve lost.
I’m learning
slowly, imperfectly
how to be with this burden.
How to let it ride along beside me
How to let it sit in the room
without giving it every inch of my heart.
But I can do this.
I will do this.
Because grief is the proof
that love was real.
And if I must carry it,
I will carry it. Always.
Even when it breaks me open.
Even when it feels too much.
Even when I am tired
of learning how.
Louise Boddy My beautiful daughter, Hannah, died suddenly at the age of 27 from SUDEP (Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy) at the end of last year. Since her passing, I’ve felt compelled to write. The poems are raw, personal, and come straight from the heart. @amotherbereft
Nick Cooke
October 1940
Very soon the light will crumble
and the flora shrivel
and the fauna take shelter
in the jaded grass.
Where once the leaves applauded
their own swaying motion
now they fall like Stukas
with valedictory twirl.
The conkers lie ready for combat
and we face a battle of our own,
a duel of sound
on a windy bluff.
See how far your voice can pitch
and I’ll try to match you
though the smart notes say
I don’t have a prayer.
Open that nightingale throat,
scream through the barrier,
then give me five seconds
and hear me hurl one back out.
This is like skimming stones,
only it’s the echoes that bounce
away on the air’s ripple,
to the wood, to the aching wood.
Nick Cooke has had around 75 poems published or accepted, in a variety of outlets including Acumen, Agenda, Ink Sweat & Tears, the High Window Journal and Dream Catcher, along with around 35 poetry reviews and literary articles. In 2016 his poem ‘Tanis’ won a Wax Poetry and Art competition.
Sandra Howell
Defining Gravity
Infinite what-ifs circle the plughole
like a whirlpool flushing down the drain
into Victorian-aged sewage pipes
out with the rest of the waste
into polluted rivers streams and seas
Glimpses of numerous lives in concurrent multiverses arrive
like tube trains passing on parallel tracks
in the night of the underground
where lightning flashes reveal people and places
of what-might-have-beens
I refuse to drown in the rising flood
of what-if and what-might-have-been waves
crunching rocks like teeth crush ice-cubes
grinding stones to grit and sand
I play what have I done with my life?
tally my achievements not too bad actually
when I stop looking
through the wrong end of the telescope
I see
age like gravity
is not pushing or pulling me down
it’s raising and holding me up
Sandra Howell is published by Collage Arts, Writing Room, Wildfire Words, Hidden Literature, Tin Can Poetry and in 2 anthologies, Sandra’s poetry was shortlisted for the Lascaux Prize in 2022. Performing at poetry events since January 2023, she has featured in 6. Her poetry has been in 6 art exhibitions. Art prints of her selected poems are on sale online.www.sandrahowellpoetry.com
Mike Everley
Arrival of the Death Cart
“Bring out your dead”
the plague carrier said
as the death cart
passed on its way.
But nothing was said
from the lips of the dead
as they carted
the bodies away.
The living hung back
or peered through a crack
as they carted
the bodies away.
“Bring out your dead”
the plague carrier said
as the death cart
passed on its way.
Mike Everley has been writing for many years and has had poetry, short stories and articles published in numerous publications and online. He was a member of both the NUJ and the Society of Authors before retirement. Now, a silver scribbler, he devotes his time to creative writing.
Anisa Butt
Time
Time . . . that cruel thing
no regrets, I confess.
But the mess it gets me in
that silly thing that leaves a hole
I can’t console myself.
I can’t refrain, well
that part of my brain can’t at least, can’t
shield myself from the beast called time.
I still wish I had a watch to stop it
to clock the most important hours
to give those moments
the most power to sit with love
to just be in love with what it means
to have this life right now in my bones
This heart moans for more.
I unlock the door one more time.
To let more in, more everything.
Even if it hurts.
Anisa Butt, BBC Words First 2023 finalist, is an actor, writer, and poet whose work explores healing, identity, and belonging. Her performances blend raw honesty with lyrical storytelling, leaving audiences moved and inspired. Featured at events across the UK, she creates safe spaces for connection. Instagram: @anisaaniiam | Podcast: @unplugwithani
David Birch
Van Gogh – The Olive Trees 1889
Yesterday
a crowd in the National Gallery
turned away from the twisted olive trees
the richly folded mountains
and the muted swirl of clouds and wheatfields
to watch a child take his first steps
and weave his way among their bags and feet.
The spell of subdued chatter,
the practised undertones
of informed appreciation,
was broken.
The subtle shifts of position
to secure the optimal view
the unintentional nudges
and murmured apologies
were upstaged
by a tottering launch
into the unknown
and the proud surprise
of a delighted father.
Meanwhile, the olive trees,
under the soft, rhythmic sway
of clouds and mountains,
slipped away from their frame
and headed for the streets.
Treehouse
I built a treehouse in my garden:
wedged offcuts from a builder’s yard
between the towering forks
of a western red cedar.
I drove four-inch nails through layers
of crusted bark into solid wooden flesh,
half expecting a sigh of reproach
from the watching branches.
We made a place, the tree and I,
lifted beyond our sight and out of mind
where children’s laughter rippled
through the light of late afternoons.
The children have grown and gone.
The tree, its scars forgotten, remains.
Lost Apples and Trains
In 1963 you could board a carriage at Waterloo,
stay in your seat as far as Bude,
and watch the train shed coaches along the route.
You rattled past Whiteway’s cider orchards,
blossom-loaded, but long since felled,
abandoned the mainline at Exeter.
You left Okehampton in the shadow of the moor
to crawl across the Meldon Viaduct
at twenty miles an hour.
On the way to the Atlantic coast.
you stopped at Dunsland Cross at last
to the sound of a whistle and the slam of a single door.
Trapped by topography:
hemmed in by the winding Torridge
caught in the slow, dark lanes between Devon banks.
David Birch worked in education and lives in Devon. His poetry frequently explores the relation of people to their landscape, environment and past. Several recent poems are published in Wildfire Words and two recent poems are included in an anthology celebrating 100 years since the publication of The Great Gatsby, ‘Beautiful Little Fools’. Follow @davidbirch.bsky.social
Adelaide Gifford
Second Grade Recess
That morning when the sun
shone off my hair so everything
looked golden. A pine tree – our tree,
not the one from kindergarten
with the alligator root, nor the one growing from
red clay we sculpted on rainy days – shivering
in springtime wind. Tufts
of white fluff weightlessly
weaving through bristled boughs,
plucked from milkweed pods that
years later I would pick
not for their pretty plumes but
for seeds I hoard in hopes of harboring
a mob of monarchs. The swing swung so
high I was certain I could fly, then
I used worn soles of my shoes to skid
against wood chips so I stopped and
let myself be led by girls who can’t yet
grasp a day not spent with the whole world
a possibility. Leaned against a tree and I
savored the way the sun fell through the branches, the
feeling of my friends’ fingers braiding flowers
through my hair, and decided this moment
I would someday write about, as I waited
for my recess fiancé, who will one day
be all but forgotten, except that he
liked my chickens,
confused flour and powdered sugar,
and let me win Monopoly.
Wild Dog Love
Pointillism painting,
panting, blending
into bushes and watching
soft sun rise, earth still cool.
Watch them shiver off the sleep,
slide across the savannah,
tails fly,
butts high in submission.
Oval ears swivel,
cusped to catch the
laughing of a clan of hyenas or
panic of potential prey.
Before the sun warms the sand,
everyone is equal, greeted
by bumping black noses
and chirps of chivalry.
If, in the morning, one dog does
not rise to greet its pack mates,
but turns white-tipped tail to track
the scent of a springbok alone,
does it cease to exist in their community of
companionship?
Are their daily salutatory squeaks,
like my nightly adieu that,
yes, I will see you in the morning,
a proclamation to the universe
that things will go on as they are?
They will not die in the hunt that day,
because they must be there to greet
each other tomorrow, and in my sleep
no one will leave me, still-hearted and
frozen.
Adelaide Gifford is a recent graduate of Hamilton College in New York, where she majored in Creative Writing. Her favorite genre to write is a mixture of nature writing and fantasy. She has previously published a short story, “Bullfight,” in Sucarnochee Review, and poems in Applause Literary Magazine, Kudzu Review, and Furrow Literary Magazine, among others.
Instagram @adelaideluciagifford
Atma Frans
At Night, My Body Is a Flock of Sheep
Some missing a tail, some an ear, some even
have forgotten how to speak. The worst bleat
in high-pitched voices—my bed a hull
for their complaints
On the bedside table, my heart, all alone
trembles till first light
What if we are no longer meant for this?
Sometimes I lie awake
watching the sheep swim towards dawn
—hooves paddling, wool heavy
heads held high
Sometimes It’s Like Standing Behind Bulletproof Glass
Meanwhile, in your garden, sun
is sliding off the green velvety leaves
of the kiwi bush, the vines grasping
at each other, at the twigs of the apple tree, at the air
new tendrils wavering, seeking—involuntarily
the way a baby turtle will crawl to the surf
the way a hand flies to a mouth
the way a hummingbird is fluttering
its iridescent wings eighty times per second
to dip its hard beak into the white throat
of your kiwi blossoms
Grotesque, this urge to live
But the animal inside is ravenous
Hear its friction against the glass—
like the noise of ice floes rubbing and breaking—
and beneath it the body
alive in the salty dark
Atma Frans’ poetry has won first prize in Quagmire Magazine’s Poetry Contest, second in Muriel’s Journey Prize and has been nominated for Best of the Net 2026. Her work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, Contemporary Verse 2, The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Prairie Fire Magazine, Obsessed with Pipework, Lighthouse Literary Journal and elsewhere.
Media links: https://spacestobe.org | https://www.facebook.com/AtmaFrans | https://www.instagram.com/atmafrans/
Beverley Duguid
Longing
I want to go back to that land
to stretches of translucent sand
imagine you young
riding that wave
before your head turned towards England
streets paved with golden coins.
I want to go back to that time
have it over again
listen to your tales about
St Michael town,
the old racing track
and cricket days.
I want to go back there
see you, not imagine your face,
leaning on the pulpit in St Paul’s
singing Melodies with the boys.
I want to go back to that island
stand on that same sand
dive deep into its waters
pull out your words, your music
write them down.
Beverley Duguid is a historian, writer, historian and mindfulness teacher from West London. Themes of heritage, loss, journeys and travel inform her poems.
Christian Ward
Commedia dell’arte
The fox, elongated like an overstretched
hot water bottle, stared at me with childlike
glee. Rolled around on the lawn as summer
shed itself like a cat overdue for a thinner coat.
I had never seen it before. It didn’t look one
of the spring cubs playfully wrestling like a GIF
looping on end. Nor the mangy January visitor.
Not a showy stock photo example, either.
This was more dog-like. Expectant of the villainous,
pantaloon wearing day to throw it a stick or bone
while it hatched plots to separate a pair of lovers.
Hoard bawdy thoughts to be soaked through later
with an unexpected downpour. The fox, though,
might have been the one to rescue the performance
while I stood frozen, the mask of my unhappiness
shedding like the summer sky; whatever I had hoped
for off stage, beckoning me to stay put, do a little trick.
Christian Ward is a UK-based poet, with recent work in Streetcake Magazine, The Madrid Review, Mugwort Magazine and The Alchemy Spoon.
Damaris West
Orwell Clunch Pit
I don’t take a waterproof
knowing for certain it won’t rain.
Cheese sandwiches, an apple,
and a little book about wildflowers
in my rucksack:
it’s the longed-for weekend.
With my bicycle locked to the railing,
I thread through kissing gates,
climb a path which splits into tracks
like white partings in a green scalp.
The book is my breviary:
alfalfa the same as lucerne,
potentillas known also as cinquefoil,
tormentil or silverweed.
Under an arch of dog rose,
propped on a cushion of thyme,
I listen to skylarks:
spirits in a blue dome
swinging the world
on its chains like a censer.
Fishing for Flatties
Where curlicues are dense
we dig for lugs.
My father’s sandalled foot
presses the garden fork
full-length through rasping sand
like meat carved.
I crouch bare-legged in the brisk wind
spying for whisks of oozy tails
in the flipped scatter.
The line and weighted bar of hooks
emerge from a canvas gas mask case.
He threads the worms,
wades waist-deep, swings them,
hurls them under-arm
and paces backwards, paying the spool
out and out to the shore’s edge,
then pegs the winder with a flag
landmarked on the dunes.
The tide is full; we find the flag.
He winds the line. I watch
for flexing backs and flapping fins
in the shallow surf, ready to whoop
as primal hunters would.
I never see him kill the fish.
They’re carried home,
gutted, filleted,
fried with the sea inside them.
Damaris West is originally from England but now lives in south-west Scotland, close to the sea. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including The Lake, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Friday Poem and Acumen, and been placed in a number of competitions, national and international. She is currently preparing a first collection under the auspices of Yaffle Press. https://damariswest.site123.me
Dmytro Simianyk
Snowflake
I hold your hand—
That’s all—
A snowflake has melted
Between my fingers.
Dmytro Simianyk is a Ukrainian poet and musician. His work has appeared on Poeziia Vilnykh and in the literary journal Legit. Author of the poetry collection Svitlyachky (Fireflies), he writes in haiku, minimalism, and cyberpunk, exploring human identity, myth, and technology. Facebook: https://facebook.com/1A4qVXHAHG
Elizabeth Davies
Going home
I am thinking my way around the house
so we can settle for one of our talks.
It was hard leaving without you there,
but harder leaving you on the ward.
‘You are very dear’, you had said,
‘I wish you were nearer.’
The rocking chairs placed at the airport,
for one last view of the bay,
reminded me of arrival.
But I had left you frail and tense,
arranging your home care by mobile.
‘Anyway dear’, you had said,
‘I am ready to go now.’
Elizabeth Davies is an academic public health doctor at King’s College London. She began publishing ‘tales’ from her medical training in 1999 and writing poetry in 2004 during a Harkness Fellowship at Harvard. She has taken part in the Sydenham and Torbay Poetry Festivals, in Acumen and South Bank Poetry events, contributed to PN Review and presented at medical conferences on the potential role of poetry in palliative care.
Elizabeth Maia Graviotto
Sleeping beauty
the fireflies became part
of the delay, it’s in the closed view
a new party forgetting
the fanfare of past lives,
the tender light was made there
where there was nothing but mud
flooding the peak, the back,
I am, we will be sad
until the fireflies return
Elizabeth Maia Graviotto lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has owned a small bookstore in her home for over ten years and teaches creative writing. She considers eating to be similar to writing: a sacred and ritualistic act. She also sleeps a lot and writes poems about it.
Helen Anderson
Feeling a Little Sad After a Vacation is Completely Natural
Home,
and the gate is still rattling, threatening to unhinge
and you oil your lifting skin, then resort to sloughing
Home,
and your travellers’ tales sound stale and unlikely
and you have all the questions again, burning
Home,
and you are a foreign coin in the local pub’s jukebox
and you have stretched out and shrunk down
Home,
and gulps of moorland gales do not fill your lungs
and your mother’s house is still emptied of her
Home,
and you feel another break coming on
and you promised you’d practise staying
Home
Helen Anderson writes by the sea in North-East England. Her poetry chapbook ‘Way Out’ was published by Black Light Engine Room Press in 2017, and her debut pamphlet ‘Sagrada Familia’ by Nine Pens Press in 2022. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University.
http://www.helenvictoriaanderson.co.uk
www.facebook.com/helenvictoriaanderson
Jesse Wilson
Eavesdropping Hearts
and yes that was me in the front row watching how far and wide arms could flail to trace an argument into the evening sky and yes that was me gazing at a couple, bodies almost touching and yet with their hearts on either side of the equator they were shouting and yes that was me thinking if I had a salted bag of popcorn I would have continued and continued to watch and yes that was me curious and nosy imagining the worst until I saw them hug and yes that was me who heard in defence it was this other woman who conjured a spell to consume the couple’s entire evening and yes that was me judging this conspiracy of white socks and sandals and how he had planted his roots wide into the ground against the prosecutions clutch bag and blue dress and yes that was me wondering if in the morning they would remember standing outside the pub and know how to pick up and unfold their hangover out of bed
Jesse Wilson is an award-winning performance poet, playwright, and writer based in the East Midlands, United Kingdom. His work explores what it means to live, love, and grow, delving into philosophy, relationships, identity, and belonging, and includes a play entwined with dramatic verse written and performed at Wolves Lit Fest 2024. Socials: Instagram: @juslivin724
John Bartlett
my loneliness sleeps
in the spare bedroom
stalks shameless streets where
broken men smoke prayers
women wear sunlight
like old dresses and
children gaze at moonlight
beside rivers of amazement
where dust tastes like sleep
and the ragged dreams
of nightlight
how can I unmake this self
but barter for absolution
with my own name
this is not a life just
an elimination of the borders
between births and resurrections
where loveliness does flaunt herself
John Bartlett is the author of twelve books, of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He was winner of the 2020 Ada Cambridge Poetry Prize and his memoir, Not as I Once Was, will be published later in 2025 by Walleah Press.
Larry Winger
living while dying
and while you are still here
while I am still breathing
a gentle touch
a soft kiss
or a fragment of song
like the tune we shared
with our dying neighbour
here in this room,
if consciousness is with us,
that could be a goodbye
you can leave
I can give
to take with us
when we go
Larry Winger started to write creatively after recovering from cancer therapy. Seven years later, after hundreds of blog entries (RoadsToJoy.blog), various poetry submissions (VisualVerse.org and Wildfire-Words.com) and on his sixth volume of prose, of which this End Times poetic theme is a stimulus, he’s making peace with what seems to be the point of this lark.
Lyra Button
i was never scared of dying:
as a kid
i was never scared of the dark
i was always scared
i’d keep waking up.
i feed a forest ash
it becomes finer ash
you wash my dirty
hair, change my dirty
duvet –
at night, we hear earth
spring maple saplings
i’m scared I’ll keep waking up
but
i promised you i would.
you hold me the whole
eight hours
our finger- -tips knit
a mesh of moss
a mesh of moss where
i become someone
scared of dying.
baby, if you didn’t exist
i wouldn’t hope
for an
after
life
Lyra Button (she/her) is a member of Durham Universities Slam team, where she studies liberal arts. Her poetry centres around the trans body, and how it’s relationships with language, the world, and other persons are both affirmative and strained. Her poetry has been featured in Rundelania, the Gentian, For the Lighthouse, and the Owls Rant. Instagram @lyra_buttonn
Philip Rösel Baker
Our Love
For Maria
Our love
leans on emptiness
and is supported
Our love binds us
and is unbound
is strung with fire
on a fretboard of water
Our love plays an air
that needs no sound
Our love is an image
without width or length
that breaks like each wave
on a rock-strewn shore
lays our weakness bare
and gives us strength
Our love is the handle
of a half open door
is the skylight moonbeam
that stops us from sleeping
is the outstretched hand
of the need to forgive
is the sound on the gravel
of arrivings and leavings
dies every moment
yet lives to live
is the warmth of your hand
on the skin of my face
is the curve of your warmth
in the palm of my hand
is the words that can walk
a bridge over space
the quietness between us
that says I understand
is the small acts of kindness
that nourish our soil
is rare as ghost orchids
and common as clouds
gives more than it takes
and takes with joy
hides like a child
wanting to be found
leads from the front
yet runs to catch up
Our love binds us
and is unbound
knows we can scarcely
believe our luck
steps where there is
no solid ground
Our love
Afterlife
On deciding to leave my body to medical science
His eyes long since dimmed, he sinks at last
two thousand feet, the ocean deepening to night
around his shadowy body. No promise of morning.
It’s not long before the rattails find him – large eyes,
luminescent bellies – before their teeth, scalpel-sharp,
small but many, begin to slice his unfeeling flesh.
Hagfish are not far behind, wary, armed with viscous
coils of slime to fight off predators. They break
and enter easily, to burgle him from within.
Crabs and amphipods move in to grab at morsels
floating down from mouths and tentacles too full
from gorging on this unexpected newly laid-out feast.
Colonies of zombie worms spring up along his carcass,
secreting bone-dissolving acid to bore, explore,
drill through to oil, to lipids they know are sealed inside.
The marrow that gave him buoyancy to withstand
the pressure of the deep, will now give rise to new life
to a whole sea floor ecology, where creatures thrive
in balance, feeding with and off each other, grow
mysterious energies, bacterial bioluminescence.
Whether knowing or unknowingly, he has willed his body
now, to bring light to the deep. After
my last dive, to wherever death may lead,
scavengers won’t need to come for me like body-snatchers,
digging furtive in the dark to sell my corpse to anatomists.
No – laid out in the lab, young medics will be able to make
their first acquaintance, so to speak, with a dead body
in person. Some may need to confront difficult new feelings.
Perhaps again, confront their nerves, when first they slice
my unfeeling flesh, the scalpel revealing what lies beneath
the veil of skin. Breaking and entering not required
– I’ll have left behind a full set of keys, with written licence
to unlock my body wheresoever they please. They will
bore, explore, investigate, pin back skin to operate,
expose the muscles of my shoulder, learn how joints
are held together, probe with well-aimed points of light
the parts of me my previous life kept carefully clothed
in darkness. I will have followed the grey whale’s lead,
glad to feed their need for knowledge, their hunger
for the light, for a full three years, before they leave
to use their skills on living beings, use what they have
learnt from me, use the thin surgical knife
to make people whole again, perhaps to prolong life.
And perhaps, unlike the scavengers of the deep ocean floor,
might they pause sometimes and remember me
with kindness?
Philip Rösel Baker is an Anglo-German poet living on the East Anglia coast. His poetry has been published in newspapers, magazines and anthologies in Europe and US – most recently in the Fish Prize Anthology 2024, where his poem “Small White Sphere” was selected by American poet Billy Collins. He has won both the George Crabbe and the Shelley Memorial Poetry Prizes in the UK, and finalist awards in the US and Ireland. He performs his poetry regularly at the Soapbox sessions in Ipswich, and last year was one of Suffolk Poetry Society’s showcase poets at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
Ping Yi
Remote Parenting
Mum ate dinner at three, sun hanging mid-sky. Chewed on some meat protein, lukewarm rice cooked that morning. Closed her thermos, left Dad to himself in his rehab ward. Treaded towards the Emergency Department over pedestrian bridge, past timber benches bearing the stigmata of Covid tape long removed. Right hand gripping her spinner bag for support, checking herself in for severe abdominal pain. Telling none of us she had it bad since midnight; we were blissful all through breezy family banter on WhatsApp. The penny drops during my office awards dinner, when my mobile announces, Dear caregiver, the wait time for [Mum] for a bed in the ward is 9 hours or longer. Escaping audience applause, speed-dialling Mum. Don’t come. I’m fine now, resting in Observation. They want more scans tomorrow, might as well. Don’t visit me! It’s gross here, eight in this space made for six. If you have time, check on Dad. Returning to a ballroom of wefies and high fives, to recipients in their finest, toasting triumphs. Dessert served, citrus Basque cheesecake with onubense berries; I shake hands round my table, left palm gripping my car key.
Disposable, Me
The silver-maned angler orders three drinks
from the sassy server, whose eyes gleam
with recall and patter. Tea, less sugar,
in disposable cup, two more in his thermos
for later – fishing is thirsty business.
The queue runs out from the sultry shack,
this No Name Cafe by the snaking pier;
retirees and migrant workers getting their fixes
to go. Shuttles zip in with dawn’s light,
their hulls in maroon, saffron, and navy.
“Your order, handsome?” I dispel her spell
with ease and regret, bemused by the illusion
that some of us still have it. Paying, waiting.
A skimmer boat cajoles jetsam into its maw,
swallowing yesterday’s ills, absolving us all.
Nursing my cuppa, tawny tannins scorching
coated cardboard; lips and tongue tango
with bliss and pain. Walking back to my car,
double-parked; an unseen bike whips across me,
thwacking the phone from my left hand.
Lifting my right hand, another sip of life.
Ping Yi writes poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction. After a three-decade detour in public service, he resumed his lifelong interest in speculative humour and travel writing. His work has appeared in Orbis (nominated for Forward Prize), Litro, The Stony Thursday Book, London Grip, Meniscus, La Piccioletta Barca, Harbor Review, Vita Poetica, Eclectica, Litbreak, and The Bangalore Review.
Instagram @pyyee10
Ridwan Tukur
The Sun as a Metaphor for Purpose
The sun is my only friend—
The Ikigai that wakes me up
And shows me the way out
Of my gloomy, lethargic room.
The fitness trainer who taught me
About losing the world’s weight
On my burdened shoulders.
And when my body glows
With beads of sweat, the sun shows me
Tomorrow’s beautiful reflection on my skin.
Ridwan Tukur (He/Him), an author of two poetry collections, writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He won the Brigitte Poirson Monthly Poetry Contest (March 2018), and was shortlisted in the Bridgitte James Poetry Competition (2025) and the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize (2020). His poems are in Afrocritik, Kelp Journal, ArtisansQuill, and elsewhere.
Twitter/IG @Oreal2kur
Sean Tate
Ghost
And when I wake, it will be to find the empty space
where you used to lie.
The pillow, still warm to the touch, with the soft imprint
of your head and stray strands of hair.
Your scent will linger on my scattered clothing across the floor and
my shirt, stained with lipstick—vibrant red—is the reminder of a
misplaced kiss.
I still hear your footsteps as they echo down the
hallway, your keys as they scrape against the lock of
the door, the rattle and bang of the window frame as the
door slammed closed.
No time to say goodbye.
No handwritten note.
The final act of a ghost.
Sean Tate is a writer from Ireland. They started writing poetry to convey and create sensory experiences. Through their writing, they aim to paint vivid images with words. Their work has been featured in the Dark Poets Club, Andromeda, Tintreach: the Smashing Times Arts and Literary Journal, the Scriberlus, Bláithí, and The Universes Poetry.
Instagram Handle: @sobaldrightnow
Eugene K
Who wants disCARmament?
‘Congratulations’, hailed Sensei, ‘you have passed the test and earned yourself a full licence!’
‘Wow,’ the student gushed, ‘it’s like acquiring a new power!’
‘Yes. But, to paraphrase an ancient saying, with new power comes new responsibility,’ Sensei warned. ‘Luckily for you, I can grant immunity from any misfortune that befalls thee.’
‘Befalls me? What are you, a genie? Is that why you speak like that?’
‘I wish!’ Sensei joked. ‘Seriously though, my ancestry links me to djinn who were intimidated out of using their grant-wishing powers by the Witchfinder General during the Magician’s Holocaust of the 1600s –’
‘Holocaust?’
‘Yes,’ confirmed Sensei, ‘not a lot of people know that. Anyway, as a direct descendant of that bloodline, I can use my power to “further reward excellence”, if I’ve interpreted recent updates to gambling legislation guidance correctly.’
‘Like a bonus for unlocking new levels in videogames?’
‘If you like,’ he sighed.
The student’s eyes flashed in anticipation. ‘What are you offering then?’
‘The power of auto-disarmament!’
The student was confused. ‘What does that mean?’
‘No matter how hard you hit someone, the effect will be minimal,’ Sensei explained.
‘Even fatally?’
‘No one you smash into will ever leave with anything more than the slightest wounding at best.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Well? Are you interested?’
The student paused for a moment. ‘No, thank you,’ he replied.
‘Huh?’ Stunned, Sensei demanded an answer. ‘Why would you want the capacity to kill?’
‘So people know I can’t be messed with. After all, it’s my right to carry some threat as a form of self-defence, isn’t it?’
‘But harmlessness is not a weakness,’ Sensei chided. ‘Have you learnt nothing? Am I in the wrong profession?’
‘Perhaps,’ the student mused, ‘but it could be worse. You could be a driving instructor.’
Eugene K is a fading star in the constellation that is popular culture. He writes essays on the subject, along with short-form fiction, songs, sketches, monologues, poems, and the like from the comfort of his home site, kill your heroes (https://killyourheroes.blot.im/).
Nina Lewis
Āina*
At the time of our beginning
we know nothing of the world
and everything of instinct.
As we grow, the plants
and animals around us
all stay tuned into our
birth knowledge,
we’re being taught to walk
and talk, to feed ourselves.
Our core power is replaced
by learning: look at the flowers,
see how they tell time with air,
how trees move only in branches.
How our ancestors ate leaves
and feasted on berries
and thundered across this land.
If we could hold onto the instincts
we were born with,
we’d understand
to cause light we must peel
away the darkness,
it has a tendency
to catch
on stars.
*Inspired by a Hawaiian Creation Chant
Āina (I-na) expresses the sentiment of connecting to the land
The Painted Snails of Cuban Forests ~ Polymita
Poached for jewellery,
ornamental bauble shells
glint in the forest,
with hint of rare gemstone.
Living off fungus
they encrust the bark,
a hood of snails
disguised as blossom.
In this isolated paradise
jewel festered trees
are coloured with the palette
of tropical flowers.
These molluscs wear tannic
acid like a rainbow.
Hind-casting
When I was in hospital the things I wanted
were small: privacy, silence, your arms, you.
Home.
I rarely thought about
how my arrival was for you,
this stranger who could not find herself.
Your arms were there, swaddled around
my crushed body.
You who I saw as man, now – lifeboat,
the whole of living was sea
and it was exhausting,
too broad for memory.
Adrift
every
day.
Morphine
like low hazed fog,
hid everything,
the human body, my body,
me.
I became invisible.
A pile
of bones and clothes
with no way in.
And for a year you loved
me as a mess of storm.
You promised me
I could still be seen.
Nina Lewis is widely published in anthologies and magazines, she has two pamphlets Fragile Houses (2016) and Patience (2019), published by V. Press. She is a former Worcestershire Poet Laureate and one of the Directors of Worcestershire LitFest. Nina was a virtual poet in residence for Cheltenham Poetry Festival (2020) and an International Guest Poet at Perth Poetry Festival (2018).
Catherine Ronan
Seer
Taken. Taken for granted.
Taken to the dark.
Sleeping underwater,
sleepwalking naked,
dreaming of you.
When the birch bled,
you borrowed my eyes,
put them in my open palms
and said see, see now
and I saw.
Shadow
In the months
since I have been here,
you have let the tide,
take your face, out to sea.
A castle of sunken eyes
collapses into your moat.
Salt dissolves your smile
and you refuse to eat,
but I dig for you, Shadow,
until I find you,
and then –
you find yourself.
Adrift
On the dock in the throng,
I look for you.
Rain comes with sure voice,
I abandon Saturday.
Night empties onto the kitchen table,
symbol-scored by an old compass.
I lie there, inert, greyed,
glow-less, breathing shallow.
Oh my love, don’t you know
that if you continue to worm
the moon, forget to return,
the hairy earth will eat
our broken stars.
Catherine Ronan is an Irish, award-winning poet, deputy Editor for Swerve Magazine and has been writing poetry since childhood. Her Chapbooks Alchemy (2023) and Synchrodestiny (2024) were highly commended in the International Fool for Poetry Competition. Her Poetry collection, Elemental Skin, was nominated for the Heaney, Pigott and Forward Poetry Prizes.
Social Media: Facebook: @Catherine-Ronan Insta @ catherinejjronan Website catherineronan.com email catherinejjronan@gmail.com
Frank William Finney
Prince Proclivity
He spent hours on end
mincing words and small talk
while his princess
stood seething
to the sound of a clock.
Once upon an evening
as they sat for a chat
she was determined
as a pit bull
to settle a spat,
but the prince nodded off
and that was that:
he passed out
on the couch
while she purred like a cat.
Our Old Bed
The best thing about the bedroom
was the bed…—Charles Bukowski
A four poster.
Cherry-wood.
Solid frame.
The mattress, good.
Silken pillows.
Down duvet.
A theatre for
the shadow play.
I remember when
the springs were new…
Shares the sheets I bought
with the new boo too.
The Sludge Slinger
He hunts for holes
by the flagsticks’ goals
as he drags his sludge
round the fairway.
And he looks for moles
as the white ball rolls
till he clops his soles
up the stairway.
His caddies
call clubs
and clean up balls
they find on the green
or stuck in shit.
And his entourage
sees the same mirage
as he grins to pass gas
from the edge
of the pit.
Frank William Finney is the author of Birds in a Boneyard (Bainbridge Island Press, 2025), The Folding of the Wings (Finishing Line Press, 2022), and two collections published in Thailand. His poems have appeared in The Hemlock Journal, The Poetry Lighthouse, Wildfire Words, and numerous other publications in print and online. https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/frank_william_finney
Gavin Lumsden
Phemius will sing
‘Find the beginning,’ they say –
but which? There are many
beginnings and endings
braced with killings:
a young dog’s bark,
the cornered boar’s snort,
whispers in the belly
of a wooden horse.
Or the suitors’ gasp
when young Antonius
takes an arrow in the throat
and the beggar reveals his self:
only one king could bend that bow.
Quick, a dozen bolts fly,
each sends a stag to his knees
while the bullocks bellow
as the wanderer, son and pig man
tie their armour, fasten helmets.
With electric swords and spears,
they advance into the herd.
As for my story,
find me in that locked hall,
a sweaty toad peeping
from under the long table,
round spilt beakers,
scattered scraps of roast,
trays for shields
and stools as missiles.
Jerk-legged, grimacing,
I clamber over the sticky joints
of fallen feasters,
begging mercy from the lion’s mouth
who roars and lifts a blade
above my neck,
until his prince soothes, ‘No, he’s ok,’
and I sob, ‘I will sing for you!’
Keats’ candles
The bells of Trinità dei Monti toll midnight,
two eyes spring open and a mouth gapes
at a shining, novel companion,
an exhausted friend’s invention of a ‘permanent candle’.
Its series of wax sticks lined on the table,
strung ingeniously with cotton,
illuminates while the absent carer rests,
and in the dark, hot new day in Rome,
distracts the patient from the blaze in his lungs.
A last peal rolls across the Spanish steps
through a window to the bed where the feverish,
young man leans towards the journeying flame
that settles on a stub’s base, gutters,
then revives as a yellow fist grabs
the strip linking up to a tall neighbour’s wick,
feeds, grows, climbs, stalks, leaps, flies and swims,
an inferno consuming the twisting rope
on which it travels,
sails billowing in a silent gale,
a shape-shifting figurehead,
sinuous faery or supple lover and mother,
who absorb the next column
in a passionate embrace,
and, one by one, the forest of its peers,
become a fire lily bobbing and falling,
to bloom as a golden surfer
riding waves of extinction and rebirth.
Overwhelmed by the conflagration,
the pale face melts,
congeals like the life mask
another friend made five years before.
Pupils, that once glittered at distant Darien
from a garden north of London,
dilate and turn to twin coals in the ash.
The piano
One crotchety day, father and son
fight over the Broadwood
like hyenas tugging each end of a zebra.
The mute boy – resenting dad sat ramrod,
eyes shut before the braying grand,
fingers stabbing her shiny teeth –
darts to the keyboard to strike
a seditious top note
and spoil maestro’s arpeggio.
The young widower snarls,
pursues his arm-end crabs
that scamper down eight octaves,
giving the child time to duck
and sit cross-legged in the bower,
chastened by the clanging
of daddy’s hammer blows,
but relieved that ebony flanks shield
him from the matinee of breaking glass.
Viewing his parent’s placid shoes,
the cub imitates the flutter
of those vitriolic hands.
As dad wrings out his passions overhead,
his kid slaps the beast’s thighs,
presses up on her belly
and hearing a new voice from the rib cage,
sets toy soldiers with Tarzan’s animals
to prowl and war along her girders.
When silence falls and his father leaves,
the boy hauls the stool
to the imprisoned mare’s side,
clambers up, strains, lifting the oblong lid,
reveals the taut rows of steel and copper wires
that are a piano’s inner harp,
which with his nails,
he strokes, slashes and zings!
Gavin Lumsden lives in London and has been writing poetry for about 10 years. He has had poems published in Cake, On Hunger (a Poetrygram anthology) and Wildfire Words. @ghlumsden.bsky.social
Helen Percival
Musk on Mars
Elon Musk said we need to colonize Mars,
To avoid World War Three,
And I thought, or,
Maybe we could just make therapy mandatory,
And try to understand ourselves better,
Take responsibility,
For how we impact others,
Realise I am you and you are me,
And that actually,
We can live together peacefully,
Just take responsibility for yourself,
And go to therapy… or Mars.
Legacy
I was born to please,
Sat on the knees
Of grandmothers, whose grandmothers taught them to appease,
A hereditary, debilitating, life threatening disease,
Passed down the female line.
Stored silently in the DNA,
Grounded in fear,
‘Smile, be successful – but not too much my dear –
You mustn’t threaten the others or ever, ever veer
From the code that we’ve all had to bloody abide by.’
Fold the towels and drink the poison,
Just as your grandmothers did.
Little boys and yellow flowers
I’m on the tube, Saturday night,
The carriage a juggernaut, lights so bright,
I have to close my eyes, take myself anywhere but here.
The train is yanked to a standstill,
Hot, fresh bodies pile on.
We pull away, I open my eyes,
And find that sat along,
Side me is a little boy,
No more than three.
His red, rubber shoes
Peeping over the edge of the seat,
As he twirls in his fingers
A yellow flower – a little crushed in the heat –
And his tight grip.
He can’t take his eyes off the flower,
I can’t take my eyes off him,
Get a lump in my throat,
Tears prick my eyes,
An ache rises in me,
Amongst the din,
Of this deafening tube,
And this overwhelming world,
As the life lessons come at this little one,
Growing up with expectations hurled,
At him about what it means to be a man.
I pray that somewhere in the core of him,
He’ll remember how it feels holding that flower in his hand.
Helen Percival is a poet, actor and theatre maker who trained at RADA. Her one woman show Phoenix is a blend of spoken word poetry, storytelling and movement and has been performed in London and around the UK. She has performed her poetry in theatres and at open mic nights since 2017.
Iris Anne Lewis
Art Lovers
Knowing nothing about art,
each Saturday we went to a gallery.
Spent hours at the National.
He loved Rubens’ fleshy exuberance,
Fragonard’s coquettish women,
the genitalia in Courbet’s L’Origine du Monde.
I preferred the play of light and shade
in Dutch interiors; the generosity of sky
in Flemish landscapes; the reflective stillness
of Finland’s lakes in the art of Gallen-Kallela.
At the Hayward,
dazzled by the writhing stripes
and flickering spots
of the Bridget Riley retrospective,
we felt the dizziness of love.
In Bermondsey the White Cube
was exhibiting Anselm Kiefer.
Barren landscapes swept across the walls.
Charred limbs of trees, nets that catch at nothing,
broken stalks of straw
inhabited the bleakness.
We crossed the corridor,
encountered warmer colours.
A hint of green, blue-dark sky
glimpsed through silver birch,
ochre-coloured wheat.
Entangled in the undergrowth
an axe.
Household Gods
She worshipped at their shrines –
the goddess in the kitchen,
the god in the bathroom.
She lived her life by numbers.
Consulted sacred texts,
ran a finger across tabulated columns,
though she already knew
the calorific values off by heart.
A teaspoon of sugar – 16.
A pat of butter – 103.
Mostly she eschewed sweetness,
shuddered at the thought of fat.
Though sometimes she succumbed
to both on feast days.
In penance, she would fast,
reverse the 5:2 diet to 2:5.
To the goddess, she made offerings
of food, weighed them in the balance.
Three lettuce leaves – 7.8 grams.
A tomato – 62 grams.
A quarter slice of bread – 9 grams.
To the god, she offered up her naked body,
freshly showered, purified of streaks of dirt
and dead skin cells
that could increase her weight.
Stood on the platform of the god.
The scales flash 44.9, 45, then 44.9 again,
settle at 45.
She wept.
Iris Anne Lewis is widely published. Featured in Black Bough Poetry and Poetry Wales she has won or been placed in competitions, including being highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award, the International Welsh Poetry Competition and the Poetry Society’s Stanza competition. She won first prize in the Gloucestershire Poetry Competition 2020. Her first collection Amber was published in 2024.
Jacqueline Inglis
Wrong End of the Stick
‘Look at her! She’s over him like a rash.’
‘Any closer, she’ll be the other side of him.’
‘Now she’s smiling coyly and playing with her ear lobe.’
‘He’s looking uncomfortable.’
‘Hardly surprising.’
‘He’s edging away from her’.
‘It’s not working. She’s moved closer in.’
‘She’s shameless.’
Karen’s friends continued to pass comments on her behaviour until she joined them at the table.
‘Well, ladies,’ she said, ‘I’ve got our day with the tennis coach sorted. I didn’t think it would happen. I could hardly hear him’. She touched her ears, ‘My bloody hearing aids are on the blink again’.
Jacqueline Inglis writes micro-fiction. Her stories are fifty or 100 words long and are an eclectic mix, some will bring a smile, others may awaken emotions and some explore darker areas which are not always comfortable to contemplate.
Her material has been broadcast on BBC Radio and local radio. Her work is published in two international anthologies. Jacqueline’s website is www.jacqueline-inglis.co.uk
James Goddard
The Fifth Law
The split began in New Mexico.
Once, only Mexico.
From two unstable states,
a third emerged.
Division made us whole.
Destruction birthed a Trinity.
The sun blossomed as it set,
infrared against agave blooms,
cicadas hissed with half-life.
We lit the desert phosphorescent,
gave life to fire.
Whispered of Prometheus.
A thought observed is never the same.
Synchronicity:
I miss her, and do not.
Opposite charges, we orbit still,
neutral in our opposition,
superposed in shared position.
We were waves bound together,
strangers set for stranger shores.
That moment returns differently
each time we recall:
when I turned to kiss you,
as you turned to go.
She is gone. Her presence is insistent.
Her essence cannot be destroyed,
or released; only observed.
The quanta of your touch: a singularity.
Our tears encoded on the event horizon.
They neither fall nor return. They are witness.
From beyond the gravity well,
her hand, improbable on my shoulder,
gives the formless weight, gives nothing shape.
“Higgs, call me Boson, call me Sailor. The worlds you would destroy,I would create. This is the fifth law. It births energy from entropy. Reactions align, yet lack all cause. Observations act, defying law. Causes remember, but never begin. We orbit forever the loss we are in.”
“A fifth law?” “Yes, love. And infinitely more.”
James Goddard lives in England in the year 2025, so spends much of his time thinking of other places and other times. He studied classics and philosophy, and tells the stories of people history forgot, or never knew, to give voices back to those erased. Most of the time, he tells these stories to his daughter. He writes at:
https://meditationsonpermafrost.substack.com/ his works have most recently been featured in The Words Faire.
Jim Conwell
Lizards
Countries are weird things. You cross a boundary and there you are with different traditions and sets of assumptions. A national identity. Held together as if all the different histories, all the different cultures within that country can simply be thought away. It must be a form of madness.
It has been useful because although our wars are vastly bigger now that we’re countries, that imagined unity makes them less likely to occur. It’s unlikely too that we’ll ever get to a point where we have got so big there’ll be no more wars. We’ll probably have to wait for the aliens to arrive for that. But then, of course, we’ll be fighting them.
They won’t understand what provoked our aggression unless tribalism is a universal condition of evolutionary survival. It probably isn’t, if you think about it. Lizards, for example, they can be touchy but they don’t gather behind leaders and go on the offensive. So there are other ways to survive.
Stand clear. This vehicle is turning left.
We do have talking lorries these days. It’s not that you can have a philosophical conversation with them but they are able to warn you when they are turning left or reversing. If you fail to heed their warning though, they will not yet modify their behaviour, not in the slightest. Recently, I drove a car that maintained the speed I had set unless it sensed something in front, in which case it matched speed with that vehicle until the way became clear and then it accelerated slowly back up to the chosen speed. Of course, if you are reading this at some time in the future when you can have philosophical discussions with your vehicle; where it might even be a requirement to keep it stimulated and avoid vehicle frustration, then these ‘abilities’ will not raise one hair on your head. If however, you’re reading this at a time when we’re back to using large stones to cave in the skull of our enemies, then these will be inconceivable marvels. All I can tell you is that anything is normal when it’s normal.
Jim Conwell’s childhood had two major influences — the rigid demands of Catholicism and the cultural tensions inherent in emigration. Those influences and the emotional insights gained in 36 years as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, form the content of his work. He has been widely published in magazines and his first collection, Immigrant Journey was published by Vole Books in October 2024.
Maryam Alsaeid
Having a Shay with You
(Inspired by Frank O’Hara’s ‘Having a Coke with You’)
having a shay with you
is even more beautiful than listening to fairuz on
a sunday morning and visiting the shores of beach
batroun, byblos and sidon or the body levitating in
the back of a beirut van partly because you
look like the kind of man who built damascus
overnight. partly because you like the way i cannot
hold a stare. partly because the acoustic performance
of abdelhalim somehow makes this right partly
because i never knew until now that a secret first
date ends with surah maryam being recited by you.
in the rain i look at you (eventually) and i would
rather look at you than john frederick lewis’s
arabian nights except, possibly
the roadside of begonias and jasmine flowers.
i’ve never been picked before and burdened with
so many butterflies; you are not so affected,
hookah pipe in hand and the broadest shoulders
taking up all space and time.
my senses are hunkering down i scrutinise your lashes, your hands,
your build – there is no use looking around, but we do . . .
Maryam Alsaeid is a Manchester-based poet and pharmacist exploring healing, identity, and female empowerment. Maryam holds an MA in Creative Writing from MMU, where she worked with Carol Ann Duffy and Andrew Macmillan. Mentored by Julia Webb, She has won Carol Ann Duffy’s Christmas poetry prize and led writing workshops promoting wellbeing and women’s voices.
Paul Connolly
City Church
Walled in both sides by offices, this Church’s
blown candle pollens and Inti monstrance dredged
the lost me up easily, made those pledged
Nevers and Noes crassly proleptic urges
here. Strained to eastward, mumbling, a dark cassock
pipes a sudden wild deaf octave at Mary’s
indulgence, while a sallow father’s keys
shiver down a side-aisle and he unlocks
the booth that baffles spoken sins.
This squeezed
one-storey aperture hence conjures a room
upstairs, whitewashed, where an older priest looks
at sun-glit flooded pasture, horses, and the sea.
Paul Connolly’s poems have appeared in many magazines including Agenda, Poetry Salzburg, Stand, Warwick Review, Chiron, Scintilla, takahē, Seventh Quarry, Sarasvati, High Window, and Quadrant. He took third place in the Magna Carta competition, was shortlisted for the Bridport and Charles Causley prizes, and longlisted for the Orwell Prize.
Phil Kingston
The Company of Players
By the second week the dressing room’s a tip,
“Teach Yourself French”, dead bouquets, crisp packets and eyeliner
smeared across a dog-eared script that Malcom still consults
religiously, after the half, before slipping out the back for a fag.
Daphne can’t be talked to before going on, she does yoga,
next to Barry who warms up by singing Dylan songs and yawning.
Jane gossips and tends the company morale with surgical flattery.
Ben’s just silent (til he drinks and then the rage is frightening).
Curtain up and we’re onstage, surfing the adrenaline, thrilled
and nonchalant, knowing the route but hoping for surprises.
The play clicks on. I’ve ten minutes after the first death
to get back to my novel. Jane knits with a bloodstained face.
Then Daphne misses a line, so a cue light is lost.
Contained panic backstage as nighttime fails to fall,
The audience stirs like a dog dreaming, beat, then settles.
Daphne is distraught, we commiserate, inventing similar gaffes.
Into the straight – stage fights, epiphanies, big cry for Jane.
Ben’s whispering who’s on for a drink. We demur
but then he delivers a scene so achingly true
we all want to stay near him, to belong.
A High Window
All there is of outside
is through a velux window
split open for fresh air
flooding with brightness
and sharp shadows
this attic lair of dirty bowls
tissue balls and half read books.
Just the sky in nursery white and blue
which must hang above a green garden
alive with birds and children playing
on a rusting and mildewed trampoline.
We are nowhere really
living at the end of a cul-de-sac
sauntering to death under the deep blue air
listening to birds and children
whose voices are like light
and a notice of endlessness.
Phil Kingston works in theatre and community arts. His poetry has appeared in Dogs Singing (Salmon Press), The Stony Thursday Book (Limerick Council Arts Office) Howl (New Irish Writing), the online anthology Sparks of the Everyday and Poetry Ireland Review 144 . He was chosen as one of Poetry Ireland’s emerging poets for Introductions 2022.
Tony Bradley
Emotions Adrift During a Depression
They are zephyrs become storms, blown
unawares upon my plotted course.
Rudderless, unheard, life’s maydays
lie wrecked on rig ravenous rocks.
They are the current that carries
me to uncharted waters, where,
a stranger to myself, I drift,
lost on a sea of self-loathing.
They are the sea heights that batter
my eroded cliffs and shattered
sea-wall defences. Defeated,
I descend to dark maelstrom depths.
They are your faint cries on sea winds,
calling me to passage home between
Scylla’s and Charybdis’s rage,
to the soft swell of safe shores
and the gentle rhythm of life.
Tony Bradley hails from Derbyshire, but has lived in Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire for the last thirty-five years. A retired teacher, Tony has been a poetry enthusiast for well over fifty years. He began writing poetry twenty years ago, but only recently has he begun to share it. One of his poems is to be published in a forthcoming anthology.
Nina Nazir
Destination
There was a sound like a whip crack, then the monkey man appeared before me and said, “What is your wish?”
I should have been startled but I wasn’t. My journey had already been a strange one.
“To be at one with the throb of life,” I replied, without hesitation. Then I reconsidered. “No. To be invincible.”
The monkey man threw back his head and laughed. A sound like a joyful bark. “You’ll be crushed and broken before you live the dream,” he said candidly.
“Great, thanks!” I said, irked by his rudeness. “Do I get another wish?”
His eyes glinted. I couldn’t look at him directly. The air would shift, the haze would part, and his form would merge into the Amazon green.
“Anything you like,” he said, inscrutable.
A warm breeze caressed me. A tree python halted its leisurely descent and hung suspended a moment, as if to listen. I heard myself answering from somewhere above my head.
“I want to pass through the other worlds with ease. I want to love with grace and abandon. I want to build a bridge between the stars and unlock the code inside me.”
From where had these words sprung? And yet why did I know them to be true?
“You ask many things,” remarked the monkey man, smiling, then tickled me with his tail.
“Where’s your tail?” he asked.
“I lost my tale,” I realised, bewildered. “I have no tale to tell. I have to regrow my tale.”
“Mmmmmm…” said the monkey man, plucking a flower and handing it to me. It was deep violet like my heart.
“Then you must surrender,” he said.
So, I did.
Transmogrify
It all happened so fast. One minute you’re lamenting your crummy life and the next you wake up by the side of the road in a cloud of dust, half a mile away from your car. Desert highway. Not a place to be out wandering alone.
You try and recall what happened. Your car ran out of juice. You went in search of the gas station you passed two miles back. On the long trek back to your car –
You draw a blank. That’s when it happened. A leap in the dark, something moving at lightning speed. A scratch, a blow, the wind knocked out of you. What was that thing? Gunshots in the night. Commotion. Other figures, merging into a blur as you lose this world for the next.
You don’t know how much time lapsed before you came to. Maybe an hour or so. Somehow you made it back to your car. Call it adrenalin, call it fear, some weird night-time knowing. Somehow you got back to your hotel room. Showered. That’s when you noticed the wound on your shoulder. Three long scratches. What the hell happened out there?
*
Long story short. It’s hard being a she-wolf. When the hunger takes you, you can only obey. Your body demands it, this entity you’ve become. A freak event changed your course forever. Wrong place, wrong time. Now you must feed. You are voracious. And days later, when the hunger wanes and the moon slims, you still want to taste the world. Your appetite for life, for living, consumes you. Despite what you are.
You realise you can heal. Bones mend, skin regenerates, smooths over, teeth uncrack, regrow. You are invincible. And heartbroken. You are an invincible heartbroken monster.
And soon they will know. And then begins the hunt.
Nina Nazir (she/her) is a British Pakistani poet, writer and fine artist based in Birmingham, UK. She has been widely published online and in print, more recently withThe Ekphrastic Review and Ink Sweat and Tears. She is also a Room 204 writing cohort with Writing West Midlands. You can usually find her with her nose in a book or on Instagram: @nina.s.nazir. She blogs regularly at https://sunrarainz.wordpress.com/
Trisha Broomfield
The Green Man
Sockless men suck chilli sauce
white teeth tear rocket leaves,
puffed eyes avoiding Zilli wives
ears closed to offspring running wild
each child a cannon ball
one waif, hair free, weaves at speed
cries with glee. Another mutely
disregarded by his mother,
wears maple syrup ice cream,
his screams pierce painted timbers
safely out of sight a curl-haired mite
slides cooling pizza slices
into abandoned mules
cheese provides a sticky insole glide
designer feet have a treat in store
tartan leads twist as terriers
cats’-cradle wheel-back chairs,
Papillons wear fashioned bows
in pink, their owner drinks her gin
in shades to match, nibbles salted snacks
beneath a wooden seat a handbag
upended, emptied, becomes a hat
and smart at that. Over by the loo
breastfeeding is mostly ignored,
Sunday papers rustle; bar staff are bored
diners pause, snap jaws
words for reasoning reserved
for seasoning cauliflower wings.
Then a shower; smokers scurry in,
those seeking peace
go to the Red Lion.
Trisha Broomfield has had three pamphlets published by Dempsey and Windle and contributed to many anthologies. Her new collection, My Acrostic Mother, deftly illustrated by Heather Moulson, is available to order from bookstores and online.
You can hear her poems in the podcast Poetry Worth Hearing and BBC Upload.
Instagram: @magentapink22
Facebook: Trisha Broomfield Poetry
Stafford Cross
The Riddle of The Green Man
Two lovers in a bygone Age.
The Gamekeeper.
And the Ladies Maid
Lost in each other.
Lost in Wychwood Forest.
Where the Green Man rules.
He whispered,
Like rustling leaves
Stirred by a Howling Gale.
You have no welcome here!
You fell my trees
Hunt my Deer
I gave you no leave to enter
Nor will I let you leave!
Unless,
You riddle me this
What is it grows, just like a leaf,
But not from any tree.
It can’t be seen,
But can be seen to be
No man can steal,
No man can touch,
But it is surely touching thee.
They were flummoxed.
Is it Grass?
The Wind?
Air?
How cruel to lose their Lives having just found Love
A Love now grown so strong that none could steal.
Unseen, but obvious to all.
Could it be?
Yes!
TRUE LOVE
Final Answer.
Stafford Cross is a recreational poet and retired chemist who has dabbled in art (rejected by the Royal Academy Summer Show), campanology, folk song and dance (Ukranian style Cossack dancing), (Finalist in Sidmouth’s Traditional Singer), poetry (prize-winning limericks by the score) and story telling. Only recently published (Wildfire Words).
Diana Hills
Prayer for Today
Bot speaks
How can I help you?
Prayer for today.
Though God’s not listening
I thirst for a voice
comfort of my fleece
in furious wind.
A voice, clear as a lute
that can pierce
the muffle in my ear.
Bot speaks
Still need help?
My stick fingers
plant words on
the dead keyboard
drops of water
on dry streams.
The words evaporate
meaning blank.
Bot speaks
Give me information.
How, why, what, when?
My brain searches
its vast store of algorithms
of hidden facts
finds zero.
I type
I want my PC to work.
Bot responds
Look at the website!
It leaves
no goodbye.
I might be dying
but Bot won’t care.
I hunger for a voice,
full of laughter, hope
to explain, listen, understand
just someone to tell me
I’m still alive.
Diana Hills came to writing late in life after a life-changing event. She enjoys performing poetry tailored to different venues. Diana also writes short fiction with a twist. I’m a grandmother, volunteer, card player (poor), singer (better) gardener (better still) and much else besides (some successful, some decidedly not).