Dear Reader

having lived in other people like  a monk inside their cell – where the walls  are made of hands – having spent lifetimes  practising the taste of curses  – whispers – stones – bread –  endeavouring to do them justice –  having walked the geography of foreign  fingertips – having made sore  those feet desiring to walk unshod  up the slopes of all of them on the way  to holiness – and at the end  having travelled back through their bewildered  eyes and stories to what was imagined  as a self – only to find that there was  a luminous nothing – was itself  as thrilling and eviscerating  as redemption was always reputed to be  – in the best stories – having been stripped  of all illusions – beneath that cloud  when the downpour broke – when skin slid  away and creation lay unclaimed –  stretching away to the very  extremities of all perception –  having drunk the wind in all...

Alt text of poem:   My glass was ice empty when I met you but my eyes were full. Thawed vermilion through the future I saw in your glacial hips. Frozen shut by the gentlest brush of my elbow. I didn’t think my eyelids could contain you all – inevitable and effortless, an iceberg under glitterball. You asked my name and clanked it against your teeth, wrapped your tongue around it, melted it, and trickled it back into my ear to see if you had it right. I didn’t know – that night I learnt its true sound through your lips and repetition. --- Ed Roffe writes poetry within and adjacent to themes of liminality, mental health, love and family. Frequently he can be found at Oxford Brookes University, where currently he is studying towards an MA in Creative Writing, and occasionally also on Twitter, @roffeed.

"Lay me on a tartan blanket and crowbar open my ribcage." - Workshop manual for a date Sallyanne Rock's Salt & Metal is a brutal and tender collection. Having known loosely what the content covered ahead of my reading - it should be noted there is a considerable content warning here for mentions of domestic violence and abuse - I promised myself I would ration the poems out, pace myself. However, once I started that promise became short-lived and I found that I was compelled to read on.  Rock guides you through the trauma of abuse with a gentle tongue that tells in rough metaphors and hard-edged figurative language, all of which shows a mastery of control - both over her own writing, that is, and over the reactions she evokes in a reader.  "He will ask you in front of his friends why you are so miserable all the time. He will look at them and laugh and say after everything I have given her " - The man is a jealous thief  What I was especially taken with - a...

Hold that thought. Hope it relaxes. Let it know every notion has a place. That sometimes polished thoughts are the ones you should trust least. That truths lurk on broken shelves in run down holiday homes. Park that thought. But do it unaided. Let it rest without uniform or privileged space. The best letters look the same in rear-view mirrors. Short words fill gaps on scrabble boards, in silences. Hold that thought. Like it’s on the verge of falling. Let it know every surface tells a story. --- Chris Hemingway is a poet and songwriter from Cheltenham.  His first pamphlet “Party in the Diaryhouse” was published by Picaroon Poetry in 2018, and he has previously self-published two collections, “The Future” and “Cigarettes and Daffodils”. He helps run Gloucestershire Writers Network, Cheltenham Poetry Festival and the “Squiffy Gnu” poetry prompt blog.  You can find out more about Chris by visiting his personal website just  here .

Every train you see is not a train. Every train is a story. Some seem to shrug and stroll along ready for anything that goes. Others keep their eyes forward but break from the pack the first chance they get. Some scream through the night as if set afire. Another aches and aches. This one is sleek but strong like your mother; that one broods like your father. And look at this one painted for town and that one filled with swaying cattle. But oh, these are always cozy and carry you in their womb. A few even whisper words that tickle your ear and say love love love. Every train you see is not a train. Some are grandmotherly; others are fresh out the station. Some trains take each day at full force while others know the journey is all about possibilities. Others never even get to start. So many trains: how many track back and forth and loop back again? How many never give mind to the cargo packed painfully tight moving through the heavy night? How many chug along past all the town squares...

Place a clean teaspoon in your mouth. Be safe but be as firm as you can. Use a sharp knife to break the skin wear sunglasses, chill beforehand. Try not to think about it: the onion plays tricks on the mind. Turn the exposed cuts away from you  so that they are hidden from view. It’s fine to cry if you are already crying, know that sometimes tears attract tears. Kindness is hard: the dangerous part is the skin. Know that a life lived without onions is bland, tragedy makes the thing a thing. What’s the big tent without the clowns? Or the circus without a ring? And when you have been caught in a nightmare and you wake with tears drowning your eyes tell yourself you have been cutting onions. --- Jack McGowan is a poet and researcher with over a decade of experience writing for both print and performance. His work has been published in a number of print and online publications and he has performed his work at high profile literary festivals across the UK. Jack is a Senior Lecturer in Cr...

All your ghosts hang pale blue shirts, I pick the small comb, gunpowder debris dragging its teeth & my mouth  across your woollen scent. Pile scratching moths on the bed next to a siege of unfinished sentences  & all your bad days. A language you kept at arm’s distance. Like love, you picked the easy parts,  I sift through old receipts, two alphabets, the dusty harbour-town in your bedside table.  The end of God’s name  seamed into a jacket, sleeves you wrap in dreams; somewhere, you’re watching Ayia Sophia flush red, turn east & Constantinople’s still burning. I take your plaid scarves, now smoky with years. You’re telling me how when you were small, soldiers searched animal skins for weapons & your father’s loyalty in the childhood home, I never saw. It was early spring. Choose the forest green Aquascutum, it made you feel like London.  Keep your passport, unapologetic as burnt-out foxholes. I loved how you were unafraid, just your stride,...