Issue #11 out now

Issue #11 out now

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Latest Submissions

  • Ballard’s ‘High Rise’

    Inspired by the architecture of the barbican.

    Ballard’s ‘High Rise’
    Charlotte Gardner
  • My Sister’s Birthday

    We rubbed our faces against the clear cool glass,
    The border land almost breached as we laughed.
    Barefoot in hand-me-down Armani I held my sister,
    As she beamed at ivory white mannequins six foot tall.
    We giggled and danced invisible in front of our Gods,
    As we forgot our hunger and my sister’s missing hand.

    Thundering bahar descends full of outrage,
    As we flee the dream temple onto the baked lands.
    At half height we weave like acrobats in our dirt skins,
    Ready for the next bad-trade and hunger-meal.
    With our three paws we forage for the glinty-things,
    And see only images of oranges where bottle tops lie.

    My sister finds apple peel and we share double quick,
    And spit out sand and memories of our mother-land.
    We cross the bady-bady where the stone-boys roam,
    And find the water crack to clean our panda eyes.
    Safe like hunted deer we pause and with cracked mouths,
    We yawn knowing the day has only just begun.

    We fist trade our glinty-things for finger bread,
    But kutra circles so we push-off to monkey land.
    Our dancing friends keep the black dogs at bay,
    As I give my sister a marble I name Samsung.
    She holds it eagerly in her only-hand and cries,
    She wants to hold the marble,
    She wants to hold my hand,
    But more than this,
    She wants to lie down and die.

    Marky B
  • Indefinite Leave to Remain

    (Diamond Jubilee)
    Intensity is done
    Now the wait
    Wondering
    What comes next?
    We, immigrant
    Moving nations
    Not across borders
    But inside bodies
    Our blue eyed son
    The reminder of migrations past
    That cut across
    Boundaries made from desks and glass partitions
    The inventions of form filling
    Line making
    Appetite suppressing
    This Indefinite Leave To Remain
    Speaks of staying
    The softness of the story, human sized and roughly hewn; indistinct
    Asks for audience
    But, childlike, must quiet itself
    Elevating certainty above ambiguity
    For the egalitarian process
    Of mutual address, proof
    Credit card payments
    The evidence of our good citizenship
    Heading home
    Bus driver rides angry,
    Son of forced movements sweetened later with the cultivation of recruitment promises
    Cushioned beneath a Jubilee weekend
    Sixty diamond years of continental drift
    Culminate in a pen stroke of declaration
    That what we are is enough
    That what we are is the truth
    The pragmatism of surrender
    Another layer on the foreshore
    As 1000 ships sail by.

    Dominique Santos
  • Snow White

    isn’t into dwarf rights,
    cares not a fig for mine safety
    or forest ecology:
    she’s set her cap for the prince
    and his castle –
    meantime, she blows
    seven old men in a single bed.

    Norbert Hirschhorn
  • Kraken Mask

    Pokémon reject #9971
    The cuttlefish’s best mate
    Something even Paul the Octopus
    couldn’t have dreamt up
    Octopus meat is simply humbugs
    wrapped in streaky bacon
    Anchor-mouth teased the kids
    A double-split experiment gone wrong
    An oceanic Higgs boson

    Christian Ward
  • The Empty Jar

    The process of pouring yourself
    into another was alien to you
    Yet, you pushed back your fears
    the god forsaken donkey years
    And plunged deeply
    Into hope-
    Ah, that shiny coin
    caught between heads and tails

    Being the women I am
    I walked away,
    leaving nothing more than
    small bites of poetry
    bellowing behind

    Small flutters of wingless love
    that you hungrily chewed
    until blood gave way to bone

    Using all your strength
    you captured what the wind
    would steal

    As I gorged myself on life
    your preception of reality
    was forever altered

    How I remember
    How I am shamed

    Sarah Hardin
  • Boogled

    (Things I had to search for on Google Images at work today)

    ‘Animatronic Party Tortoise’

    Julie Seal
  • The Better Brother

    You wouldn’t have ended up broke
    two weeks before each payday
    unable to pay the rent
    or heat the house;

    and you wouldn’t have looked for
    easy ways out of it: therefore,
    you wouldn’t have seen the
    open door as an opportunity

    and you wouldn’t have poked your
    head inside
    and you wouldn’t have noticed
    the flatscreen TV
    and you wouldn’t have taken it.

    And even if you’d ended up there,
    you wouldn’t have panicked
    at footsteps upstairs;

    you would have walked out calmly,
    rather than fled
    so you would not have dropped
    your wallet.

    Zoë Fiander
  • Hourglass

    Pity those
    Who in fruitless pursuit
    Of all evil’s root
    Forsake that which matters most
    That which can’t be controlled,
    Hurried, cajoled
    The commodity, none can trade
    An end that can’t be stayed

    It slips right by them
    Where they stand
    That most precious gem
    The hourglass sand.

    Rather still, the thinking man
    Who knows what it is
    To sit and gaze on that or this
    Who just rests a while
    Beneath birch,
    Or perched
    On style
    And just is
    And just be’s
    Who says I am,
    I understand.

    Robert McEvoy
  • The Cut

    I see full lines, track lines, parallel lines
    where the fast furious light cuts my patch in two.
    With berry-stained paws and diamond eyes,
    I walk where no man can.

    I hear the click, the crunch, the snap
    where trespassers breathe fire in hushed huddles.
    With cold jaw and electric fur,
    I hide where no man can.

    I smell dead meat, car heat and human feet
    where the dark light always rattles and hums.
    With eager heart and pulsing blood,
    I eat what no man can.

    Marky B
  • The Sweeper

    His streets
    long before the
    flurry of the
    earliest morning feet
    And this makes him smile.

    Not perfect yet
    Nor will they be
    But they’ll be better
    Yet

    Each stroke
    Palming away
    The unwanted
    Always forward
    Firm grip and downward
    Push, past memories
    Swept up with butts and plastic cups

    While most look down
    He looks back
    Happy
    He’s made a difference
    And this does him.

    Robert McEvoy
  • Paratrooper

    I lay plank-like darting eyes,
    you the unknown reminding me I’m
    alive.
    Between beeping light and white coat,
    I see you cleaning floors
    and opening doors.

    I spy you in profile radiant,
    ignored by passersby hidden and shy.
    Between morphine and news at nine,
    I see you cleaning floors
    and opening doors.

    I guess at your state of mind,
    and what loves and shames you hide.
    Between new hairstyles and hemlines,
    I see you cleaning floors
    and opening doors.

    I hold you in my mind’s eye.
    Escaping and collapsing
    Into
    each
    other.
    Between adrenalin and the final
    Flat__________________Line,
    I see you cleaning floors
    and opening doors.

    Marky B
  • Some thoughts about film

    I want to see films of bleak environments like desolate Iceland and harsh Russian tundra.

    I want to see films about change and class and discontent.

    I want to see more films about space. There aren’t enough.

    I want to see films with colour palettes of faded browns, deep turquoises, semolina yellows,
    And subtle tones of grey.

    I want to see films in different languages, un-subtitled, because they only make sense in their native tongue.

    I want to see films that make me uncomfortable,
    And angry,
    And those that make me think about them for weeks afterwards.

    I want to see films that make me see differently,
    And ones that show me I’m not alone in my thoughts.

    I want to see films with dialogue so natural it’s perfect,
    And quiet films … with minutes between lines.

    I want to see films with characters I loathe, and then fall in love with.

    I want to see my future favourite ever film – but not just yet.

    I want to see films that instil in me the urge to make films …

    I want to see the film I keep thinking about making, but doesn’t yet exist.

    Alix Land
  • Parental lament

    My boy is sleeping safe in bed
    Without a tumour in his head.

    No hepatitis, septicaemia.
    No lymphoma, no leukaemia.

    His heart is strong, his breathing sure.
    The marrow in his bones is pure.

    No ADD, MS, ME,
    CF, MD or HIV.

    We drove him safely to his school,
    And back again. He swam the pool

    Untroubled, laughing, loving it.
    No seizure, stroke or fatal fit.

    No aircraft engine yet has failed.
    No train come lethally derailed.

    He moves from trampoline to tree
    To bicycle, to skate and ski,

    Unharmed, unruffled, innocent.
    No injury. No accident.

    He sleeps. We sleep. Another day
    Is passed in ease. We made more hay.

    No horror here, no sudden shark.
    No plunge into the depthless dark.

    No slip from sunshine into sorrow.
    But there’s always tomorrow.
    Always tomorrow.

    Mike Reed
  • Stand up, routine

    I’m going to write in italics
    For the rest of my life.
    It helps me put my own
    Slant on things.

    I worried I was pretty fat,
    So I curled up
    Small and started a fire.
    I was a little lighter.

    They told me I needed
    To be an advocate for turf.
    I felt very forlorn.

    I went to the tobacconists.
    It was closed,
    So no cigar.

    You think I’m bad?
    Well, the internet’s
    Doubly selfish.
    It’s all meme meme
    Meme meme meme.

    Django Wylie
  • Draw…something!

    You know what pisses me off about Draw Something? PEOPLE. Stupid, lazy fucking people.

    For those that don’t know (are you serious?), Draw Something is the latest app to make people drop their yoghurt. It’s basically Pictionary without the time limit – hang on a minute. How did they get away with that?! Maybe we should all take a popular board game, remove something fairly unimportant and make an app. It’s the modern day get-rich-quick scheme.

    Anyway, back to the people. The fucking people. The people that think it’s ok to draw ‘table’ because ‘dandruff’ is too tricky. Just draw a Head and Shoulders bottle! We could earn 3 coins! I may take it a little too seriously. I tend to avoid (or delete) my best friends if they pick a one coiner, or draw something so ludicrously abstract I waste half an hour crying with rage, frantically pressing the shuffle letters button. They don’t deserve me.

    I’m not gonna lie, I’ve become a master at this game. OK, a master of half this game. People come to me to help them guess because of the idiots I’m used to playing. But drawing is in my top 3 weakest skills (my girlfriend can tell you the others). But I try, I really try (go on, ask her). I look at my drawings before I send them and smile. I even draw them in a way that makes it easier to guess quickly so you don’t waste your precious time.

    That’s all I ask from fellow players. Fucking DRAW something, don’t waste my time. Be considerate, it’s a team game.

    That reminds me, I need to draw Shrek for my shrink.

    Lewis Bish
  • Dogs in books #003

    The Hundred and One Dalmatians
    Dodie Smith 1956

    Pete Lewis
  • MDNA

    MDNA is Madonna’s twelfth studio album, and the first since 2008’s Hard Candy.

    Anticipation has been high for MDNA, particularly after the singer’s widely praised performance at this year’s Super Bowl XLVI half time show, which scored a record audience of 114 million.

    Lead single Give Me All Your Luvin’, featuring Nicki Minaj and M.I.A., became Madonna’s record-extending 38th top 10 single in the United States, whilst the music video for latest single Girl Gone Wild, a throwback to the singer’s Erotica days, has been banned on open view on YouTube due to sexually explicit content.

    Needless to say, this has all generated a huge amount of publicity for the singer’s latest album. Early reviews of the record were glowing, with Billboard referring to it as ‘sheer brilliance’. So, does it live up to the hype? In short, yes. MDNA is an eclectic album, full of dance tracks practically made for summer, pop songs and reflective ballads.

    Whilst perhaps not as strong as earlier albums, such as Ray of Light or Like A Virgin, MDNA is a solid album that reestablishes Madonna alongside her contemporaries.

    Highlights include I’m Addicted, I Don’t Give A…, Love Spent and Masterpiece.

    James Golunski
  • Hippoparadox

    I’m a hippopotamus
    When I’m alone, just I.

    But when there’s lots of us
    We are hippopotami.

    Mike Reed
  • I’d like to commend…

    I’D LIKE TO COMMEND
    YOUR CATTLE CAR SKILLS –

    the bus driver announces
    over the loudspeaker,
    momentarily excusing us
    from pretending
    to ignore our fellow
    morning commuters,
    whose bodies
    and possessions
    are all pressed against
    our own bodies
    and possessions.

    Elizabeth Dingmann
  • Cheesecake

    Sweet, sticky golden rain
    forms puddles of goo
    on dense, creamy goodness
    and drips down to soak
    graham cracker crumbs
    and quickly disappear
    with the quick swipe of
    my grateful tongue

    Pamela Rudisill
  • Under the BT Tower

    UNDER THE BT TOWER

    I am arrested,
    no, lassoed,
    brought-up long
    by the sight of
    a duck-egg blue
    seahorse that’s
    gone to extension
    school, now racked
    and loitering on a
    sapling’s cage
    outside a restaurant
    promising ‘betta pitta’.

    On further away inspection,
    M. Pony de Mer turns
    out to be a
    camouflage
    giraffe,
    failing to
    find spring
    sustenance in the
    trap he has sprung.

    Operation Metaphor
    sweeps one more
    time to discover that
    its colleagues in the
    Simile Squad should
    have been called out,
    and now they are left
    with a torn plastic
    bag and a scene
    of no purposeful
    plurisignification.

    Rishi Dastidar
  • 344

    Look at these buildings
    these massive temples
    with all the facade
    and the intricate stonework
    and ironmongery.

    Maintenance will be required.
    and you will be the ones who wipe
    the soot and grime off
    with raw hands
    in the depths of winter.

    We will keep you.

    These people who live here
    These people who live here.
    These are people who go jogging at 9am.
    These are people who put up signs
    like no ball games.

    These people have nothing to do
    with being hungover on a bus.

    May
    It’s like waiting for an invisible guillotine
    an empty forest
    without me in it
    to witness
    the orchestrated fall

    And so,
    soundless
    your absence
    2am will never be the same

    I miss you
    sometimes
    your arms
    surpass
    my ability
    to comprehend
    history

    Ola Podgorska
  • Firehorse

    Walking the forecourt hands dug in deep breathing black winter air like a firehorse. Glass door split. No petrol for me. Look up gun in my face. Never happen before. No T-I-M-E to think. Push by me and I watch a man on the run. “I only come for Rizla” what to do? I DO NOTHING WRONG. I panic. I run. I do 4 years.

    Fourteen years later hand on the pump breathing sweet petrol air like a firehorse. Glass door split. No Rizla for me. No gun in my face. Happen before. Time to T-H-I-N-K. Pay at counter and watch man look at me. “I ONLY COME FOR RIZLA.” Get in my car and turn to my son. “You my firehorse, you never be afraid.” I drive. I cry. He’s 4 years old.

    Marky B
  • 8-Bit Lit: Mrs Dalloway

    8_bit_lit_mrs_dalloway
    Joe Hedinger