Replete by Maggie Butt
Replete
Enough of beauty - I have devoured
small boats curtseying at anchor,
green palace-dotted hills swarming
the spice-scented shore of Asia Minor.
I couldn’t chew another mouthful
of waves,...
What You Call Your ‘Winter Mode’ by Patri Wright
On the wicker chair I wait for the duvet’s rise:
you’re just a mound, breath,
as I worry over why, again, you’ve overslept.
Could it be early...
Review | The Neighbourhood by Hannah Lowe
Hannah Lowe’s fourth chapbook, The Neighbourhood, begins with a winding dotted line that travels from the first to the second page. The image continues...
Poetry | Atlantic Palimpsest by Kerri ní Dochartaigh
-for Heaney and the Peace Bridge
Grey and greying sky
reflected in choppy body,
as our matching heron
performs his balancing act for all to see.
The Donegal hills,...
Refugees by Manash Bhattacharjee
Refugees
I know a thing or two
about refugees –
As a child I heard father
say, “We were sleeping
in the place we thought
was our country, till
the siren rang...
Flash Fiction | Never Fall For That by Rebecca Lilly
"Clarify your intent," — Lama Chopra, our
meditation teacher, rang the bell for us to
sit — "the Reaper was once an old friend."
My...
Snowbound by Michael O’Neill
Snowbound
Carriages lit and still between the drifts ...
With each flake it took on a new form,
the city they seemed exiled from ---
almost a sad,...
Catalogue of Minor Extinctions by Tyler Raso
i. labrador duck
Sitting at a disrespectful distance—
---------back where they came from—gets
defensive when blinking (like only
---------shepherds have a right to).
welcoming wreckage to its homeland by
---------sailboat...
The Lighthouse by Michael Shann
The Lighthouse
Markhouse Road
So far from the wine-dark sea, a displaced
monument to faith and absurdity
at the turn of a neat, Victorian street.
Still, the treacherous rocks...
Evening Light
Evening Light
Brave bat in a bowler hat
Blood shot eyes question
What time does this light
Depart?
The light descends elsewhere
Its shadow rising here
The bat changes into an...
Poetry | Woman by Manash Bhattacharjee
Woman
“It’s easy, impossible, hard, worth trying.”
~ Wislawa Szymborska, “Portrait of a Woman” (1976)
She is intimately attached
To night and day.
Only...
The Teacher by Manash Bhattacharjee
To Upal Deb
He wasn’t a blackboard
Framing flightless birds
Not a classroom figure
Offering the curriculum
To rows of bored faces
He sat on his bed facing
The window Van...
News | Waltham Forest Borough of Culture 2019 — The People’s...
The People's Forest — a literary strand to Waltham Forest's programme as the first ever London Borough of Culture this year — has recently...
Review | The Triumph of Cancer by Chris McCabe
The scientific language used by doctors to describe cancer—the uncontrollable growth of a single cell—is often mystifying and alienating. Can the experience of cancer...
Social Contract by Rachel Willems
The politeness, not leaving any butter in the jam,
or jam in the butter, or shoes in the hall.
Not leaving any residue of who did...
Khuda by Manash Bhattacharjee
Many times I passed by your house
On my way to see my grandmother
I paused before the large iron gates
Expecting to catch a glimpse of...
Poetry | Coot by Iain Twiddy
Iain Twiddy
Coot
It didn’t need to be a big ripple
nudging its reed-nest for the overstep
to plop into the up-plump of the breast,
and the coot to...
At Aya Sofia by Edward Lucie-Smith
Today it’s snowing, snowing
In Istanbul,
Stamboul, Constantinople,
New Rome, Byzantium.
The city has mislaid its Jews
And most of its Greeks.
The bones of its Armenians
Are long scattered.
Somewhere far...
We Wait for Poets by Manash Bhattacharjee
prophets have retired
so do not wait for yours to come to you
~ Ashraf Fayadh (translated by Mona Kareem)
In our country, a prince,
Dara Shikoh, had...
At the Nursing Home by Leland James
—inside an old man vacant by the window
Hold me occasionally for the light is fading
and I can no longer see the hills that once
rose...
Partita, 1968 by Hannah Lowe
Partita, 1968
When the tabla and double bass are really moving
the raga in full swing
I think of when I used to run for hours, for...
Review | Letters To A First Love From The Future by...
Andy Armitage's pamphlet is among a number of new releases from the poetry press Half-Moon Books, which is based in Otley, West Yorkshire, where...
Onion Music by Mark Fiddes
I grow lighter for you
with each striptease
from skin to skin leaving
a glimmering bulb
a milk light by your bed
for you to undress by
or find your...
Poetry | Joan Howson’s Cottage by Michael Henry
Michael Henry
Joan Howson's Cottage
This is Black Rock Sands that
............my parents walked to
from their honeymoon hideaway.
Those are the footprints they left
............on the sand.
That is the...