Porridge

ESSAY | A Citizen Of The World – Isaac Aju

There was something very claustrophobic about being in Nigeria. Nigeria gagged its people. Nigeria strangled people’s voices. People were often afraid to speak out. People were always afraid for no reason, and so being in Nigeria was the last thing you wanted to do. You wanted to move out of Nigeria. If that would not be possible, then you wanted to connect with people who were not Nigerians. You wanted to know more about the world. You wanted to move into the real world. You wanted your mindset to morph from Nigeria to The World.

ONE POEM – Ava Patel

Here lie abandoned gyro crusts and Bundt cake crumbs.
Your fingers shine with olive oil grease

It’s Always Going Away: Losing the Places We Love – Nina Smilow

New York is often unfairly maligned for being unfeeling, but that’s just what we call uncontrollable things, which the city is. It tumbles on, transforming a million times over the course of a decade before remaining stagnant for far too long. Occasionally, shifts rise rapidly from seismic events. I’ve seen sudden pivots in the wake…

FLASH FICTION – Lizzie Holden

The water is so clear, the sunlight snakes across the rocks on the seabed, I can see the relaxed mottled skin of her arms below the ripples of surface, her arms leisurely open and close like silky breath.

TWO POEMS – DS Maolalai

waking
at midnight
to piss
on the sand dunes
and the sky overhead
like a badly
scratched frying pan.

ONE POEM – Nóra Blascsók

In an ideal world
the washing machine
is a portal to clean linen
dishes lean back like sun
loungers by the sink

Heaven-Born Things – Sally Gander

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.Marcus Aurelius ‘It’s about a third full,’ I say, clutching the mobile phone to my ear as I hang my head into the water tank, my voice bouncing off the metal sides and echoing back at me. ‘Does the pipe…

ONE POEM – Mary Chydiriotis

a chant begins
a loud doleful wail
smear my body in holy oil
adorn my head with your crown of thorns

Midnight Games – Madeehah Reza

It’s not that she wasn’t happy for her sister, far from it. Nadia only wished she could hold on to her for a little longer.

ONE POEM — Alanna Offield

My soles are gelatinous, a mixture of blood, and yoke.

COMFORT FOODS // ONE POEM – Dea Guri

my father wanted to recreate the grapes
grow his own over our tiny backyard in the suburbs just outside the city
his vision was three separate plants,
arching and twisting their vines from our neighbor’s garage to ours

ONE POEM – Kate LaDew

I swirl my eyes inside the paint
tears forming at the edges of me

Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner that Held Them: Managing Isolation and Becoming the Fabric of a Place – Joanna Mason

January and the New Year are often dreaded in their insistence that we look back on what we have achieved, or what we meant to. This year, the looming of March feels the same, with its marking of the anniversary of the initial lockdown. It is easy to be hard on the progress you have…