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Two hundred Pounds of strength Give me twenty twentY vision And about ten inches length

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What I love about dancing Let me tell you what I love about dancing...

It's the feeling of being whipped up

like inapopcornmachine, WsreegdFe' breeze ry.Abetore or like leaves on the ground in the autumn breeze

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;,"''JT:]";*.-",.-%Ht"li,ffi,r{ta" When it's good you can truly feel music in your soul and under your feet and in your whole body consumed by abeat

that you'd never be able to recreate with your voice

or an instrument.

ffi#'ffilll allows the non-mur,"", in music that would otherwise make me need to do anvthins to resoond- to create.

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An ever-changing dancing thing with two heads, four arms, four feet.

Dancing through the centuries with no need to sleep or eat.

So I've told you what

I love about dancing

until you must have had enough of my talking.

Don't protesto I know that it's true.

So come here.

Take my hands.

Let's dance.

And let me tell you what I love about you.

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Each morning at eight, the nutters run. It sounds better in Polish: czubki biegn4. We start on the asphalt road but turn left into the fietd. We run by the river, or the part of the river that looks like some sort of experiment - there's pipes, an old engine, even a functional-looking small excavator' One tank has yellow water in it, yellow like all I remember from a documentary called "The Yellow River" which I watched on TV as a small child. The cows are watching us from the other bank.

There's high grass, nettles, and other weeds smacking my ankles, and for the most part I concentrate more on hopping around the biggest ones for some skin survival, rather than on feeling both my feet on the ground, keeping my head straight, and hearing, as is the therapeutic instruction, for the run and beyond. My brain doesn't actually switch off for one minute, because otherwise I would feel I the pain of all the effort I'm making, waking up before seven (there's exercise and meditation before the run), and running through fields in a heat which is blocking my breath from getting out of my mouth in any other way than sideways. The field is pretty, however, so I do stare at it when I can, when the nettles are out of the way. The moment I love most is when we turn back, especially if it's on that little hill, from which then you can run down. The furthest point is around the second river bar, but the water is much nicer earlier, when calm, nearer the experiment area' It has algae on the surface in clusters that look like dinosaur skin or seaweed like the seapeople's hair from a matinee film I saw in Olsztyn when I was little, the back exit of the cinema leading straight out onto the green river, so I felt like I never walked out of the film and the seaweed-haired seapeople were

still there.

I also like it when we

are back on the asphalt, because

it means we're almost done, and I run a bit

faster and steadier on stable surface. One time we see two drunks asleep on the ground, and someone runs up to them to check if they're alive, someone else rurming right after them to make sure they don't get one in the face. Another morning, an old lady on her bike, with a rustic scarf over her head, like she came out of a "how to look Polish" manual, sees us running - and you must know that the way of running is weird (like us): the point is to do it as if you were pulled by your stomach, with your hips forward, not your head first - and Ramka, the dog that follows us from the manor, barks at her. The woman is angry, but probably equally scared, and yells after us: "You filthy pigs, you scum!". To add to the weirdness of the run, we are supposed to yell if we're running_ out of strength, so granted, every minute there are mad screams from the mad people. The locals must love us indeed. We run back just in time for breakfast, and the long day starts.

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'Ode to television'

?tgtl''le 55

They say you're wiser than my mother.

I would like to disagree, For after watching your Big Brother, I require therapy.

Hate not knowing.

But then the guessing keeps me occupied. lf I wasn't guessing I would actually have to work.

Although I could be missing meaning, And kindness alongside with Prudence, pride and dreaming Of being loved and missed.

And the more I work, the more I frown.

This leads to stress. Which doctors say is bad.

For you.

I miss your virtues and Your graces;

So here

My views are overtaken With eager bosoms and coke traces; Role models in the making.

I use it as a playdough, making shapes and words.

Please, let us not Pretend, This horror has to end.

It's self-analysis at best.

I grate it, mash it, stew it in the hope to bake a meaning, But I've always failed at food tech.

'No more violence'

lfiddle with my mind.

I shouldn't pick my spots, so I pick at my brain instead.

I stick my arms down to the elbow and re-arrange it,

lntoxication !

And ultraviolencel And when we're violent It's ultra-violet!

And shiny, shiny, shiny, ah!!

So instead, I mend hems and sew buttons.

I prick myself on purpose now and then.

And in the end, as thought at last emerges, I find it far too thin, spat on and sticky.

And realise that I don't need it anymore.

So I move on. For now,

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Drink milk from the korova!

At the Korova, the Koro-koro-koro-rova

'my memory store' I know me inside out, But I don't want you

Me and my droogies,

To know the me I know.

We're always fashedl

Milk Bar!

Pete, Alex, Diml

Our interests clashedl

Besides after the third time, I got sick of

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You oughtn't know me As some know me,

Too many overdressed skeletons, A few smiles in my closets.

The men they got me, Stripped me down raw!

And then they put in This special chair And said

lf I let everyone in, My closet would be broken.

My safety wall, my net.

'There's porn, sit there'l

Some words are foreign there,

Some dresses lie, wrapped,

lncripted, hidden.

Even lcan't find them.

Freud would have a lot

I do not wish, I fear to suit them.

Somebody else's present That can't be thrown out.

Dust gathering necessities.

To say about this.

We stole the money, We raped that whorel

I also keep my

mother's fur coats,

my old toys, my sister's.

Unused or not my own.

Forgotten, yet stored, Brought into light With careful consideration.

And these are only the objects I know of.

Kept my eyes open, Fed me vitamins, As lwatched porn And ultraviolence!

And then I felt That lwould die, So sick and sorry,

Not really knowing why So

then they let me,

Like let me out.

And now there's No Korova Bar and No Ultraviolence And I don't swing about.

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Kate Ross The Camden Town Murder

Look me in the eye:t love?

Now what do you know to die lot My sister told me it took a But you make it look easY As easy as breathing When breathing's only just enough.

So pale in life, In bloody corpse made vibrant, noisy hue; Your whey-faced cheeks t!f!gd-Ig! Made black and blue Where broken veins and mottled skin And vacant grin meet rigor mortis frown God, how the corpse's blood is sad in the depths of sound.

Seeking dead-end justice As only a cadaver can.

Repellent yet effeminate, Resplendent degenerate,

Boy in your lifetime In death made twice the man.

My old man (said follow the van) Blow out your kyte with liquor As the young girls bicker Over whom you'll belong to tonight;

A dirty little one night stand; They say the artist is not separate frofi the man.

And this audience won't let You be Ignoring your pleas with the image that they see'Et Rita. They go to bed with Gilda, they wake up with me' !

Where broken veins and mottled skin abound -IE A persona paper-thin Yet heavy with the farce that weighs it down God, how the corpse's blood is sad in the depths of sound' Sound and violence.

Yet silent you stand.

-Silent, but yours is the noise of history A cacophony of pasts that seethe- and breathe And rustle in the swirlY bteeze.

And hug the curb as best theY can Before they flit amongst the treesi Your sapling structure bent, Parroting music hall refrains a century out-spent Hello, hello, who's Your ladY friend?

Oh, what shall we do for the rent?

But now, at least, in silence, you stand.

As though figurehead to a mighty ship, Sculpted siren ofthe briny streets, S

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Adonis of the landfill

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AHUMBENG

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Poem beginning "Today.,."

Today of all days when the Gasman craves the kind of moneY We can only dream about,

When the boiling stew of the sea Separates objects so finely, Like you from me,

When the sun has swollen up, To several times its natural size Sucking earth upwards or sideways or

Causing the rolling brawl of a bus

to be

More awful as it spins into concrete walls, When headwinds flick skyscrapers like ants

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lnto the mountains, upside down, Grounding the lightning rods Before the inevitable, melting then steaming avalanche

ls not one for clasping hands, then Placing an arm around a shoulder

And walking under the newly orange sky to find breakfast.

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Nicola Lavey

Wolf Cottage

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The MYth of Pentheus

the ldeal on a calendar one day. Picture this: you're walking through the forest on a foggy December evening, somewhere close to the Polish-Lithuanian border. The fir trees scowl and press in on the unsuspecting traveller, like witches with their skirts hiked up high dancing around frenzied fires, frozen dead in a snowytableau, their wrath thwarted only by the shriek of an enchantment or spell. There R. are no birds or voices, the only sound being the distant howls of something not quite animal or human, The snow crunches predictably under your every footstep, fresh and hard under the sole of your shoe, cold and pure. When you look up the sky is a clotted mass of grey, the only way it can be, a sort of viscous polluted cream. The silence is crushing. Eventually you come onto a clearing, never stopping to look behind at the looming army of fir trees, as if the forest were following, watching, closing in on you. There is a light - a cottage, on the left bank of a stream, now frozen over, immortalized' A small wooden bridge, covered in sparkling icicles, like stalactites, provides the way across. A distant, dissonant screech breaks your monotonous plod, propelling you forward. The cottage is dotted with little Christmas lights, little spirits, glittering imps. One can see the light through the window, the crackling fireplace with its low, sensual warmth, its rich and husky roar. A burgundy, velvet sofa basks in its glow; blazing amber walls home tq the melancholy gaze of a stag's head, its ominous antlers now a mere decoration, a relic from a grandfather's hunting days. Preserved like flies in amber. The cottage seems like an anomaly, extracted from time, a shard of glass, eternalised. Another flurry of snow starts, the flakes beating your cheeks; sharp little wings. You cannot see that through the door from this living room is a kitchen, the curtains drawn, and the stove on, a cosy cauldron of cinnamon smells. Through the kitchen a corridor, and another heavy wooden door with a cool iron knocker leads the way into a bedroom, the soft, twitching heart of the cottage. The pulse of domestic bliss, On the floor lies a sheepskin rug for your feet to sink into, the bed a plush white monolith sliced open with a single rose. Two mahogany tables, one by the side of each bed, There is a book on one of them, 'A Hundred Years of Solitude.' The wolf howls again, this time closer, you quicken your pace. The sound echoes, but I saw

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why? ln this forest there are no boundaries, no walls. The snow deep in the woods has lost its lifeblood, its vital property: the ability to reflect light. Back on the woodland path, it lies limpid on the ground, on the trees, sad, silent and dumb; lightless. The abyss yawns as you give yourself to the forest and its dark security. The fir you back with open arms, a sigh of rll trees embrace you and welcome relief that you have passed by wolf cottage and its amber walls, its *.* -{ imp-like lights and its burning, burning promises. The bristling

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forest saves you from that heady pink maw, waiting to gobble you up, to lap up your juices; hardly pausing to crunch and grip you in between its hungry knuckles. For in the cellar underneath the cottage they would rip you to shreds, my dear Pentheus, Because one night, when we danced together and you left me standing cold, you refused to believe I was real, that your reflection in my eyes was divine. I will wait forever in my glacial retreat until you come again, to me, your Dionysus.

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Hannah Hudson

Title-less slick linoleum stairs for you, around the three cotners of the haliway complex, almost bashing my own pelvis into light-less metal framework in a careless flurry of body. Finally slamming into yout color-less door, the love-less steel knob slipped off of me, not wanting my calloused palm to touch its smooth mirrors. My own face loses saturation in the distorted, round reflection, a sponged out version of a person, collapsed in hope-less falls that the body can barely handle anymore. The body is love-less, the body is color-less, and the body is what iets yourself turn that steel knob to find my lack of saturation and my distorted reflections waiting for you.

You may bring my residues from stark hallways to this place we have, but you remember the turquoise flashes outside your window and the green-butsts in her eyes, pulling you into full blown radicals. These sparks flow around you, and they blind you to my own dimness. I knovz this may anger you, I know I can't tell you how you've been blinded by false lights because they wâ&#x201A;Źre yours to see, not mine.

But maybe you can believe that when our eyes would match up to evaluate each other, to really study how the hghts and darks form rivers which fall into out minds maybe you can believe that I felt those sparks and I saw the colors you saw, for just a moment, enough to knovz my dimness can't be seen' And I don't mind your blindness. But you pretend I am as saturated as your memories and ambitions, which I am not, and I can't live up to the brightness.

I remember running up the

Wood Pigeon

Galen O'Hanlon

A wood pigeon's outside sitting heavy

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In the tree, whistling snooth soft and lovely To me. Under his full weight the bowed brmch

Shivers as he shifts, shuflling mlfling His thick feathers, as he wonders whether

Doryhy Thoughts O, bread! If only all that I have read Would stay inside my head like thoughts of bread But from my head it seans all thoughtshave fled, And in their place are thoughts ofbread. o ifonly all the hours ofreading Weren't threaded ttrough with the hours of dreaming.

If only I could set my mind to kneading The dough of deep thought and deeper meaning: I'd bake an essay loafin an essay plan, I'd have a roll ofthought for each exam I'd bake a baker's dozen in my dusted pan Andhope my baking is beterthan O! if onlY all I've read My Wiuld give me doughy thoughts, not thoughts of bread'

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Slre's listening. Sitting there whistling over The same notes, louder, patient, persisten! then Pausing, tuming, waiting, hearing

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Nothing but her silence. She doesn't care Or she isr't there. And the cool sunliglt Slate grey on his back as he sits, whistles, Shits, waits, thor clatterclaps into the air.

And, heavy as a wood pigeon, wishing She

would call, I sit and wait and whisfle

and hopg and whistle and waig and think,

Shit how like that wood pigeon I am!

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Use your

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Two Dreams, Death & Half Life

Freewheel to junction Warm for October Light turns amber Wrestle with jumper A sweaty blunder Head stuck under Sleeves and collar Washing powder 5o epiphanic Crouching traffic Hidden panic, Engines manic Parted tides pour oceanic and rush.

Ned Carter Miles

The coming

first foot first.

You pass someone you kno,v and know you hnow them; you pass someone you knov and knows you knor lhem; you passed the two at once.

No words urere spoken.

No words are spoken.

Thror8h adulled, damp body as though bathed ln

Dieting gas-holders, Bored buddleia, Even the coots are coy.

"Wbit! What value?"

Surface tension on ,:,,:

Stagnant water

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Rubber capped and blubber skinned A man swims.

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benzo€ine,

An icy rain spears your shoulder as you choose: "urhether you're rising, whether water is falling around you," but there's endles€ time to think about lfie weather, though it never changes in it's measure or its kind, but it cuts the thin veneei of a ndhing haff summer, and therein li€€ its value.

Gentrified canalside:

Slicing through the green An arm arches and peaks,

&ys aretimeless.

You step paths never built but rdher emboss€d in ancieflt architecture; riratch yourself tEverse these trenches

grip my brakes to gaze at him,

Trawling these arteries Past locks and quays to the heart, which is

This moment Sticky like sap, catching insects ln frozen lights and held breath

You force open an eye,

and ask yourself if life lived still can be down to theweather.

But the salt outside burr}s the film over your iris and dilat€d r€tina, and you regress to the deep.

And dr@m amomem, prior to forgetting: That airy sphere that sp€*s ot you, that you spoke, An unending rep€tition of straight sides, sk€tehed lines, and the impefection of co.ners.

This bubble thd comains all you can say and ndhing you can mean, that signitied scream sinks with you.

tirst thr€ad of a de€per dr€m reaches your lips but stays thete witho.fi substance for the coming days are timeless: 'Noq I will grow my hair impassively, Buy a suit and traveFe lndia." words like gunpowder!

All consuming fire in srite of rain, All consuming rain.

Dance like petrol tlames, old flam€s.

But there isn't any time, and your hair gran on and left you behind.

The

Now you could be back on those paths or under the sea or drowned in the folds ol sleep.

Dark eyed children run around you, maybe even through you shouting dai! dai! dter each other. but you've nothing left to give and bel€guered with their br€dhing, you hang upon your head, you feel

this first time, the benevolejrce of the dead,

Notes

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V/hen homunculus taps on the window, Terrifying the house's occupants Before it bounces back out again.

Thoroughly decent couples can be seen Only as a lumpy outline 'neath the duvet, Huddled for fear that Homunculus breaketh And doth not payeth for the breakages.

Homunculus waits many nights out this way;

U

While the street wafts screaming rows He reaches in. Tapl And a chillwind

But not a piece out of place glass-wise.

He scuttles away, upward

And when one half gets up to look and see if he's Gone, something glints on the floor And when they sit back down They finC their foot is cut.

9. Homunculus tskes uP a ukulele

Musician compose thyself, Consider the options you have

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Or you'll never get your ukulele back: 1. Surrenderto the lilt and swing That you know who plies on your strings 2. Or try and snatch it (it's not recommended) 3. When all the tiresome songs of night are ended And dawn comes like a fucktastrophe of weakened light your gusset ripped, its love handles sad.'. never mind'

-

Without much poise the sun sags beneath the clouds The overhang of a flabby deity, who needs to pull his T-shirt down to sleeP again.

"Petty thief play ukulele with me" "This is not An instrument for folk music."

I ain't never heard no horse sing a sonS; That's Homunculus' job.

So we can go

Alexander Zhang The Arizona Sun Corridor

Today I walked through cold London wearing earplugs jumping in each puddle I black coffee flecked with cigarette ash'

When I wear my father's too large coat I look at my hands peeping out of the sleeve and see that I am a small child.

sat down on a park bench.

thought back to the Arizona Sun Corridor.

flicked a cigarette butt up arching over branches of trees to come falling down in a red ember landing with a click.

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she picked a butter knife off the table raised it high into the air and

brought it down

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to rest on my plate. we sat there

together a

nd .watched

how the heat opened up and bled.

Bridget? Ah, Bridget. Memorable. Good student, good grades, but... what can I say? She does well, but could do better. She tries, sometimes, but honestly? Bridget talks too much and gets too lost in her own thoughts to do that well in class.

She reads well though, so maybe she's got a chance. Let's just hope her imagination calms down a tad; it tends to run riot, am I right? She,s being creative, I guess, but what next? It's all a bit... much, Mostly. I mean, we don't want her to be one of those annoying kids that read too much as child and so as a teenager, reckons they know absolutely everything, eh?

r

I remember you in seasons.

think once upon a time there was spring, and we walked by flowers on the way to school, stopping only to kill a chosen few and put them in our ttair.

I

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Mine never stayed because I kept fidgeting, and I thought they looked stupid anyway, so I always tossed them out after a while. A waste, if anyone actually gave a shit. Yours were still there at the end of the day, albeit looking as dead as the smiles I got for all my petitions and campaigning. I I remember you once asked me why I felt the need to I could change the world, I

fill in the gaps, why I thought

laughed, as though I could've treated all your doubt and all your cruelty as a big joke. I knew the answer, it always sat at the tip of my tongue. Because you didn't want to.

You made me cry all the time, back in those days. Then we grew up, and I fashioned myself a nihilist in your image. You seemed unsurprised, bul then again, you always seemed that way. As though nothing could move you.

And the earth was littered with tiny light pink petals fallen from cheery trees, like confetti in the wake of a political victory.

I

think

once upon a time there was summer, fuly crept up on us and I turned j.5.

It must've been unbearably sunny, and I must've complained constantly. There's a memory of a beach, and it looks beautiful. The shells must've stung my feet and the water must've been too cold, but it looked like a postcard one might've bought to make the ones left behind jealous of their lies of smiles, so it was beautiful.

trying to untangle my hippie makeshift necklace that sat on the skin where a scar now lies, an angry line of purple, like a sweater sown with the wrong color of thread.

You were

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I remember you gpt really ill one day, and I got you a bug in a cup to cheer you up. We had the sickest sense of humor, didn't we? I don't know if you threw it back in the water, though I can imagine it probably died in that prison of

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white plastic, scorched by the sun, as we were busy abusing each other over thin that would've seemed ridiculous even to lovers having ffia'. . :: arguments, which we weren't, but acted like it anyway.

think once upon a time there was autumn, leaves of copper sauntering downwards from a cloudy sky, and there might've been a castle. *ffiffi,q _& z I

We might've walked its stone-clad floors and imagined life as before, pretending to be princesses with hidden lovers and corsets too tight.

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But that doesn't sound like us, much. I think we weren't too impressed, I think we stared in mock-awe and hurried along, eager to get back to pollution, capitalism and hot chocolate [with whipped cream, please). : 'â&#x201A;Ź â&#x201A;Ź -.:..::-.1,=19 I think once upon a time there was winter, and at some point there was snow [each flake unique, as if anyone cared). I

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You told me you were dying, then. we were walking through the woods at night, back when I could still stand to be in the middle of peace and quiet, when the noise wasn't the only way to make sure I was still alive, like the regular beeping of hospital monitors. ffi-sI might've shed a tear and it might've frozen on my eyelashes only to melt away slowly when we got back to the cabin, a subdued, delayed reaction, if I'd taken you seriously. But you always lied, and I took everything you said with the whole damn salt shaker [we buried you one month later),

And then spring came along. I walked to school alone, and no flowers died.

We lay by the sea without you, and no bugs were harmed.

I read a lot. I knew all about great rulers, and when I warked bv ddl ruins, I almost thought I could hear faint sounds of hooves. I ro imagined the past, no present to bicker about with you, and no f;ffiF to plan without you.

I'm too busy to go feel the cold on my face on some top of the world with no network coverage, and global warming has effectively taken care of any debates over individuality of snowflakes. Now it's just icy rain; shove an umbrella in your b"g, i

trytowearSenSibleshoesandrunofftothenextmeeting.M But Hayley, just you wait. I'm gonna change the world.

L F

Charlie Satow

A midnight swim

Ilaughter

stillness, only troubled by It was that time in a summer evening when there is a muffling free of the sharp contrasts of the and the clatter of cutlery from across the road. Adults are

day, and the little ones from the restraints of consciousness' hand' Whispers are Brother and sister tiptoe down the stairs, silent shadows, towel in exchanged, so close that they tickle the ear: "Are you sure he's not around?"

"He wasn't before."

"And they can't see us from here?"

"Come on, just go!"

4 'r,

the gravel (feet The balmy breeze hurries them on: they slip out the door; they edge along gate. Finally brother and sister disappear ignoring the sharpness of the stones) and they leap over the now that the sun has down the steps still wet from the day's dripping towels. The air is slightly cool felt later' And then gone, which makes them shiver and go faster, rippling the cloud of midges only to be the lamplights' orange to the steps' a stop and he grabs at her arm, as their eyes are thrown from plane of vision, eagle's eyes racing up and overlapping blues and blacks. He's heard a rustle. He scans his ,,euick!,, And into the bushes that they knew so well, lips kissing the earth as the clipdown and across. continues on up the steps' Best to stay clop of the concierge's shoes comes, checks for a moment, and the glory, soon forces put for a while. But the thought that the others might get there first, taking all puddles' them on. They scurry out and down, skilfully avoiding the peripheral vision, like elusive stars which And then their friends do become apparent, only in the the steps towards the vanish as soon as you focus too hard, until there is a whole crowd flying down that the concierge has gone and fence, all following the brother and sister who grasp their towels, now

the safety of the darkness has come. green guards, looms at the suddenly, therel The outline of the pool, surrounded by those thin brother and sister and friends end of the path. Some younger ones try to climb over the spikes while of tens of small hands: two bars skip to the far end, to the pine trees which obscure the craftsmanship the pool, each forehead energised' bent to allow entry, And now they're in, and they assemble around there are sharks lurking beneath' Eyes shift left and right, frightened by the black stillness. Perhaps go the flailing perhaps the water at this end is so deep that it never ends. But one girl loses her nerve: in of grey-blue shatter the nervous legs and arms, and it triggers off a chain reaction of bodies' shards silence.

where

,t''no '.'','s. Some cling to the sides; *n.'''::::f shut and bravest go to the deep end. Eves tightly

enough to stand. onrv the o +^ cf av r rndtrf it becomes impossible to stav under' ter which way is up; eyes open wide and cold ^-.1 +ho the rnld the adrenarine runs out and bumps and stomachs from kicks. But , - -r !^ rL^ *^.,+h and +hpn to tthe head, to the mouth, and then ,.i,"r.rtips movins up veins to the torso, to the -r^ L^^^.,-^ i+," ac if rrtlatef iS ts the water if the tong to wait though, because it's as

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ca tho cfen rhe vounser ones have to use the steps; Now bodies cramber over the side. bring warmth and renewed danger: everyone for themselves' The towels

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before were they?"

"The lights in that house weren't on

"l don't think so - maybe they've seen us'" "Let's go then!" gap' leaving only as the group pours out of the tiny so the next wave of activity is begun

footprintsthereforawhile,soontodisappear.Tiredlimbsturntheirthoughtstobedandhome,but the never-ending steps' first on the heels in front of them, and "There aren't always this many steps'"

start moving!"

"Of course there are. Stop talking and only brother thinning, swerving off right or left, leaving Nearly home, and the swimmers start quietly back into their door reft ajar, The two adventurers burst the path and gate, the the to and sister the table' butter with sart scooped up from They chew fiercery the bread and

room and onto the beds. their hearts full but stomachs empty'

Richard Morgan Debussy Sirdnes

Melting petals colliding against a stagnant river, slipping off statues of curcents and sotidifying in their form once more; beawty graces death. Melodic rocking of cradles to andfro, the gentle rhythm of a dissipating consciousness. Somewhere...a wedding ring is d.roppei accidently. It rolls, ,i*ut and harks back on itself in ever-smaller ciriles. From deep beneath, the Earth's plates rnanoeuvre themselves for the final battle, jousting, spying, testing one another. Beyond the threat of conflict, a bird sings its song of love, not to a lover, but to the morning itself. The day responds, pretending the season is fit for new lifu; the hoax of spring. But rain comes! No, hail comes'.'hail and. petals! Softness fights for recognition amidst the freezing face of falling heaven.

Floorboards creek ai herds of elephants approach the precipice... Oxpeckers ascend from leathery perches and reveal the route from one life to the next. A prayer's engine is started...

Anna Kirk Electricity On guard you varlet!Shouts my brother, wearing a waste paper bin helmet jnO-wietOiirg plastic swords. Egads, gorblimey, swounds!l cry and swoon and die'

lf I die too quick my brother's bottom-lip is in a strop till I felt-tip a fingertache, the curly kind, and hold it to my philtrum' I draw one for him so he can be D'artagnan.

We drink so much phenylalanine in fizz the trampoline seems hjOhel than it is and we jump over moon-s I say are made of stilton. He doesn't like blue cheese, oh yuk, not yet, but pokes his tongue through jarlsburg.

When I am grown and gone away, he develops epilepsy quietly' It's idiopathrc Out we should apply science to his wide eyes instead of saying, oh, his imagination has simply grown so big his body cannot stay afloat those dreams of his' He is a hairy long-limbed epileptic boy, my brother. I am far from home. i maf<e pan6afei in the Oaif ahO eat them with blue cheese, watch picture-book moons out my window. I wonder if fits are like flattened carbohydrate and cheese-mould.

think of drinking phenylalanine, interfering with serotonin, and jumping on that tramPoline.

I

so much static from plastic swordplay, so much stroppy happy energy' He has excess electiicity, my bright brother. He switches off in fits, but see how his neurons light and shine through skin'

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Tattoos blur, Fade to blue and rose. lnnocent details lost That can never be re-inked.

Come old age our hearts Turn to mush or flint; Memories once bea utiful Turn to smudge and smear, Details lost forever That leave us cherishing loss, And even loss ls lost in death, lllusions of forever Lost to worms.

A cold wind clears the air

Snapped back from morbid reveries Rosy cheeked and fresh I am still young

And dream of losses stillto come.

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-

We're climbing upwards, heaving at the heavy sky Like the dead weight of goods freighted steady through the night Or a stream of ants crawling, hauling crumbs on motorways

With a heady sense of purpose I can only contemplate I ai'n a

tourist

-

Having arrived, I would be lost.

Having arrived, my thoughts would scatter, A nest doused with boiling water.

Today, we've shed layers of air like skin And emerged from clouds with a kettle click To be restless again in the stillness of this peak.

The scent of spent incense lingers along the track Trodden with snack wrappers and plastic bags

Where the tin-can blare of a Nokia 8210 Leads

the procession of three girls and two men.

Submit your poems and short stories for our radio featu

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Hello everyone. We pre launching an all-new, exciting collaboration wittr n.q.nn fVt this year. Still and Still Moving, our radio feafure witl be operating in full swing i by the end of term, but we need your submissions. Anything you send to us will \ receive air time on Luke Neima's wonderful lunchtime show each Friday between\ l2-2pm. Each RARE show is then uploaded to mixcloud, so you'll be able to share\ listen to yours and other Young Writers' contributions as much as you want. l

You c4n either send us your own recordings of your submissions or we can meet up and record it for you. Alternatively, if you don't want to read but want your poems to be heard on the show, just email your submission to us and we dan read/record it fi you. It'd be great if we can get your awesome work on a wider platform! If you're interested, please email or

utyry

Thank you! Genevieve and Molly, Young Writers'Radio Reps.

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