The highway children beat the traffic lights, selling cigarettes through jeepney windows. Tarnished coins weigh down their belt-bags as they walk back to ramshackle homes, past the market road that …
From the Archive (2019) | ‘Sun Rises in Mid-City, LA’ by Fred D’Aguiar
Call for wings, alligator skin, eagle eyes, dog ears, leopard speed GPS coordinates if body ever hopes to slip that helicopter whose searchlight combs late night revelers, two-job commuters, down …
From the Archive (1992) | ‘The Country at My Shoulder’ by Moniza Alvi
There’s a country at my shoulder, growing larger – soon it will burst, rivers will spill out, run down my chest. My cousin Azam wants visitors to play ludo with …
Barca Nostra, 19 December 2019
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 …
