Sophie Clarke’s poem provides a literal tribute to the old wives’ tale that claims a swallowed apple pip will grow in your stomach. Illustration by Zoe Regoczy.

White as knuckles, shoots grip down
in soft pink beds. They plait thinly
over moist, warm organs, until I can’t tell
what is vein and what is root.

Twigs snap. Thick branches break
into the curvature of my ribs, my spine wizens
into trunk. A whole ecosystem heaves
under a canopy of lungs and leaves –

I fear I will be a laughing stock.
What use is a doctor with these ailments
I can’t speak of? My tongue is gashed
black bark, I choke on clumps

of mulch. And each morning I wake
to fistfuls of flora at my ears,
the miniature disaster of my nose
sprouting birdsong.

A poem by Claire Booker, recalling a late-night walk with the moon through the back streets of London. Illustration by Mathieu Persan.

She trailed me three miles home
with her Geisha face, always one step ahead
as if drawn along

like a child’s balloon, descending
into the evening scent of linden, then darting to my left
as if she knew my every move.

Just for kicks, she scaled
tumescent cranes, glided through their box of tricks,
blew rings of softest apricot

to mask her curves, skipped
a row of trees, then dropped into a bedding shop,
left me standing jaundiced under neon.

But still she favoured me, swept back
radiant on a plane’s flume and when I chose to turn away,
scurried down a side alley,

re-emerged ahead, hanging
on staves of telegraph wire — an astonished semibreve.
Every slate and puddled gutter

became her slave that night;
laid their hopeful mirrors at her feet, where she conceived
herself as peacock of a thousand cracks of light.

She blazed so recklessly,
I saw men’s boot-prints studded in her flesh,
then vanished — drawing whole oceans from me.

A poem by Tyler Quick of love, loss and the incompleteness of continuing life’s journey companionless. Illustration by Miranda Meeks.

The facial imprint left so long ago on your pillow lingers,
a chasm forged by the eruption of your departure.
And now, I must traverse this canyon without you.

Know this:
I would chase your ghost to the farthest stars,
if it meant a little bit of closure.

And there, we would watch the novas together
and let their dying echoes reanimate your phantom,
if only for a minute, even if I must rejoin the living alone.

A nostalgic poem by Annette C. Boehm, taken from her debut poetry collection, The Knowledge Weapon, published by Bare Fiction.

Please accept this spirit
bottle as our gift.
Inside, the extracted specimen
has been carefully preserved.
Formalin may cause slight
hardening, changes in color,
perfect for such a soft body.
We’ve cut it wide open to show
it is constructed, like an egg,
of two concentric spheres.

The outside is synthetic
blue as you stomp through
anthills on a red dare, unscared,
run after him, into the under
growth, — you’re his,
you’re the wild one, you both
piss into the ravine.

Night comes with berry stains
on your shirt, your shorts
muddy, your knees black and glue
on your hands, arms marked
by brambles, lost ballpoint pens.

Inside, the smell of your father’s
repair shop, of soldering irons,
dust and grease and circuit boards
in a jungle of crates, blind vacuum
tubes and purple tins that clank, ready
to spill screws. You sit, tailor style,
between drips of lead
on the linoleum. Thirsty,
you reach out and drink.

A poem by Bethan Parker-Luscombe, providing a sweet snapshot from the halcyon days of an innocent youth. Illustration by Esra Røise.

Sticky haribo against my lips,
Stopping the words I wish to whisper,
In the darkness of the night
Giggles floating along the air,
Like musical notes,
The feel of smooth skin on hands
We hold as we run to the bathroom,
Too scared of ghosts and men wielding axes
To brush our teeth alone.
We unfold our hearts like diary pages,
To one another as we hide under sleeping bags,
Sheltered by the torch’s glow.

Now I wish I had those hands,
That heart and that crumpled hair
Spread over the pillow like a map,
The scent of excitement to
Flow into my heart, making it beat like
It once did, as in spotty pyjamas we huddled near,
Watching those grown-up films,
Back then, our only fear.

Inspired by the weather and dreams, Ash Huntley’s poem imagines the two intertwined, each telling the other’s story. Illustration by Phill Darlington.

Mesmerized by the moon
between slatted blinds,
sing yourself to sleep,
dream through waterfalls,
row over heavy clouds,
gasp when you disperse
as rain falling
into eyes and open mouths.

Let yourself be drunk in,
flow like blood
through earth,
veins of leaves,
fingers of a working hand,
pumping hearts.

And, when you wake
to the sun’s soft dawn,
eyes blurred by visions,
thunder in the distance,
clouds dimming the rays,
stand and peer
out the window.
Watch life
fall from the sky.

Isobel Dixon’s short yet powerful poem, taken from her latest collection entitled Bearings, laments the loss of her father.

It’s not just twins, identical,
who feel this way
(thinking as one),
same-egged, conjoined,
deep life-long linked
till hit and run –

or old age in my case:
not twinned, but fathered,
equally bereft.
Death, it seems, the fiercest
raider of identity,
for the survivor too – self’s theft.

Once genetic double,
mutual-celled;
equalled, answered, met –
you were almost only goodness,
I’m the damaged bit that’s left.

A nostalgic poem by Melanie Whipman, looking back to the halcyon days of an endless childhood summer. Illustration by Lizzie Downes.

I still remember Southwick Beach.
Allowed out with the older girls.
The smell of the salt
And the tar and the rust
Of the boat yard gates.
The sting of hessian
Against yesterday’s
Sunburn. The gut-swirling
Freedom of four girls alone.
I remember the eyes
Of the cycling boys.
The slouch
Of their salt seared shoulders,
The casual drape of their hands
As they wheeled like circling gulls.
The white of Kim’s teeth
And her cautionary hiss
Not to look, not to stare, not to care.
I can still see the neat boundaries
Of their towels on the stones
And their careful grace
As they slipped off their clothes.
Their bikini’d confidence
As effortless and endless
As that long Summer day.

Sheila Jacob’s short poem addresses the difficult birth of her first child and the complex relationship that followed. Illustration by Leib Chigrin.

Your drowsy eyes were ringed by bruises
matching those where two doctors
and Kielland’s forceps prised us
apart, our struggle for separate worlds
so ferociously induced
we spent half a lifetime
plaiting a slippery bloodstained rope
to haul each other back.

A short poem by Karen Harvey, inspired by early memories of oppression and a longing for freedom and adventure. Illustration by Matteo Gallo.

How I longed for the
weightlessness of flight,
to feel the wind in my hair
and the breeze against my cheeks,
but you, were determined
to clip my wings.

I can still see us now.
You staring down at me
with the shears in your hand
and me, curled up
on the floor
playing dead.

A poem by Marianne MacRae, based on a man she would observe on the way to work who used to stare intently at girls whilst eating various pieces of fruit.

The pervert breathes in.
He is, after all, human.

The pervert wears neat jerseys over neat ties over neat shirts.
The pervert is a civil servant,
boxed in by bureaucracy
and desperate for a taste of something other
than the thin ham sandwiches his wife makes every morning.

He thinks of her hands,
two pink jellyfish,
undulating across the kitchen counter,
reaching for the butter.
She never spreads it evenly,
the sting of the knife leaving a pattern of pecks and pits
in the centre of the slice,
the edges dry as the stale potpourri
that waves him off and welcomes him home
at the hallway sideboard every day.
Putting her sandwiches in his pervert mouth
leaves him oily and unsatisfied.

I watch the pervert eating an apple,
tearing rouge skin from white flesh
with desperate teeth.
His wedding band flashes like a napkin ring
around his smooth pervert finger,
there to stop his hand unfurling across someone else’s lap.

Inspired by classic fairytales, Gretel Keyte’s crepuscular poem speaks of letting go and seeing who you really are. Illustration by Rachel Orme.

In the envelope of the night sky
you whispered that we’re all the same,
for tonight our sins will seal shut
in grand sweeping chaos.

So I let the twisted hands
of oak creep across my body,
repenting my misfortunes to
the milk dusted stars in the heavens above.

It doesn’t matter what has happened now,
we’re all the same, between
our pearled teeth
and bloodied tongues.

We howl out to the deep,
curdling our voices until
nothing is left, but
crumbled ashes at feet.

The night has devoured us,
pitied our longings,
ripped from our souls the
wrong we have done.

Sophie Fenella’s poem, from our recent Adventure issue, explores the ways in which adventurous personalities can affect the dynamic of a relationship. Illustration by Matt Harrison Clough.

Come, I am already with you
in damp grass, earth worms,
a night too dark for us to see.

Trampoline bellied, saucer eyed,
you wrap your arm on auburn bark,
ascend into childhood dreams of flight.

I am yellow bellied under your feet,
catching kisses dropped to earth
tasting the wet of your lips.

My neck is craned for you, hoping
to solidify your swinging feet
as you hang like clothes from a line,

I am right here with you
only gravity bound.

You think I need saving
from my concrete steps
but your glass pierce scream
is out of reach.

My butterfly gut was prophetic,
I told you so, but my twig arms
cannot break your fall.

A spirited poem by Alexander Blustin, written to mark the end of a despondent period and the beginning of a better one. Illustration by Brandon Loving.

Sweep up the debris, the wreckage of life;
Tear down stubborn cobwebs of threadbare dreams.
Pack up the pills and the noose and the knife;
Burn all the novels on miserable themes.
Turn off the box in advance of the news;
Take mourning clothes to the jumble sale.
Silence the record that’s stuck on the blues
And abandon your hike on the Misery Trail.

Take vagrancy to the end of the scale:
To the ends of the world, to the end of your tale,
To the end of the signpost that’s wrecked in the gale,
To the end of the line between wrong and right,
To the end of the longing that grows in your dreams,
To the triumph of passion. Stride into the night.

In honour of World Poetry Day, read Helen Mort’s poem on writing poems, inspired by a rejection letter sent to her friend. Illustration by Yulia Yakushova.

When they ask you to send tamer poems
what they want is the ocean in a pint glass:
a sample of the flint-pale sea, scooped up
and shown off on a coffee table.

There! Beside the tasteful magazines
it makes a girdled centrepiece. Your friends
stoop to admire: we must get one ourselves —
a single rose is so passé…

But in your living room, the ocean’s
tideless and undrinkable, a moth
caught in a jar that gives up battering
against the sides, and rests.

So while they watch, take up the glass
as if you meant to hold it to the light
then throw it hard against the wall,
stand back to watch the paper darken

at the sea’s least touch, the glass
go shivering to the floor,
then put your bleeding hand
up to your mouth and taste its salt.

Inspired by cliff landslides in Whitby, Angela Readman’s poem talks of the close bond between our homes and our history. Illustration by Paul Garland.

The cottage slips a little each day,
closer to the cliff, we picture it as a boat,

drifting off in one piece as we carry
out spoons, china cups, and stand back.

It should leap into the sea, skinny dip
like a woman realising she can dive.

Yet it slides slowly, glacial, pools
of one man’s fingertips in the gloss

of skirting boards hold it back, strands
of his hair fasten floorboards that keen

for our losses. Mother’s face is a gable,
a peel of wallpaper still hanging on, plaster

ducks on the wall winging it, pointing
out all this sky. There is nothing to do

but stare as the roof tips its hat, and bricks
buckle up for that slide into ocean, free-fall.

Coinciding with Mother’s Day, Barbara Wojtowicz’s short poem reflects on the role reversal between a mother and her child. Illustrated by Sara Netherway.

You made me out of clay, coal and sugar.
Wrapped me in cotton and fairy dust.
Locked me in a glass snowball.
Protecting me against evil, rain and your mistakes.
Now I am standing in front of you.
Made out of concrete, diamonds and salt.
I want to wrap you in cotton and fairy dust.
Lock you in a glass snowball.
Protect you against evil, rain and my mistakes.

A love poem by Benedict Freeman, inspired by the idea that our lives are the culmination of a long string of choices. Illustrated by James Richard Smith.

Every decision ever made,
every choice, every chance, every moment,
now trickles down into this one.

Stretched behind us,
twelve thousand decisions,
that somehow found you and I here,
in this place, at this time, with these people,
pupils locking together for the first time.

Stretched in front of us,
drunken dates and birthday presents,
shared shopping lists, merged bank accounts,
a mutual interest in horticulture,
the summer, autumn, and winter of our lives.

Not that we’d know it.
In this moment, just your body and mine,
in front of each other.

First published in our ‘Love’ issue, Gavin Bryce’s poem imagines the relationship between lovers as a living body. Illustrated by Ross McEwan.

We built a body together,
Made of the finest fabric.

From the fibres of laughter grew young hands;
Desire stretched arteries into arms;
Eager feet sprang from our travelled roads.

Kisses formed lips, and smiles made teeth.
Knowledge strengthened bones and words weaved skin.
Vulnerability created eyes; honesty opened them.

Love bore breath,
Spun to every cell by the beating will of our hearts,
And vows held them in strong fingers like ribs.

A poem by Luke Wright, presenting a beautifully truthful and progressive metaphor for marriage. Illustrated by Adam Batchelor.

A marriage is a boxless jigsaw puzzle
no guiding image and no guarantee
that pieces aren’t astray, no warranty.
Some soon decide it isn’t worth the trouble
when slotting parts together is no longer
enough. Some never see the bigger picture.
But patient couples, willing just to sit there
will find their intuition growing stronger;
until at last they know which fragments fit
and which to lay aside for later on.
They help each other find the missing parts,
piece dreams together; side by side they sit.
And if there are rules, they follow only one:
complete the frame, then work towards the heart.

Bringing focus to a less-considered side of homosexuality, Hayden Westfield-Bell’s poem looks at the life of two elderly lesbian lovers. Illustrated by Dilly.

All wings when hand in hand:
Arms flailing, connected lightly
At the joints but failing
To stop the flap-flapping
Caused by warm summer winds.

Benched, with knobbed knees
Twitching under long skirts,
They turn and kiss
With sandpaper lips; slipping
Together like wrinkled cogs.

At night, they tear their
Clothes aside and rest,
Hands on thighs, lying
Side by side exploring furrows
With nervous fingertips.

Max Wallis’s poem looks at love in the modern age and the ephemeral nature of our digital love letters. Illustrated by Agnese Bicocchi.

We send each other text messages at work. Discuss what we’re having for lunch.
Ether-joined by unlimited messages and pixel screens.
Two minutes after saying goodbye on dates our phones jangle, vibrate,
‘I had a lovely time tonight :)’.
The little xx means more from you. You give me fewer than my mum.
I look and linger at them, there, at the end of your miniature letters.
Save the sweet ones in a folder and read them when down.
‘These are the reasons I love you.’ ‘Do you want to go to the cinema at four?’
‘I’ve never felt this before.’ I smile when I see your name appear.
The lump is a plastic pebble in our pocket heavy with the weight of expectancy.
Linked to everything, almost sentient it throbs with the lives
of so many people a button press away: Facebook, e-mails, Google
and you.
When people are gone: vanished. Ephemeral ghosts that exist
but don’t. That breathe,
but don’t.
The wishing wells in which we shed our coins.
Our thumbs linger over ‘DELETE’ as though they’ll disappear from memory, too.
Punch. Gone. The love letters dead. Think that’ll make us feel better.
When our hearts turn red again, we’ll wish we had the numbers still
to say hello, hi, how do you do.

A poem by Miriam Johnson, embracing the freedom that comes with going beyond physical attraction into the hidden depths. Illustrated by Kee.

Untie your shoes, set them by the bed.
Peel down your pants, place them, folded, on the chair.
Roll down your sleeves, unbutton your shirt,
hang it back in the closet.

Pull down your socks, toss them into the hamper.
Slide down your briefs, throw them aside.
Singe off your hair, pluck your brows,
wipe the strays, ashes away.

Stand for a moment in your husk,
allow the goose bumps to rise
as the chill air kisses your skin,
then shave it off.

Unzip your muscles, unwrap your tendons,
wind them back on the spool by the needle and thread.
Unlace your ribs, seal your stomach, kidney, spleen
in ornate perfume jars, line the empty bookshelf.

Crack your skull, leave for me
the wrinkled, grey mess that’s left.
The only piece of you
I want to consume.

Ignited by the 1915 film of the same name, Cathy Bryant’s poem addresses the ugly reality of how nations are formed. Illustrated by Peter Strain.

We’d like to picture brave explorers
mounting ridges and coming upon valleys;
lines making maps of sturdy pioneer faces
as wagons roll in, and the building begins,
and the settling, planting, trading.
But most nations are born with a flag
dipped in blood, weapons and a desperate
or arrogant idea. See Europe’s countries
re-draw their lines and change their names
like hemlines and hairstyles – ra-ra skirts,
tucker boots and teabag tops with Yugoslavia,
Czechoslovakia and the CCCP, through grunge
and back to leggings and ballerina flats
and the Balkans remade in sweatshops
and reshuffled into torn remnants of
cultural identity and angry patriotism.
And with every change, death and suffering.
Nations born not in sunshine on wagons;
birth always, always a bloody battle where
cords are torn and children scream.

AE Ballakisten’s poem puts forward the idea that those considered mad may possess more wisdom than they are credited with. Illustrated by Analisa Aza.

Listen to the madman
who speaks at night,
for he alone has seen
the wonder beyond the drapes
black. Untangle his chaos that
rings of peacock feathers and
starlight bubbles, and wine black
spilled from roses red. Listen,

Listen to the madman
who has heard the distant voice,
who has read the unwritten lines,
and seen inside the empty chest.

Listen to the madman
as he implores us to take man
not as he is, but as he could be,
with spirit uncaged.
And while you re-cage him,
and clear his mess,

Listen to the madman,

for he alone speaks
with uncensored voice.

A poem by NJ Hynes, written following a visit to America’s Midwest where rights to the air were being sold thanks to a commercial interest in wind power. Illustrated by Tim McDonagh.

They are selling the sky and I wonder how –
by the yard, like bolts of silk, or in fixed amounts,
pre-wrapped in cellophane – (if you can’t see it, look again)

They are selling the long, flat sky that sails
over the freeway, billboards and telephone poles,
a picture rail for satellites and sparks from a solar kite.

They are selling the deep, lagoon-blue sky,
its breeze carrying thistledown, salt, a bird of prey,
folding a lake into waves, leaves into an autumn drain.

They are buying the sky’s voluminous wind,
its full-bellied breath turning wheels to spin the currents
that run this eager world, its streets of glistening light.

They are buying the sky and I grow afraid –
for the rise and fall of my chest, for inhaling doubt,
for what we will do when the sky runs out.

Inspired by her conservative grandmother who attempted to teach her to sew, Ellen Davies’ poem celebrates the advantages of ignorance.

Despite your lessons,
I never learnt to sew.
I could never master the fluid
movement required to darn a tear,
sealing it tight.
Could never emulate the steady rhythm
of your hands as you thread
the faint stitch through the lip
of the ripped fabric.
Your casual flick of the wrist.
The simple knot you tie with a gentle twist,
a bow formed from loose ends
and dangling cotton wisps.
Even now I bring you clothes.
Garments with gashes of flesh missing,
torn out by careless tumbles.
Blazers with burnished buttons slack
from too much wear.
I know what you will say.
I should learn to sew,
to seal up this gasping gulf,
but I bless my ignorant hands.

Nancy Carol Moody’s poem reflects on the unintended fierceness of her face, which betrays the softness that lives behind. Illustrated by Maria Rikteryte.

When they ask about my face
I will say something about snow,
the skittered tracks of a hare,
just prior to the hush.

I will say wind bores
salt into sea-boards,
taut rope burns a furrow,
Leaf rust pockmarks autumn elms.

I will talk of hoarfrost bit by hob-nail,
a meadow after the scythe,
the dory’s barnacled hull,
a peppermint held
too long against the palate.

When they ask about my face
I will say that even a trodden carriage
leaves wheel marks in the stone,
that shrapnel can flare
a staggering tattoo,

that left to their own devices,
sparks of midnight fireworks
will carve ferocious trails
into the black wax of the sky.

A charming little poem by Neil McCarthy, written for his nephew as an ode to the future and the footsteps once trodden himself. Illustrated by David Lemm.

How many times, singing, have I
untied your laces, pulled
off your shoes and held
one to my nose, pretending
to sniff some foul odour
if only to make you laugh?

As you grow older you will
forget such gestures; the
world as you come to know
it, an open envelope of
good news and bad. From
dependent to child to boy to
adult; an alphabet sung backwards.

A poem by Daniel Sluman, providing a crepuscular vignette of a time spent on drugs. Illustrated by Devin McGrath.

We’re floored like snow angels on the carpet;
I show you how to roll a cigarette –
the delicate origami of tongues and fingers
reflected in the glitter-heaped mirror.

Lilly has met you in her dreams before –
paranoia or white witch, she has seen
your eyes fizz like coke in a clean glass –
your shower fun smile on display
and legs apart like your profile pic –

an invitation
to hold that slippery bundle of thighs
and slide a hand to the headboard.

A razor-fine line rushes
through arteries to the air eating heart;
a thousand drops of water burst onto skin –
flutter tattoos of light from the pores –
shadows flinging themselves on the wall.

In the dark the red of our roll-ups
swing from lips like fireflies –
she would hurl at the sight of our hands
whilst our feet stuck to the floor of the bar –
how I flicked line after heavy line your way.

A light-footed poem by Max Wallis, addressing the day following a break up and the importance of the wallowing period. Illustrated by Peter Locke.

Allow yourself this one day
hungover from love. To sit in your sad cocoon
bed-lain on lemon bon bon sheets and sick with ache,
cuddling your bones. Let the day roll into night.
Do not fret about the red numbers in your account,
about deadlines and business worries; pick up three
books and do not read them. Wallow in coffee,
or simply nothing, as you tap-tap through Twitter feeds
and text messages and nonsense mad thoughts.
Let yourself reek with the unwash of sleep-sweats
and salt tears. Eat the mirror on your wall.
Play the unhappy songs that in bed you kissed,
had sex, made love to, that time, when sex became
heart-bare: skintouched, and those eyes.

Tomorrow you can sit in the warmth of a bath
clean your nails, pluck your brow, shave the fluff;
eat, drink, clean your room of your last meals
and bed-locked naked picnics. Tomorrow you can sail
in fresh linen and clothes, listen to happy songs
with no meaning but pop-tones, through a new day;
today is today, this day, my love.

Zelda Chappel’s short poem, taken from her debut collection entitled The Girl in the Dog-tooth Coat, whispers with elegance, yearning and fragility.

In the night I dream you are an orchestra of penny whistles
house martin chatter, gentle cawing of sea birds calling days
to their close. I map swift flight precisely, trust it knows its path.

I long for you to tell me how you still sing despite us, that you
still have things you want to say, that in the storm of our unending
noise you wish and long for louder lungs. We are all drowned

in the concrete sometimes, ears strained and searching for
your penny whistle songs. I swell with disappointment when I
cannot tune in, miss your well-strung notes and grieve.

A poem of youth, memory and the reinterpretation of the past. Penned by Claire Booker and first published in our twelfth issue on the theme of Time.

I remember your promise —
the meadow lands of Surrey laid out before us
like a picnic on best linen
and talk of wild parties;

the way the gravel bruised my feet,
a slew of cars silting the driveway
and how the chimneys shifted shape
with each new angle.

That night was full of door slam
and things half said, strangers touching
in corners, a girl draped in fox fur swaying
through a room of clocks.

We slept on the floor wrapped in patchouli
and other people’s snores,
oak butting my hips each time I turned
and you too spaced to go beyond the perfunctory.

As day slid out from under night I rose
in my Greek sandals, passed
waking lawns, the gate, and watched
an ancient hornbeam, black with crows,

fling hieroglyphs into the sky.
Now I see it was the last time we would spend wild,
and not wild enough
for a last time.

A poem by Katherine Venn, inspired in part by Old Testament prophecies about God replacing people’s hearts. Illustrated by Joey Guidone.

I woke to find God sitting on my bed. ‘This
is going to hurt,’ she said, reached into my chest

and pulled my heart up from its roots. Stumbling
to my feet I followed her downstairs, a trail

of blood dark on the kitchen floor, and out
into the moonlit garden. The breeze sang low

across my opened breast as I watched her plant it,
my heart: four inches deep, the depth

you’d plant a tulip bulb. She pressed the earth
down with her fingers, satisfied, then turned to me

and took a fold of seeds out from her pocket,
shook out one, two, three into a palm

and dropped them in the space my heart had been.
‘Sweet peas,’ she said, her fingers at my breast, and left.

Since then I wake at night to feel them stirring,
their roots stitched through my veins, their scent

a prayer. Outside, my old heart draws me
to the garden, to kneel and see if it’s put up a leaf.

A short but sweet poem by Mary Hayward, inspired by a return to the derelict farm where she grew up. Illustrated by Tim Laing.

It sags from the rafters, in the museum of the byre,
like he’d just shrugged it off, in the October of his life.
Spiders have spun, big hairnets of webs
on the collar and shoulders of his once best coat,
now spark-holed and cold, like snow-holes in thaw.
And inside his pockets, grass seed and nails.
Whispers of pipe smoke, return him to me
with his eye to the sky, his soul to the soil.

To mark National Poetry Day 2015 and its theme of Light, read Maria Apichella’s vehement poem, Fire. Illustrated by Rosie Gainsborough.

The card says ‘light a candle
to represent your prayer.’
Twenty pence for a wick,
a flame and a quiet corner.
Let your suffering go
up in silence like smoky lavender.
Let your pain melt
down into waxy little stalactites.
Tomorrow morning it will be grated
off the iron rack by the Verger.
I don’t have time for candles.
Stand back.
Open both the doors.
Clear the Altar.
I’m coming up the aisle
dragging an uprooted oak,
a can of paraffin.
My prayer          will burn          for days.

Taken from our Outsider issue, Rafael S.W’s poem explores the corporeal restrictions between lovers. Illustrated by Sébastien Thibault.

My lover will one day be someone else.
Almost all of him. I’m reminded I own nothing,
and nor does he. This skin, our careful stamp album
of woundings. That will be a graft. Passed on
passport maybe. I’ve been in synch with his lungs
and they too will go elsewhere. Draw warm air
through strange lips. The deep sea creatures
of organs with uses I don’t know, they will
be bottled briefly, or netted from his sacred sacrum.
I hope I am dead before this. We should have
made a pact. It is not for loneliness, but rather
the fear of seeing him unzipped. And knowing
it was not me who lay claim to his heart.

A perspicacious poem taken from Tim Wells’ forthcoming poetry collection, Everything Crash, published this month by Penned in the Margins.

‘Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success’
Bob Dylan, ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’

How he got here doesn’t matter: the raw talent, the hours
of practice, the racism; the mob that gets you breaks
but never lets you rest; the hits, the girls, the hangers-on.
Even if tonight it’s just the uppers keeping him upright,
when the spotlight hits, he’s on his own, all else fades
and Mr Excitement is king of the room. Horns punch,
drums jab and hook, he ducks, weaves, that voice soars,
lifts ‘em up and knocks ‘em clean out. Dancing
into centre-stage, he throws his jacket over his shoulder,
arches back, knees bent — sweat soaks his silk shirt.
Flipping forward, rolling hips, shoes shuffling in a blur,
if he undid the fly of his shark-skin trousers, it’d take a bite.
He knows, as the girls tear his clothes and he’s ankle deep in
lingerie,
it’s important not to dress as who you are, but who you want to be.

A poem from Aki Schilz, articulating the wistful desire to unspool time and extract a tender passage from life’s story. First published in our ‘Time’ issue.

I would unwind you from my body, until

our separated bodies lay innocently side by side
on the bed in the room with the crooked curtain rail

that caused the sun to fall in broken pieces on the floor.

I would uncurl your fingers from each strand of my hair,
divorce your lips from mine to let the air between them

become words to speak away the silence that led to
that first kiss. And, unkissed, I would walk backwards

away from your house, down the hill towards the harbour
past the ships and birds and moorings. I would walk

backwards to the train station to take my seat and forget,
halfway home, where I was going because I’d never been there,

in the room with the broken sunlight and the crooked curtain rail,
the photographs and our hands, that never touched above our heads.

Unkissed, I would lie at home, not thinking about you,
not falling in love with you, not falling in love with you,

so I would not have to wish, years later, that I could undo you.

Taken from our ‘Time’ issue, read Shirley Wright’s poem, Methuselah, inspired by the 5,000 year old pine tree of the same name. Illustrated by Glenn Harvey.

You show your age these days,
there’s no more hiding it. Winter winds
must give you jip, those grey arthritic
limbs wearied on the wheel of years.

Green grown, your canopy has counted
twenty times the transit of Venus,
waved endlessly at Halley passing by,
nodded as the pyramids went up

and bombs rained down. Back in your
Neolithic nursery, with Stone Age yahoos
bashing heads against your toddler trunk,
did you dream of mobile phones or botox,

the space race, that the white face smiling
from the conquered moon would be ours?
I’d like to lie beneath your shade and talk
to you, listen to you. Wait it out with you.