Dear Reader

This third incarnation of thirteen stiffs semi-circle Sheldonian’s stern - still, indifferent, stoned and sometimes crowned with traffic cone, wren shit hufflepuff scarf. One or two have humour for it. All stare, unblinking at map gripped tourist tracks, inert undergrads - ghouled by samsung screens, blinkered cyclists and white vans vying like Tamesis Pike and Carp wrestle Osney Lock currents. Thirteen Herns are angler fixed - baits weighted for another incarnation, another three-hundred years when our postcard pics have weathered and our server farms are lost, after palm oil took precedence over air, the babewyn continue to unhook themselves from gutters and spires and run jokes past the emperors, about parallel lines crashing together in infinity. --- R. M. Francis is a poet from Dudley. He's a Creative Writing lecturer at the University of Wolverhampton and author of five poetry pamphlet collections. In 2020 Wild Pressed Bo...

It is like something out of a painting by  Hiëronymus Bosch everyone who has just fallen in love, and everyone who is heartbroken here in the garden at the same time. Those who are in love speak in petals, break out of pink eggs like sheeny birds, burst from the heads of flowers, dusted with pollen. Those who are in love are lavish as rococo gardens, lofty as the arching vaults of gothic cathedrals. All the weather is upon those who are in love and the rain gleams. The displaced butterflies are come back to settle on those who are in love and the blackbirds beat their wings as if in applause. Those on the lawn who have lost love   stand on nail points and knife blades crawl out of ears or intestines drop like buckets to the bottom of wells. Those who are heartbroken   flail their legs like dying flies as black shells snap shut on them and thrash their waxy limbs in bondage, strapped to harps that will never ...

It’s my relationship, nobody’s business and it suits me. It was a hammer-and-tongs conversation outside a pub, A young girl with a screeching diva voice that could rattle glass Talking to a man, red-faced, and trying to get a word in. A break up, a breakdown, roll credits, the end, wait for outtakes. Don’t speak to me. Don’t speak to me. Don’t speak to me, rotten git. She let out a Baskerville hound-howl followed by expletives. He walked away, raising an arm for a Churchillian V. * I was so sure his middle name was Charles, turns out it’s William. Two women of years chin-wagging outside a greetings card shop Talking about a deceased neighbour and how much they’d miss him, His Walter Brennan musical-chuckle laugh and good manners. He came round one day and killed two big spiders, one with his boot, The other with a rolled up People’s Friend which I hadn’t read. The women hugged and went their separate ways. One shouted back, His handwriting was p...

that you can’t go back ever and this will torture you throughout your life that the past is gone even as it remains a tantalizing ghost that can only be made solid by an act  of imagination you find hard to summon and it  will never be solid  that the here and now is a lie the present moment is a fleeting thing and to say the now  is an effort of will and the now you spoke of  is already  in the past that your body  is heavy with memory and memories change with time that one day you will end  and the world will carry on as if you never were --- p.a. morbid is a Poet, Editor of The Black Light Engine Room Press. Outsider Artist/Musician. 

On late summer nights I sit near the open window so I can hear the tree frogs. They know autumn is coming, understand they might hold on a bit longer  if they are a little more stubborn, a little tougher. Lately they sound like guiros played by old men: careful, slow, soft. Summer is  unexpected moments like these: warm tomatoes on the vine,  orange and pink wildflowers on the side  of the highway, exultant amidst the smog,  a child learning how to ride a bicycle,  another braving the deep end of the pool  for the first time. This is what life becomes.  Once it was faraway places stamped on a passport,  or a new boy, or too much wine on a work night.  Now when the tree frogs sing it sounds like they say winter, winter, winter. --- Lynne Cattafi teaches English at a private school in New Jersey. When she's not teaching her students to love writing poetry and reading books, she enjoys drinking c...

The ocean stole the Gods. Drew them down from hallowed heights. Enticed them into soft waves then closed over in furious surges. Now they sit on the bottom. Plait their seaweed hair. Flex webbed toes and keep pet octopi in order. Sometimes they think of home. Power wielded, destruction caused but they do not move. Are content under ebb and flow. Poseidon brings them anything they need.     --- Miki has had two poetry collections and a pamphlet published, plus over 500 poems included in poetry magazines/anthologies. She was a finalist for Gloucestershire’s Poet Laureate and a nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Miki has read on TV and on Radio many times. She also ran a poetry writing group at The Roses Theatre, Tewkesbury. She has read at many festivals and venues. Miki is disabled and now lives near Tewkesbury. Gloucestershire.UK.

After the administration was complete – the registering, the funeral bill - they handed me a small metal container. This, they told me, in their clinical-yet-tender way, was a Grief Bucket, Standard Issue. They said I might find it useful from now on, and please could I sign to confirm I understood. At home, I placed the bucket in the middle of the living room floor, carefully removed its cellophane wrap and stared at it for days. Sometime later, I found myself on the sofa, head between my knees, and the bucket proved useful for catching drops; catching the sad plop of grief as it lived up to its name. Friends showed mixed reactions. Some had no time for buckets, were too concerned with their unfair jobs and sore feet to acknowledge this recently acquired possession. Even in its shiny newness. Even in its glare-in-the-winter-sun-ness. Some were more attentive. One reached into a kitchen cupboard, brought her bucket - carewor...