essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
When my body was made up of straight lines it felt boyish and uninteresting, and when those lines finally bent, they felt uncontrollable.
Every year, while the people who crowd around the Christmas Eve table might change, the chili is always just as delicious, and just as cheap to make.
How would it be to find oneself reflected as “both handsome and unexceptional”, or find one’s back captured unawares from behind, “broad and fleshy, leathery with sun and age, and marked with numerous moles and scars”?
Their guitars stand somewhere in an empty room on American soil
Dust spots in the sun settle on their strings
Born in the heart of the Black Country, Claudia Knight is predominantly a writer who is exploring the capabilities of her creativity after moving to London and discovering the freedom in taking more risks in life. Having discovered the endless possibilities when creating digital art, her bold yet simple pieces explore her relationship with herself, her body…
The moon will not go down again,
street lights will be on forever and drive
electricity bills into walls with no seatbelts
when a father is a control bar
made of wood
and the strings snap
the puppets fall
Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash Milk Crate Malady We stumble to your home, arms linked tripping over ourselves as we talk I’m guided through the front door and down the passage to your room A lone mattress on the hardwood floor A vinyl collection spilling out of green milk crates Quick thumbs roll a cigarette we take…
C.S. Barnes is a Worcester-based author and academic. She lectures in Creative Writing and English literature at various universities around the West Midlands, and her research background lies in representations of women in crime fiction. She also writes fiction and her work is published by Bloodhound Books. . True crime, by its very titling, leads…
Their heads out, curved eyes on us,
reciprocating the salty, convex cabin.
Look, there, beautiful wooden bowling balls, said my mum.
My grandfather who was not gay was born in 1930 in Seville, Andalusia. He worked as an itinerant labourer for the señoritos, the rich landlords, tending their olive trees and their domesticated animals.
There are days when my body is a forest of old pines ailing and wailing in unison
