Dear Reader

I grasp a piece of invisible text from Delta of Venus and bite so hard juice runs down to where I'm smooth inside. I am falling over the edge in anticipation of your mouth.  My lips curve like the rim of the roll top bath,  they smile, then say,  fuck me over the side. Open mouthed, soft inside, I swell, clitoral bulbs freeze framed in slow, they grow - lento.  I’m an Attenborough nature programme, my clitoris evolves from want.  Don’t stop - you make me summer. --- Wendy Allen has been published in Atrium, Re-Side, Brunel Writer and Northern Gravy. She has a Legitimate Snack coming out shorty from Broken Sleep and is about to start an MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes.

A child’s mark before letters— sticky red palms, ten tiny petals, two flowers patted on white. Already they’re telling her story— the whorls of the thumbs, the dips and stretches of lines of life, of the heart. She’ll leave them everywhere— on the skin of lovers, knives in the kitchen, the riffled pages of library books, on window glass, wiping raindrops.   Will she reach out to touch things no longer there, make her mark for others to find like her sisters whose hands were caught in crushed ochre on cave walls, among running horses, the haunches of bison, 35,000 years ago?* *It’s now believed that many cave paintings were made by women, judging by the size of the handprints.   ---   Pe​nny Ayers lives in Cheltenham.   She has been published online and in various magazines, most recently in ‘Ink, Sweat & Tears’, ‘Snakeskin’ and the summer edition of ‘Spelt’. She helps run the Gloucestershire Writers’ Network.

for Casey I loved our dance of domesticity— you making pancakes in the morning, as we spun around each other  following one another’s lead  for space in the kitchen.  You’d hand me my coffee with a hug  or kiss on the forehead—and for the first time, I was held and healed. --- Marisa Silva-Dunbar's work has been published in Better Than Starbucks Magazine, Chantrelle's Notebook and Pink Plastic House. Marisa is the co-editor of the anthology "Kirstofia." She has work forthcoming in Sledgehammer Lit Mag, and The Daily Drunk Mag. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @thesweetmaris. You can find more of her work at  www.marisasilvadunbar.com .