Dear Reader

The body is a spell. Ten fingertips, magicians, disrobe their damoiselle — slow, while he is sitting, puppy, restless, nips at black pointe shoes. Your finger tells him no. Obedience he’ll choose. He won’t require a potion. Vertebrae compel. Observe over shoulder, stoic but his tell: two fires that smolder inside pupils. Heat he deserves for shrinking — even thinking you are small. Your body is enchantment he didn’t see at all. You indicate the floor. He crawls towards a doll vibrating sorcery, below rotating, naked piqué turns. Each kiss, even a pointe shoe, he will earn. --- Kristin Garth is a Pushcart & Best of the Net nominated sonnet stalker.  Her poetry has stalked magazines like Glass, Yes, Five:2: One, Anti-Heroin Chic, Former Cactus, Occulum, Luna Luna, & many more.  She has four chapbooks Pink Plastic House and Good Girl Games (Maverick Duck Press), Pensacola Girls (Bone & Ink Press, Sept 2018), Shakespeare for Sociopaths (

The precinct is alternately pound stores and charity shops, pasty flavoured rock and broken biscuits, gormless boys and fierce girls. Dream catchers and gollies, fridge magnets, buckets and spades, elderly couples sip tea in pavement cafes. Scooters snarl up the seafront, sand castles stomped by yobs, donkeys who can tell a tale or two about the faded peeling hotels. Families in matching anoraks eat chips out of polystyrene trays on benches in memory of the forgotten. And yet we flock in thousands, walk hand in slippery sunscreened hand, collect sea glass to catch the light. --- Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol, UK. He’s the author of a pamphlet,  Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016) and a full collection, We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams,  2018). He blogs and posts mixtapes at https://benbanyard.wordpress.com.

She spoke in her own voice. For a minute, I swore I could hear her mother talking. Her grandmother. Her great grandmother. All the way back, all speaking in her own voice. Always, I can hear love, love. For the telling of stories. But for one, roaring female sound. A scream from history. A deafening echo of all the women unreported. It was then she sang. For if they will not listen to your words, then give them pitch. She did and I was amazed. I last heard her, leading a revolution in song, the chorus of her ancestors, echoing, echoing. --- Cath Davies is 44 and works in social care in North Wales. Recently completing a degree in creative writing, she is a member of Colwyn Bay Writers' Circle and performs her poetry at events locally. She also writes prose, and has self-published 'Problem Box', a book of short stories, and 2 books of poetry, 'Love Across A Wire' and 'Juice' (with Gilda Clark), all

So long then Mary Seacole, your face is now paling, the plates are pixelated, your image needs upgrading. You’ll go no more a-healing, those hands all cracked and chapped bleed too dark a colour so we’re sending you back. Adieu Ignatius Sancho, close your shopdoor behind you and hither to that slave ship where famous friends can’t find you. Dr Johnson’s dictionary with its definitions and lists contains nothing to describe all the beauty we’ll have missed. Take care then Evelyn Dove, farewell Fanny Eaton, your legacies buried ‘neath a sullen empire still retreating. And farewell to new flavours, new voices and new dress. As the drawbridge pulls up one last time, hello to loneliness. --- Harry Gallagher has previously been published by The Interpreter's House, IRON Press, Prole, Smokestack and many others. His collection 'Northern Lights' was published in Autumn 2017 by Stairwell Books and he has an impending new join