All titles are taken from Vera’s paintings Lunatic Urbaine The man who loved me pushed me to the ground in a pool of white plants. When we tell you to …
Saruk Mohajeran by Mark Waldron
Did you not know it was me, when you knelt down to pick up your glove, that it was me in the bristly touch of the carpet? I’d had a …
Creating the Memory Collage by Alice Notley
Because I was mourning Doug so hard but push out onto page Alma, or The Dead Women I couldn’t then react too to 9/11 and I have placed it where …
Milk by Emma Jeremy
It was easy not to like him, because of the milk. It bled from every pore of him, thousands of tiny waterfalls of milk. Milk-falls. You would think that he …
The Detectives by Jane Yeh
No matter where we go, it always looks like California. Get in the car and drive. Our invisible friend Comes with us everywhere, like a shadow. He tells us how …
Skylight by Natalie Shapero
YOU DESERVE IT was what she said when I called a cab at 10 p.m. instead of hopping the 89 bus, which lets off six blocks from my place – …
The Twilight Sleep II by Alice Tomlinson
We bring them in, bursting with promise, sweet in sherbet-coloured nighties, bright spring flowers picked during a gale. We smooth wild hair and swaddle pretty heads in bales of soft …
Dare by Mark Pajak
You dare me to cross Bently road naked. Its three a.m. and we’re the only two awake and its icy and streetlights shy down their yellow. On the tarmac my …
I Need the Courage of a Cremated Woman by Natalya Anderson
Marguerite called me last night from her rotary dial. It’s been several moons since I heard her rosary beads dancing with the cord of that phone. Marguerite has been dead …
The memory-foam pillow (3rd prize: 2017 competition)
– Katherine Pierpoint
Cages (2nd prize: 2017 Competition)
– Jack Houston
Crocodile (1st prize: 2017 competition)
I know how I will die then in a death roll scales to my cheek claws sunk into my pale shoulders water burning my throat like whiskey the uncountable rows …
The Experiment by Jane Draycott
Dearests I have arrived. Some things have already been taken: the small blue bowls and airmail stationery, the summer tablecloth (only slightly blue) and the darkness is now quite cleared. …
Augurs by Oli Hazzard
during the course of a particular day the word shapen happens sharpens how I see the snow how I know it is what it is only listening to it glistening …
Many Bird Roast by Rachael Allen
I came in, dandy and present arguing for a moratorium on meat of the kind splayed out on the table, legs akimbo like a fallen-over ice skater skidding on her …
