COMFORT FOODS // Ode to the Palta – Ulrike Durán Bravo

…across the bitter world, a sweet gift from Pachamama
like my father who taught me to feel
and press its skin: a map of lost worlds

TWO POEMS – Simon French

For the good of the country we claimed their land & property. It was necessary for the people.

ONE POEM – Helen Ferris

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.

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

FICTION | The Signmaker — David Hartley

They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.

TWO POEMS – Billie Manning

The plane goes to the gym every morning
before work and holds that plank.

TWO POEMS – Carl Griffin

Now I’m a chrysalis,
neither caterpillar boy
nor butterfly man.

COMFORT FOODS // On Rissóis — Samantha Denny

Fried dough dishes are a universal constant.