by Olivia Elias Their report cards pinned to their chests will not have saved them pathetic passports barely good enough to make paper balls loaded dice error message this world …
Lasantha Wickrematunge
by Vidyan Ravinthiran Author’s note: The Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, editor of The Sunday Leader, was likely assassinated. He wrote an editorial that, published after his death, stirringly accused his …
Spleen
by Nuzhat Bukhari The native’s muscles are always tensed . . . ready . . . – Frantz Fanon Almost all her life had been a slow war. Even between sheets …
Twelve Million
by Taher Adel The letter ح does not exist in any other language, it’s pronounced as h but imagine your lungs are struggling for breath, is that why hub is the most common word for love? because …
The Sound We Dressed For
Major Jackson
Pages 22–29
an excerpt from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure Nicole Sealey
Cold war spy with a mouth full of gold fillings
Susannah Dickey This is what she was after: a big light-eating slice of butternut squash for a mandible. When people offer you a slice of the action the action is …
Black Seeds and Soil / Roger Casement speaks /
Inua Ellams
She
Hannah Lowe She brought me a glass of orange squash each morning and hers was the strong soothing hand that led me to school, and left me skipping or hop-scotching …
Poetry London Prize 2020: Highly Commended
Sean Cooper δ A democracy in decline has a need for poetry and a democracy in decline has no need for poetry. Our attention span for text has dropped, so …
Poetry London Prize 2020: Highly Commended
Mel Pryor Evening Scene Into a lamb and apricot casserole I am stirring my brother’s rage. I must do this for him because I am in his apartment and he …
Poetry London Prize 2020: Highly Commended
Luke Allan Mantelpiece with Bananas Sometimes a great boredom comes over me when I am naked. Standing at the window watching a man fasten his daughter into the plastic bike-seat, …
Poetry London Prize 2020: 3rd PRIZE
S. Niroshini Letters to Sunny Leone i. Dear Sunny, I want to explain to you how I lost track of my body. Or rather, how I lost the sense that …
Poetry London Prize 2020: 2nd PRIZE
Pat Winslow 1971, Northaw
Poetry London Prize 2020: 1st PRIZE
Eleanor Penny Winter, a biography I’ll admit I was raised in a red house by a woman with red hands on a bare hill, where birds walked on the ground …
Perennial
Oakley Flanagan I once thought we had fought to become entitled to love & divorce; leave the parade, go home mindless. I was near senseless, forgetting what we’d inherited. See, …
The Owl
Maya C Popa Took off from the field again away from you and back in my direction. We share an owl now – we did not mean for this to …
The Mystic
Raymond Antrobus The lightbulb in The Mystic’s living room is reluctant. The pink laminated sofa looks like a fat dick in a greasy condom. The Mystic sits in the deck …
To Turn
Amineh Abou Kerech They threw a very little ping-pong ballat my country, a very little ball. I thought the ball would come backand everything would be okay but I was …
my poems
Danez Smith my poems are fed up & getting violent.i whisper to them tender tender bridge bridge but they say bitch ain’t no time, make me a weapon! i hold a poem to a …
