Piers Cain

Piers Cain

Another Land There is another land. A land of rockand falling water. Valleys deep in shadewith railway stations blue with rising mist. There’s a city of sunshine built on slopesthat flows down a hill in a torrent of stoneto water. Gardens hang in steps of green. In...
Julie Craig

Julie Craig

Remembrance The pin pricks like a memory.She tries again,Almost stitching the plastic poppyTo her chest, over the heartBleeding past into present. Years have progressedBut the wound won’t heal:A scout’s compass, it pointsTo loss and leads to a monumentMarking her...
Vuyelwa Carlin

Vuyelwa Carlin

George Orwell Typing at his Desk – a Photo Cigarette (always), reek of paraffin, the flintyJura house; those poor, rotting, blood-leaking lungs: he pounds out, a year or so from death, his last bleak book – I ballsed it up…so ill… he wrote– that cracked, wheezy laugh....
Stephen Miller

Stephen Miller

Gull Island Unfamiliar shorea broken doorsill to a part-remembered landthe dismantling sun bleedsinto a rough-hewn slab of seaand seabirds scream their warningand welcoming of all that is unfixed,uncharted, unrehearsed. Demonstrative as daysavvy as bull terriersand...
John Sewell

John Sewell

St Lucy’s Day 1This dark year’s endis a short night’s passagefor the veteran oak. John Donne’s passionruns centuries beyondhis lover’s last embrace. Neither recompenseoff-sets our final days. But let’s light a New Yearfrom the night that’s gone,bring to...
Cathra Kelliher

Cathra Kelliher

Kestrel kestrel hoveringthe moment before her stoopas our first remembered falcon the field behind the cottageempty farm buildings and twilight fallinglike a gathering of ghosts shadow dropping from the fencepostthat could be a buzzardthe instant, unexpected movement...