Dear Reader

We drained an hour of madness   from the Alpine souvenir jug - sniffed a blast of varnish remover, a posse of parents gathered furious as peasants at a monster’s castle; a penalty hour for each of my ten years. Next week another kid kicks our front door in and there’s trouble. Sentence this time house arrest. But weekends, packs of superheroes terrorised the area, trampling flowers and fighting in the street, until my mother sent me away to a better school where I endured their scorn for need of education. --- John Short lives near Liverpool after many years in Europe. He is widely published, most recently in South Bank Poetry, London Grip, Poetry Salzburg, Sarasvati and The Blue Nib. In 2018 he was a Pushcart nominee and his pamphlet Unknown Territory is due out from Black Light Engine Room Press next week. He blogs sporadically at johnshort.poetry.blog (Tsarkoverse). x

If there was music it was a chart hit, spilling from a bar’s open door. She might have smelled fag smoke and beer. No lights were slanted to gloss her blonde hair or the swell of her breasts, no microphone picked up the echo of her steps. No-one offered her a lift so she didn’t turn it down or, later on, wish she’d said yes; if anyone saw her pass by, nobody took any notice. --- Sharon gave up writing poetry in 1976 and started again forty years later, after her retirement. In between, she brought up two children and worked as a teacher and manager in post-16 education. Sharon's poems have been published on line and in print, most recently in  Poetry Birmingham, Snakeskin, About Larkin  and  Poetry in Public. 

Shock of salt water in a mouth that opened too soon. The balm of cucumber The buoyancy of swimming  in open ocean A wedge of watermelon saturated in sweetness. The sensation of being nowhere on your back where all is sky.  Aniseed warmth of Ouzo adds to the August heat of the Aegean Sea --- Sarah L Dixon lives in Linthwaite. Adding wax patterns to Wednesday was released by Three Drops Press in 2018. Her first book, The sky is cracked , was released by Half Moon Press in 2017. Sarah’s inspiration comes from being in and by water and adventures with her son, Frank. More information can be found at: http://thequietcompere.co.uk/

When I walk by The White Horse and Griffin on Whitby’s old Church Street  I remember trinkets found when mum downsized to a retirement flat. She snatched the box from me.  You can’t throw that! This will give you some idea of our task: place card holders, a receipt for grandparent’s honeymoon  dated 1935, confetti, a tarnished lapel pin. Throwing away the past can be cleansing, can be painful, always a little loss and if we are preservers of the past then I am growing toward mother’s view: let others decide,  let the future obliterate. Letters read again, photos seen, all the love there was evidenced in all the love there’s been, spent in a million kisses a hundred thousand wishes preserving all that’s gone before. Names from this box of trinkets. Now when I walk by The White Horse and Griffin On Whitby’s old Church Street, I remember that hotel bill and pause-- my grandparents walked through these doors took...

I watch him walk in the fag ash wind. He smiles with his eyebrows at a neighbour, then talks with a brie tongue. He has a woodpecker stance holds his hands in his pockets to keep them safe from the fruit machines in pubs. He once had a wife and two kids but lost them in a game of poker. I know he drives a bin wagon each morning before the school gates open. In the morning I hear him cough out toothpaste in the garden, then watch him clean his ears with the beak of a sparrow he catches in a net. He rolls a newspaper on the garden wall, paints a cigarette between his lips, swigs a can of cola. His burp is a tenon saw on wood. He taps the neighbour on the shoulder and walks away with plumb bob straightness. --- Gareth lives in Wales. He has two collections by FutureCycle called The Miner & A Bard's View. He has been Nominated for Best of the Net and won his first poetry competition at the RS Thomas Festival 2019. More information on Gareth and his work can be ...

I was alone in the house when a phone started to ring. I thought it was strange; no landline and my mobile sitting silent on the table. The ringing stopped and a voice picked up. I listened for a minute and realised the voice was yours, so I wondered had you slipped into the house unannounced. I ran upstairs, chasing your voice from room to room but still no sign. I listened more intently. The conversation was light and frothy at first, and, loving the timbre of your voice, I grabbed a coffee and settled in. Like listening to a familiar podcast, I nodded instinctively to everything you said and even thought to anticipate what might be next. The start of a familiar story prompted me to re-check the house, tip-toeing self-consciously into every room, the sound seeming to ghost just ahead of me. I stopped when I heard a fresh intimacy in your voice, the volume dropping to a whisper, as though you knew you were being overheard. My heart was pumping and, when I froze ever...

We’re in the middle of the pandemic, When people quarantine with what seems Like infinite amounts of pasta and toilet roll, Make contingency plans for not leaving their homes For weeks, maybe months, when strategies are concocted Behind closed doors, perhaps I too should be thinking Of toilet roll and pasta, of canned goods and cat food; When my thoughts should be focused on the art of stockpiling, A different kind of inventory anchors my mind and I count Goosebumps, kisses, glances, sharp Breaths taken and released when we were in unison; Cups of tea, ideas, drawings, poems, tokens we swapped Particularly for times like these, when a ten minute drive Seems impossible and out of reach. As I add another Item to the online shopping list and steal glances at the date, The time, the hours seem to have come to a halt And never has life reached such a standstill. --- D. Parker spends most of her days surrounded by books both at work and at home. In her free time she r...