In the southern heat,
giddiness spread in a slick of sweat.
A stale and sweet smell embraced the girls
as they danced and danced
and would not stop dancing.
Category: poetry
ONE POEM – Balfour McBride
They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.
ONE POEM – Emily Tee
and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth
ONE POEM – Susan Shea
we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
ONE POEM – Carolyn Oulton
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
TWO POEMS – Catherine Redford
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
ONE POEM – Paul Brucker
When I bent down to give her a kiss,
she quacked
Then exploded with loud report
into hundreds of pieces.
ONE POEM – Olivia Heggarty
Cutting my hair with the meat scissors,
being told off for not using a hairdresser,
explaining that if I don’t change something
often I will do something worse
ONE POEM – Kira Scott
these are the tears that we cannot shed
as we comment on the beauty of the glen and
how wonderful it must have been to live in such a place.
TWO POEMS – Tim Kiely
the cake is made of Walthamstow
a dense and glutinous Walthamstow
we are going to make Walthamstow
a Titanic success for Walthamstow
ONE POEM – Bernadette Gallagher
Get some hens
dig up the garden
sow and plant.
ONE POEM – Greg Jensen
sharp as a thorn.
I held on
to whatever
it had been
at the start of existence,
a stem cell