Dear Reader

After so long, you woke me to tell me they had begun. The forming of sunflowers. No trace yet of their future black and gold. The I at the green centre. Radials around the heart. Stalks will bend in the carrying of the black heart. They lean on dead wood, are tied to it, lest they fall to earth. The canes. Snail and slug decimate leaves, leaves like fine-grade sandpaper, leaving ragged patterns of air where green was once. They come at night, on momentous journeys along a wall, over stones like sierras. We find them by torchlight, remove them to a place of safety. Ours. Some plants grow taller, some fail altogether, in a certain slant of sun, before the warmed brick of a cottage under a hill. --- Mark Mayes has had poems and stories published in various places. 2017 saw publication of his novel,  The Gift Maker . Mark also enjoys writing songs. 

as if it wasn’t there.             swipe of hand                         and enough,                         it doesn’t tumble             it evaporates. the vanish             of feeling             watched. the thing is they know                         they are being watched too                         but they get to laugh about                         it                                     because                                     they have nothing                         to fear from             what is observed. life one finger wrong                                                             they think it’s about                                     triggering                         a          bomb.                                                             rend                                                             all                                                             naked until they see what you ar

You say you are a man of Rome, Brought up among her schools? That city on the seven hills, Where Julius Caesar rules, they say, Where mighty Caesar rules? Your pardon, sir! We’ll cut you loose To make your own way home, For we have sworn never to hold A citizen of Rome, oh no, Never a man of Rome. A noble Roman once set sail With a princely retinue, And we boarded him and took his ship And slaughtered all the crew, oh yes, We slaughtered all his crew. So haughty was his look and speech, Imperious yet handsome, We saw at once that he was worth A rich and golden ransom, yes, A twenty talent ransom. He laughed at our demands and said, “You know not whom you hold. For I will buy my liberty With fifty talents in gold,” he said, Talents of purest gold. Once freed, he hired himself a fleet And sought us far and wide. My shipmates he took prisoner And had them crucified, he did, Throats slit and crucified. We hold no Roman

how to hunt in silken plumage tooled up with talons and hooks 　 how to split the seam of the night with saw-tooth wings how to consume all I kill yet stay hungry 　 how to haunt sleep my head - a phantom full moon how to be outcast and avenger spectre and seraphim, winged god and ghoul 　 bladed angel dropping from the sky. What I learnt from the owl 　 how to voice my darkness in hisses, in shrieks 　 how to drop from the heights, heart shaped face falling to earth 　 as if love itself were plummeting. --- Anna Saunders is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press) Kissing the She Bear, (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox ( Indigo Dreams) and Ghosting for Beginners ( Indigo Dreams, Spring 2018) described by Fiona Sampson as a 'beautifully evocative read'.  Anna has had poems published in journals and anthologies, which include Ambit, The North, New Walk Magazine, Amaryllis, Iota, C