“The Other Side of Things” and other poems by Robyn Rowland

I. The Other Side of Things. from the sequence Sky Gladiatorials Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown made the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic, Newfoundland to Ireland, 1919.Previous to that, they both flew for Britain in World War I. Alcock ‘was the first man to bomb Istanbul’; then, with plane trouble, [...]

“Tarmac” and other poems by A.M. Cousins

REDRESS After Junichiro Tanizaki. Give us this day your problems. Allow us to torment ourselves about shadow and beauty and good taste and we’ll swap all that we’ve got for one hour in the life of a tortured artiste who wants to sit in a fancy lav and listen to a mosquito. We’d leave the [...]

“English Breakfast Love Song” and other poems by Rhiannon Grant

English Breakfast Love Song   I am longing to pour out my soul to you in words which show my creativity and let off my head of steam but my soul is not so liquid it comes out in funny lumps uneven like old-fashioned sugar ready to make sure your tea is always too sweet [...]

‘Siegfried’s Homecoming’ and other poems by Suzanne Stapleton

Siegfried's Homecoming You come home from the war at least a third emptier than you were, Like all the words were scooped from your head with the butt of a rifle that you constructed with your own hands and demolished too, leaving so much of yourself in the barrel. The teeth in your gums white [...]

‘I wanted to tell you, but there was no time’ and other poems by Csilla Toldy

Kitchen   With hot chilli in my eyes I read between the lines, a coded message of noises: A child’s scream sheathed in wind blasts,   gashes through the cracks. The mandalay porcelain clock, riveting, ticks between my shoulder blades. I carry my life like a snail.   The fridge sighs, a boiler roars into [...]