essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.
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
we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.
The plane goes to the gym every morning
before work and holds that plank.
Now I’m a chrysalis,
neither caterpillar boy
nor butterfly man.
Fried dough dishes are a universal constant.
The colour revealed itself like crab meat
only a wound, something to lick clean
From Prince Harry’s TMI memoir to Barbara Kingslover’s Appalachian bildungsroman, the team at Porridge share their favourite novels and non-fiction reads of 2023.
I imagined the horse bolting so it did,
skidded along the canyon’s edge while I watched.
Porridge 