Issue #11 out now

Issue #11 out now

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Latest Submissions

  • Blue Bicycle

    you drop it right there
    your blue bicycle
    in the almost-grass of april
    and it sinks in
    just a little bit
    like a tired dinosaur
    the blue kind
    i don’t know all the kinds
    you talk about them a lot
    but i always forget

    David Luetke
  • migrants

    envious,
    i watch them
    splayed fat across the sky.

    we are the same,
    pulled from within
    towards the warmth of our mothers’ bellies.

    suffocating from cold
    we scream –
    squark!
    ‘let us be free from this place’.

    they, freed by flight
    squeal and shout;
    ‘join us!’
    and then they are gone,
    smudged into the horizon.

    i am left.
    flightless,
    in the autumn leaves.

    Lilly Warren
  • The Girl and the Tree

    tree_girl

    She first saw the tree when she climbed to the top of the Mount. She put down her satchel and caressed his skin; she pressed her cheek against his body and felt his strength. He sighed.

    “Why were you born a tree while I was born a girl?” she asked him, gazing up to where his fingers touched the sky.

    She visited the tree every day. In the summer months, the tree’s hair was green. She would strip off all her clothes and press her hot body against the tree’s cool flanks. In the autumn the tree’s hair turned reddy brown. She spent more and more time with the tree and spent less time in her home.

    “You and I are just the same,” she’d say.

    One evening, just as Autumn was becoming Winter, she ran away from home and went to see the tree.

    “I wish I could stay here with you for ever,” she said.

    She saw that much of the tree’s hair had fallen to the ground and lost its color. She felt so much tenderness that she wanted to scoop it up. She sat down, her back against him. The sun went down. When she thought about home, she knew that she would never go back. She would have to make her way up to the city. It would mean leaving the tree behind.

    “Don’t you wonder what it would be like to be able to move around?” she asked him, wishing she could know what it was like to be so still.

    That night, she told the tree all of the stories of her life. How she had never had anyone just be there for her before, or see her as she really was. She moved as close to his body as she could. She closed her eyes. She sensed the tree digging deep into the earth and growing into the air. She felt herself being drawn along with the Winter’s night inside the tree, melting out of her girl form and becoming part of him, held under his skin, an injection of love, mixing with his juices and flowing around his veins, pumped around all night by his mighty tree heart.

    In the morning, the word ‘Goodbye’ fell from her lips as softly as the drops of dew that fell from her clothes.

    Pippa Anais Gaubert
  • Untitled

    Just a quick note to say
    hi I hope you’re ok
    because I am
    I have a new girlfriend
    she has tattoos
    she is more adventurous
    than you you know
    I didn’t want to become
    that couple who chat
    on the phone at lunch
    because they can’t at home
    but we did remember the time
    we couldn’t go on holiday
    because you had to work
    fuck that was romantic

    sent from my iPhone

    Robin Boothroyd
  • Mooning

    Let me tell you only two things from my youth. When I was five years old, my father told me a sci-fi story every night. The protagonist was a five-year-old boy whose parents had perished with everyone else on earth. I alone had been saved by an alien species, who called themselves “the golden men”. Even though they cared for me, I escaped every night to look for my real parents. One of my friends was an enormous ant who lived on the moon and had built a time machine which allowed me to go all over the place. I had many adventures this way though I also felt quite sad often. I wasn’t sure if I was entitled to be sad: after all I had been spared! This went on for several years. Much later when I was grown up, at least I’d begun to feel that way, my parents’ house was not the right place to fool around. I used to go to a park with my girl friends at night. It was a special park though since it belonged to an enormous open cemetery. We felt there could not possibly be any chance of discovery: a cemetery! (It wasn’t a creepy place at all, just empty and lush, the gravestones well hidden in the shrubbery.) I often had the impression we were being watched but I was never sure and in any case, we were beautifully busy. If there were voyeurs they were very discreet and cautious not to be seen. I suppose if there were voyeurs then we’d have a bunch of shared memories now. It’s fun to reminisce. It doesn’t hurt anyone to go back in time, perambulate the past, cull clover leaves.

    Marcus Speh
  • Modern Romance

    I never want to see you again.
    – Angus (sent at 17:38)

    Kitty Sashkovich sat there, crying
    on the train
    as suburbia passed her by.

    She didn’t know
    that he had sent the text
    to the wrong number.

    Jessica Edwards
  • That’s Not My Name

    I hadn’t had time to watch Thor
    or to read any of the comics
    so I had no idea why you
    were wearing a red cape,
    brandishing a large hammer,
    and referring to me as ‘Jane’.

    Jessica Edwards
  • Just try

    Oldskool. Words printed on cellulose papers and bundled up in a book. Now, that’s going a step further. Or, shan’t we say, back? Words printed on a cellulose paper then folded up and inserted in a bundle of papers with a bunch of words. That has its own charm. Try to stick this bookmark in an e-reader.

    Jan Orrok
  • Inception Haiku

    Five in the First line,
    Seven in the Second line,
    Five in the Third line.

    Dan Broadbent
  • Good Pluck

    The day I was dumped

    I stopped plucking

    my eyebrows.

    I haven’t had a good

    pluck now for

    nearly three months.

    I used to pluck

    every day. Or,

    rather,

    I wanted to pluck

    every day but my

    tweezers,

    they only wanted to

    pluck me every

    second, third or fourth

    day.

    I’m getting pretty hairy.

    Kat Franceska
  • Pioneers

    This table
    is the high seas
    Open water, bread crumbs
    We reach across
    opposite shores
    and let our glasses travel

    David Luetke
  • Casting

    A wild howl
    Hunts from above
    Tearing my cells up
    In honeycomb hunks
    Leaves fall from the trees
    Moulting hair parting
    Revealing me fleeing
    That enormous tongue
    Flickering and testing
    The air like a snake
    Narrowing on my body
    Locking on, casting out
    Plunging down
    Like a drinking straw

    Forged in your pits
    I peel away from myself
    Rolling and burning
    Over and over
    Hardening to a foetal
    Spherical skeleton
    Concertinaed and shifted
    In upward contractions
    Reaching wet cheeks
    Swilled and spat out
    Scuttling along the ground
    Piddling ghostly trails.

    Lucy Winrow
  • Three Strangers

    1

    As the patter
    of our passing feet fades,
    I wonder
    how hair on a head so young
    could be so mortified to grey.

    2

    A pity,
    that the mystery she weaves
    can be dispelled
    by a common name
    scrawled on her coffee cup.

    3

    She careens across the street,
    louche-limbed,
    lush-lidded.
    In her eyes,
    a glint shines still.

    Hazem Tagiuri
  • Over It

    I’m SO over that, says the girl student, imperious, to her sidekick boy. Y’know? SO past the age where, like, I have to get drunk and emotional. She sighs.

    From the other side of the carriage, I smirk. The girl wears an outfit in a style pre-dating my student days. A twenty year cycle; now it’s the hip new thing.

    An older woman opposite peers over her reading glasses at the paper. As the girl speaks again, the woman looks up at me. I realise I’m tutting out loud. As my eyes meet the woman’s in the hope of complicity, she drops them, and her mouth twitches into a smile.

    Laura Windley
  • The Look Out

    I can immerse myself in stones

    and pebbles here.
    A gathering of tens of thousands
    of boulders; rolling, rough but as
    meaningful now as a human heart,
    a similar size and as rich in history.

    To my left a friend is
    mapping out the coast;
    rock-slides have left a minefield here,
    deposits from another age –
    but he’ll walk it.
    I listen to nothing but the frish
    and shush of wave-sets.
    I look straight ahead and try
    to see France.

    Christy Hall
  • The Grump

    Lives his life in knives and forks
    He often talks a kind of squawk
    A clump of a man
    Slumped into a beanbag
    A complete mess
    A face of stress
    Going nowhere fast
    The grump

    Zach Roddis
  • Dear Andrex

    I think I should tell you
    I have been poisoning
    Your dog
    Because
    It Watches me
    Poo

    Adam French
  • Molar-coaster

    Julie left the orthodontist clutching her mouth. She hated these visits. Her braces were tightened and the ache lasted for several days. She had always chosen colored bands to go over the train tracks but today she defiantly went with the natural color of the elastic. It was her protest. The truth was that she hadn’t been concerned about her teeth. She would have preferred a hip shaving operation in order to slim down the childbearing beasts housed within inherited chubby thighs. Julie stepped into the passenger seat of the car that her mother sat in, the engine quietly sniggering. The ache in Julie’s mouth continued the whole ride home and her resentment built. With each twinge of pain that eased the crooked pearly soldiers in line, Julie considered another part of her 13 year old complexion that could benefit from alteration.

    Julie proceeded through life blaming her parents for highlighting the flaws of her body – for pointing out the imperfections that she had once been blind to. Their casual indifference to ‘correcting’ their daughter lingered, and Julie’s confidence slowly diminished. At first Julie tried extreme dieting – altering her body shape through juice cleanses and cabbage remedies in an attempt to reach what she believed could be perfection. Next it was her lips; they received multiple collagen injections and her face was hardened with repetitive botox. After some careful consideration and a lifetime of self loathing, Julie decided she would be more comfortable as a man. She lived as the opposite gender for over a year and booked a sex change operation with the local consultant. Julie’s mother pleaded with her to only have the breasts removed, but ever defiant, Julie had her vagina turned inside out and made into a makeshift penis. To Julie’s father’s surprise, he actually found his daughter more alluring as a man.

    Julian had some real poise. And a perfect smile.

    J. A. Hall
  • The Anus Scale Chart

    o
    Sparrow

    o
    Otter

    o
    Pig

    o
    Debbie McGee

    o
    Leopard

    o
    Bison

    o
    Elephant

    o
    Whale

    o
    God

    John Allison
  • Gastropods

    I watched it so,
    As to not be seen.
    Cracks of chapped lips,
    Received Vaseline.

    Now on her face,
    Encased in slime,
    Two slugs do rest
    But not entwined.

    Callum Copley
  • Outside the doctor’s

    Walking past the surgery
    A queue of ailments
    Wish I knew what you all had

    Jerry Turner
  • The Shift

    Again in this extended box,
    that isolates any chance of my
    escape plan mutating alongside
    the others here,

    whom I know search a similar plea
    with empty hands, that struggle
    to have their previous contents replaced.

    We hold out our callous free palms,
    hoping our life lines will be once again rubbed with gold, just enough
    to keep any wolves at bay.

    But for now, our fingers hover like dragon flies, over the keyboards that are now clogged with dead skin and visible traces of boredom, and the voices then start to pour down the lines with a vaccine-less venom.

    And to release each one at will would be a far to easy escape; instead I allow that headset to
    melt with my skull, and allow the first hour to take its toll, and lead me once more in this merry dance.

    Jonathan Butcher