Riggwelter #7

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RIGGWELTER #7 MARCH 2018 ed. Amy Kinsman

The following works are copyrighted to their listed authors Š2018. Riggwelter Press is copyrighted to Amy Kinsman Š2017.

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Foreword

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Sisyphus at the Summit

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TV Collage

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To drown the light

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The Spanish Pistol

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Too late

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On Holidays

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star(k)

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Night Follows the Dusk

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Virginity

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Some Ways She’s Tried to Kill Me

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Orchids

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Untitled

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A Portrait of You as Varanas Komodoensis

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Matchbox Ballerina

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The Puppeteer

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Dragonflies Collage

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Prosopopoeia

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A Midweek Fixture

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How beautiful are the swirling colours of the towels

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Announcement

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this does not affect your statutory rites

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Sketch Artist on the Train in June

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Therapy in the Accounts Dept.

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Winning at Losing

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What the brain hemhorrage says

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Wearing My Skeleton on My Face, No.1

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Treasure Map

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Feelings In Words Hang

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In a Previous Life

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I Will

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Contributors

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Foreword

Welcome to issue twelve, and welcome to what is technically the start of spring. Here in the North of England, we’re buried under snow drifts due to passing Siberian winds. With that backdrop, this issue feels very appropriate in how it tackles life and death. As an editor, I never plan these things, the ideas simply come out once all the pieces for an issue have come together, but this month we cover medical crises, suicide, awful governmental decisions, eternal punishment, working in accounts, cat ownership and football. This is an issue that sinks its teeth into you. Some thankyous before we commence: thank you to all of our contributors, all our submitters and everyone that supports us – your help is very much appreciated and Riggwelter couldn’t happen without you. Thank you for your wonderful work and spreading the word. On a personal note, thank you very much to Ronnie Goodyer and Dawn Bauling at Indigo Dreams Publishing Ltd. for working so hard with me on my debut pamphlet, &, which is out later this month. You can check that out here: http://www.indigodreams.co.uk/amy-kinsman/4594216097 Thank you to everyone working right now in essential services and to get the country operating again as soon as possible – you don’t get enough thanks for what you do, and this issue is dedicated to you. Curl up with a hot drink and a blanket and enjoy. Together we’ll dream of Spring.

Amy Kinsman (Founding Editor)

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Sisyphus at the Summit The boulder crumbled eons ago— even the gods can’t defy erosion. This is the question that rolled like a dark ocean behind his eyes: what happens when the Almighty’s will is bested by mere physics? Mortals weren’t supposed to reach the top. Men weren’t supposed to escape their punishments. But all the Underworld’s nebulous gloom swirled before him, and his back was achingly unbent. Like an eel though a net, he slipped out of time, his mind a boat drifting on a starless sea, waiting for someone to descend and tell him it was all part of the plan. For the boulder to reform like a cancer. For the mountain to rumble and rear up to twice its height. Anything to keep his ordeal eternal. He waited. And waited. Finally, he stood and wandered down the far side of the mountain. Stretched his back, popped his knuckles. Found the biggest boulder, the one he imagined Zeus would have chosen. He planted his feet, leaned hard against the stone. He thought to push, but the wheel of habit had long ago snapped. Slowly, he sat down in its shadow and did not get back up.

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Is this part of it? he asked the void. He wasn’t sure if anyone was listening anymore. But he waited, still, for an answer. Samuel T. Franklin

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TV Collage (Cover Image) Anna Nazarova-Evans

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To drown the light The thing about darkness is that you can’t really see it. You could forget to pay your electricity bill and leave your only lighter with that stranger at the bar. The stranger with the funny looking nose who wouldn’t say the word racist and not just because of his lisp. The stranger could keep your lighter in his left pocket and take it on a trip to the west side of town to an ex lover’s house. You can just imagine his face when he knocks on the door and it’s not the ex-lover who opens but the black neighbor with a towel barely wrapped around his waist. You could spend all your money on dark apparel: black pants and shirt, black underwear and socks. You could buy that black lipstick and dye your hair dark. At the Goth club down your block, Roni would give you special treatment and let you cut to the front of the line. He would still be standing there the next morning to wave you goodbye. Roni would be standing there day in and day out, clocking over 40 hours a week. Roni, who has an engineering degree under his belt and used to have a different job with different hours, Roni who used to spend too much time inside casinos until he gambled his house away. You could take a trip to the middle of nowhere and pack your flashlight with no spare batteries. It would be a night without a full moon because you know better than trying to run away from that light. Last time you tried to do that you ended up in that dance floor where you met Harry. Harry who slept with you, brought you breakfast the next morning – a little red rose instead of orange juice inside the jug – stayed around for six months of ‘I love

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yous’ written in tiny pieces of paper hidden everywhere in your room and a morning where he asked to borrow your car to go fetch some beers and never came back. You came pretty close to seeing darkness that time but then you decided never to buy orange juice again. You could swim to the deepest end of the ocean, let all your air out, bubbles rising to the top, so you don’t get pulled back up. But have you seen how plankton glows in the dark?

Laura Steiner

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The Spanish Pistol He took the gun, the Spanish pistol they used for shooting horses. He remembered all the times he’d pressed the short, black muzzle to a thick cranium, evading the wet, uncorrupted eye, and squeezed the trigger. He recalled the scorched hole, the pithing of bone and brain, scant blood, considering. Nothing more. The cleaner, a good and devout Catholic girl, found him, the back of his head gutted, pulp staining office walls, the Spanish pistol on the floor. Later, after priest, police, numb widow and the last spectator crept away, she cleaned, purged the office, scouring sin and the lave of blood. Lesley Quayle

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Too late The two girls had been sitting in silence for what felt like hours when Edith stood up and started speaking, as if carrying on a conversation. “We didn’t have any choice, Alice. He was a disgusting pervert and no-one would have believed us. Just because he made up those stories about white rabbits and mad hatters and all that. That doesn’t make it ok, what he did to you.” “I know,” Alice said. She did know, but it didn’t change anything. She did know, but she still wondered, when she was alone, whether it had somehow been her fault. She did know, but it didn’t excuse what they’d just done. Alice made herself look at him, at his pale, limp body, at the mess they’d made of his face. She remembered him whispering stories to her in the half-light of dusk; impossible tales filled with odd creatures and madness and her. She had loved it, at first, being at the centre of it all. It was the first time she’d been singled out, chosen. There was a lightness in leaving her family behind for those hours with him. It had started slowly, with a brush of her leg that could have been accidental, a welcoming hug that stretched on too long. But then slow turned to fast and it seemed like it might be too late to say stop. Alice’s sister was holding two spades. She passed one to Alice. “Come on,” she said. “Before someone sees us.”

Laura Pearson

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On Holidays Today, while some will gather together, someone will suture the gash tow the dead car blare the horn on the freight train as it cuts through town vend the cold medicine or diapers serve the perfectly plated entree rip the movie ticket you just bought to escape what really hurts go out on patrol answer the hotline whisper last rites to the nonagenarian leaving this world alone Katie Chicquette Adams

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star(k) Richard Biddle

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Night Follows the Dusk

Dusk

We begin at dusk. Bleary eyed, pregnant time of day where all seems probable. Freudian slips of reality skip peripherally at first; a flicker of a loved one’s shadow, their presence, mist-like hangs in the air and their memory fogs yours. In dim lighting everyone looks exactly how you want them. We want two arms and two legs wrapped around us. We want two eyes locked onto ours at dusk because breaking eye contact meant breaking our molecular bonds and we’d be flung to the extremities of the universe. We want two choices at dusk: let the moment wash over our entirety, cleansing us of life’s grimes, or to wring out clouds for rain. Either way, all we want is release.

A metallic rapping reverberated inside the car. Noah was counting the quarters in his dashboard cup holder and he turned to the glass to see Marcus holding a tire iron in both hands. That Marcus could learn of his one moment of bravery the day before meant that Eve had admitted to him she had kissed Noah. “Noah, get the hell out here! You stupid shit!” “Hey, hey, hey...Marcus.” Unsurprisingly, Noah’s vague entreaties did nothing to make Marcus go away. Marcus was here to remind Noah that he was the good old possessive type. Touch his car and he’ll break your hand. Tell his girlfriend - whom you’ve known since the third grade - that you think she’s a treasure to humanity and she deserves to be with a man who doesn’t take her for granted. Well, for that, you can expect to have more than your hand broken.

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Noah stepped out of his car and into the parking lot. He was a full head shorter than Marcus, and at least fifty pounds lighter. Though Noah didn’t get out to fight Marcus. “Marcus! Listen, it’s just that...well I’ve tried so many times to tell her. To tell you! But every time I gathered up the will to say something either you guys were out or I could never find the words. But yesterday it just came flooding out of me. I couldn’t hold it back any longer.” “Yea, well neither can I, asshole!” Marcus let loose with the steel pipe. With his feet. With his head. With everything he controlled in this world. Marcus swung at Noah’s head with the pipe until he couldn’t hold it any longer and for lack of strength it flew from his hand, steel bouncing off of the pavement with glee. Then Marcus tackled Noah to the ground, balled up his fists and continued swinging, one, two, three, four shots to the face. Noah’s blood was flying in waves from Marcus’s fists. For his part, Noah stood still at first. If only Eve could see me. Like every daydreamer, Noah envisioned the movie scene where Eve would rush to the scene, grab Marcus’s hand and stay the execution in the name of her new love. Then the new couple would embrace as Eve played the coquette and wiped the blood from his forehead. A passionate kiss and end scene. Instead, this is what happened: Noah was knocked to the ground. He was stunned and couldn’t get up a defence. Eve got out of Marcus’s car and began shouting at Marcus. Through the ringing and waves of nausea and blurred vision and more ringing all Noah could make out was the silhouette of Eve against lamp post light. A

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slight smile overtook Noah’s face. An enraged Marcus put two and two together and tried to pummel the smile off of Noah’s lump of a face. It wasn’t Eve who stopped the fight. Marcus’s body slumped over Noah’s, heaving to get more air. Marcus stood up, cracking his bloody knuckles and craning his neck; a post workout stretch. One last kick wrapped Noah around himself on his side and Marcus walked away, shaking his numb fists. Eve lingered over Noah for a moment and shook her head. If she said something, Noah was unconscious and didn’t hear it.

“I love you,” Noah said through split teeth and swollen eye sockets shaded merlot. He’d never said it to anyone before, but it was the first thing that came to mind when he woke up. Noah was laying on his stomach in the convenient store parking lot with gravel and glass digging into his raw kneecaps as Eve walked away. Things could have gone

better. Thankfully the street lamps provided canonical vignettes in the falling dusk. He could watch her walk away momentarily. Noisy grey light filtered in-between, so she slowly became the image of a VHS tape’s untrackable ghost. It wasn’t until three street lamps later he decided to get up. The glass pebbles dropped to the ground from Noah’s body in chips of rubies; he sputtered he next few breaths to clear his lungs and rooted his hands into the gravel to gently rock himself into a crouch. He craned his neck slowly from left to right. In swinging his head slowly, he noticed the rubies made an arrow pointing to his right. His car tires were gasping their last breaths through slashes and Eve was lost to increasing ethereal static. Noah was looking for direction.

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He stood, pivoted ninety degrees to his right, and staggered through the parking lot towards what appeared to be a worn path covered by arches of birch trees. Through mid-fall, the trees held their leaves so that each step further meant a doubling of the darkness already falling. Fireflies sparked to life here or there. Noah sighed, and slumped his posture, knowing that their phosphorescence was only to attract a mate. He cried, and said, as if only to the universe, “Eve.” The fireflies were flowing single-file away from Noah as currents in the air carried them to their destination. It was too late to turn back, as the canopy now shielded Noah from the burgundy clouded sky above, and so he too waded in the currents. Feet stumbling over every root and rise in the path, he soon began to grope at birch trees with hands outstretched. After minutes of walking there was a glistening and a multiplication of the fireflies ahead. Half of them hung momentarily before darting ahead while the other half shimmered in place on the stream; ripples shot through their light. Noah, with steps nearly on top of one another, edged his way towards the river. The birches parted. The fireflies grouped in clouds around his full height lighting up his wounds from the earlier fight with Eve’s boyfriend. Occasionally they lingered over an injury: the eyes and the teeth; the bloodied knees; his broken rib. With water up to his chest, the fireflies darted in all directions and Noah knew. He bent his knees and dunked his head into the river three times. It shocked him at first but as the air exploded around him upon standing up, he felt a cooling sensation flood his body. His heart’s pang melted and the easiness with which he thought of tomorrow was refreshing.

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Night

Eve, first in line with sputtering candle, paraded down the aisle as rays of smothered light limped over her candle’s lip. Each heel-toe brought her closer to the church altar until she peeled off into her family’s pew. She sat as the congregation was told. “Brothers and sisters, we gather here today to await the dawn. Please extinguish your candles for safety’s sake.” At that, the parishioners each snuffed out their candles. “Kisssssssss.” Eve turned left, disbelieving the chorus of accusations being fired at her ears. “Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.” How could they all know that it was her idea? That she had only convinced both Marcus and Noah of Noah’s advance. She looked down at her own candle and the fire leapt upwards. A single flame crackled up five, ten feet. It singed her eyebrows, the heavens. The fire repeated the accusation magnitudes louder, chucking the syllable, “kiss” every which direction while Eve, panicked, flinched, and snubbed the candle out with the palm of her hand. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” she shouted. Much to Eve’s displeasure, the organ turned silent; the pastor stood slack-jawed at the pulpit, hand mid-Alleluia, outstretched palms facing heaven; her family aghast and looking at Eve with eyes and eyebrows arched, heavenward. The congregation was mixed in their displays of disgust. Some recoiled from the shattering of their sanctuary, while others stood teetering between repulsion or confusion. “Eve Winters,” the pastor, now recomposed, finally said, “is there more you’d like to add to this evening’s sermon?” With his hands gripping the pulpit, the pastor braced himself, fearful of both silence and response.

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“Yes. I’m afraid I do.”

Adam Maciejewski

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Virginity has something to do with anodos not the ice between my fingers

like spinnerets

virginity is not chastity

elastic icicles as hereditary as glue

nor the conduit which wrinkles with frigidity

she finds an aloof place

not necessarily as a mother

kore

core

coeur

shadows of pears are growing on branches

archaeologists in churches

deep under the ground will exhume the skeletal remains of pears penetrated like chalices she takes her furs like the nez perce

or a wife

they can grow full

she does more than wear a chiton sandals

she can hunt for food

she may play on swings in fields

the train carriages are

attached with concertina walls floors

connected with black and white checkered

internal bleeding can cause swelling

she is a mother standing on her stiff

legs gracefully

like a fishtail braid through the carriages

watching how her daughter rides the ebb and flow out of sight

the train body spirals

to weave manic obsessional ropes like plaited reins

the city

the sovereign woman is a virgin the rising of the cardinal the blood nest from the crown of thorns Annie Blake

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the country


Some Ways She’s Tried to Kill Me This morning when I woke she wound a liquid silk around my foot injected me with six hot toxic sharps insinuated trip wires on the stairs. Tonight I will admit her to my bed and while I sleep she’ll fix me with her flecked green milk jade eyes and edging closer try to stop my tick with her small warmth and her neat nose and tiny counting breaths. Rachel McGladdery

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Orchids The Orchid sat on our windowsill in a white pot. After an initial showy bloom, it withered away to a brown stump and David wanted to bin it. I stopped him though. Instead I gave the plant a name – Artemis - and I watered her hopefully. I felt sure there was something growing deep down in the dirt. I noticed the new shoots on her around the time David started disappearing. First his toes went, then his fingers. A week later, Artemis sprouted new leaves - thick, green and glossy – and overnight David’s hands and feet were gone. His legs went in pieces, ankle to knee, and knee to groin and by then Artemis was in bud, her stalks pregnant with scented promise. As she birthed each of her floral offspring, parts of David’s arms ceased to exist. And then one day he came home from work just a torso and a head. New leaves kept sprouting, new shoots thrust up through the soil, and David suffered in parallel. I went to bed one night with just his eyes next to me on the pillow and when I woke up, I wasn’t surprised to see even they’d gone. It’s just Artemis and me now. She’s broken out of that little white ceramic pot. Her foliage covers the windowsill and her roots tangle and twine in the plughole of the sink. Her flowers weave themselves into the slats of the blind. Turns out, orchids need regular feeding.

Rebecca Williams

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Untitled Elizabeth Moura

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A Portrait of You as Varanas Komodoensis

You’re one of life’s Giants A ferocious Komodo Only inhabit Islands To take up even more space Ten foot long Three hundred pounds Of ego Hatched from an egg Shell Shock a nation Bite us With your venom Bountiful bacteria Won’t let anyone under That boneScale armour Long yellow tongue forked Serrated Knife teeth You use to eat yourself A narcissist’s meal No lizard-lite With your bodyLength tail Fangs gushing red

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What could be more Fantastic than the blood Of a dragon Non-fire-breathing Facing Extinction David Hanlon

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Matchbox Ballerina

There was something about that matchbox, discarded on the pavement, that drew me to it. I couldn’t articulate why I felt compelled to pick it up, but I did. It looked like an ordinary matchbox. Yet when I shook it, I didn’t hear matches. I slid it open a crack. Inside I saw a face, a girl’s face, staring up at me. I slid the lid closed again in a hurry. I must be going mad. I slipped it inside my coat pocket and hurried home. Once there, I put the matchbox on a table and, convinced of temporary insanity, opened it again, expecting to find nothing inside. But the girl was still there. This time I saw she was a ballerina. She looked at me, then performed a plie, a pirouette, and several other moves that were beyond my grasp of balletic vocabulary but were quite beautiful. I felt sad for this girl, no bigger than a thimble, dancing to silence. I hastened to my collection of records. Ah ha! Handel’s Water Music. The sweet tones rang out around my lounge. I watched the ballerina go about her routine again with gusto, entranced as she whirled about her tiny cardboard arena. As the track ended, I applauded. “Bravo!” I yelled. “Bravo!” She curtsied once, then twice. The next piece began to play and she leapt into action once more. I watched her for hours, even forgetting my evening glass of wine, then closed the matchbox and went to bed, a giddy smile across my face. It occurred to me as I dropped into slumber that perhaps I should have asked if she’d minded being shut in again, but was sure she’d forgive such rudeness. I had, after all, rescued her from the street. The next few nights were spent watching Millicent, as I’d christened her, perform to Brahms, Bach and Beethoven, tiny legs prancing poetically from one end of her box to the other. I felt humbled to have this beautiful miniature lady here to dance for me. But then I felt bad that she could only have music when I, this godlike figure (or

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that’s how I felt she must perceive me), deemed it so. Next day I crafted a miniature stereo (I’m surprisingly nifty with a soldering iron) that I placed inside her matchbox, so she could dance to her heart’s content, even when I was at work. I also made a teeny-tiny sofa, so she didn’t have to sit on the floor, and a torch so she was no longer in the dark. She remained silent when I brought her these things, but I detected a glimmer of gratitude in her eyes for me, her benefactor. But the following evening, when I opened the matchbox, Millicent was on the sofa, arms around a miniature boy! I could scarcely believe my eyes. “Who’s this? Where did he come from?” I asked, perhaps too bluntly. Millicent shrugged. The boy gave me the insolent grin of all young boys, whether six feet or six millimetres tall. “Dance for me, Millicent,” I demanded. “When I open the box, you dance.” The boy scowled. Millicent shrugged again, but stood up. I put on some Mozart. He would usually cheer me up, but as I watched Millicent twirl, this time not even his Magic Flute could bring a smile to my lips.

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The next day there were more people in the box! And from somewhere they’d got more furniture to sit on and tiny bottles of alcohol to drink! I was flabbergasted. “Millicent, what’s going on?” She rolled her eyes at me. Several miniature people stifled giggles. “I take you in, give you shelter and warmth, and this is how you repay me?”

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More eye rolling. I stamped over to my stereo and began to blare out some Vivaldi. “Dance for me Millicent, at once!” She shook her head. I was beyond the other side of flabbergasted now.

“At once!’” Someone gave her a nudge. She rolled her eyes a third time, and finally began to dance. But there was no energy, no passion in what she did. It was dancing by rote. I swore in a most ungentlemanly fashion, closed the box, and went to bed. Next morning, I opened the lid and there was terrible heavy metal music playing from the little stereo, several small people sprawled in an alcoholic stupor, and Millicent in a corner with her lips attached to a boy’s face and her hand on his crotch! “Millicent!” I cried. She didn’t even look at me. Instead she just raised said hand, gave me the crudest of gestures, and returned it to the boy’s unmentionables. That was the last straw! I slammed the matchbox, thrust it into my pocket and stormed off down the road to the spot where this whole misadventure had begun. I half-threw the box down in the middle of the pavement, turned on my heel and strode home again. As I put the key in my lock I began to question my course of action. Had I been too harsh? She was only a young girl after all, a young girl in a strange place. Maybe I should give her another chance. Maybe she just needed the guiding hand of a father figure like myself. I’d overreacted. Guilt coloured my cheeks. I ran back down the street. The matchbox was still there. I stooped, seized it, and flipped it open.

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It was empty. No miniature people or furniture, and certainly no Millicent. She was gone, to who knows where, and it was all my fault. I let the box slip from my fingers. At home, I put on some Handel, poured myself some wine and sat down. The music, which used to bring joy to my heart, now made me feel disconsolate. The wine was tasteless. And the room seemed very large and very empty. I cast my eyes to the table where the matchbox used to be. I began to cry.

David Cook

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The Puppeteer

I. Thinking Standing in the prologue, he thinks in the third act ̶ the steps between misplaced before they're made. Muscles move within inert limbs to dance the wooden body, and twinning wakes in the sleeping space between control bar and crown ̶ up and down, up and down, both little lives spanned by strings. II. Playing His hair on cheek is silk on silk, and runs like rain on wood, as straight as sleet. Her shadow is his face, is an eclipse as painted eyes rise to the lamps, little sculpted hands cupped to hold his soul below, white as caster sugar and wrapped in what he'd sewn for her. A ruff from a tattered glove, hem from twisted antique lace and a patchwork bodice stitched from his own hose, darned each moon, worn raw from their waltz. His toes curl defunct on wasted soles. III. Encore Her toes tap the wood with a crack, crack, crack beneath pillars, columns of law, and strings that play a low note ̶ always one of woe. He is cello, she is viola. Skyward cuff-buckles are Saturn's rings, and coughs and claps punch through like stars, comets, a flaming meteor in the lights down. Their bow conducts applause, such wooden clapping oak on oak ̶ a rose with many thorns. They stand in the light as one, and time falls again like rain. Caroline Hardaker

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Dragonflies Collage Anna Nazarova-Evans

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Prosopopoeia On the other side of the seashore are apartments, neatly lined with florescent bulbs to decorate inner ruby texture walls. A necklace of streetlights stretch through the far end with more apartments of noir interiors. This is a different sort of birdcage: when the shoreline beckons in restless rustles and gurgles. But on the other side, I wonder whether two others can make a familiar, with a Turkish dictionary in my pocket and a familiar autumn leaf bookmark. The wind drags fallen leaves to elsewhere without an echo. On my tongue, I taste sea salt, looking out at the old city flyover, its tattered skin through the years. In the late lullaby of a fog-filled night neon car glows arrive and pass steadfast the humming sea continues its call. At length still, from apartment braids distance cuts through visible smog ribbons patented across outer crusts of roads. In these apartments, there are trapped birds coarse with their mute anatomy only — the sea comes up to the shoreline in a plea for their release. Sneha Subramanian Kanta

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A Midweek Fixture Where this kiosk nukes truckloads of pies There was once a curving terrace, open To the gusts that blasted hard enough To take a layer of away fans' skin off. I left this town as soon as I could. But Tonight I've given Tuesday my excuses, Snuck out at half past four to journey Eighty miles for a midweek fixture. The motorway is infamous for crashes Caused by drivers dozing off. I wonder can the cargo ships and Ferries see these floodlights from their Pelagic vantage point, as from the stands We watch their shifting constellations Dot-to-dot the starboards of the vessels. I grew not knowing the sea was my home As an unborn baby does the womb. Pressurised by their marauding winger, Thomas lofts one up the channel. Neilson Fails to get on the end of it. Final whistle. We split and file out, flanked By terraced houses pressing at our sides Like circumstances. Striking for the sea wall, I pledge support to this libero moon Silvering the estuary's elusive slipways, Gather sand-adorned debris, gain the pub And my mum's new place; taste the tang Of disposable scotch, the legless irony Of beaches at night. A family home I Never lived in. That's last orders.

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And I relive a novelty sensation To violate the shoreline at 7am, Flourishing rivulets lending the strand A run of cursive shapes, like handwriting. A hundred minutes train ride and I land Back in the city. Track into the office, All offhand. Press my toes through the Sand in my Converse. And the day begins to The Windows 7 startup chime, the faint Taste of coffee and victory. On the base of the monitor, I set, with care, Two hole-riddled whelk shells.

Pete Green

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How beautiful are the swirling colours of the towels She tumble-dries herself out of the fifteen years, crystal anniversary, marital bed, to tolerate abuse from her teenage family over snapping cereals and gone cold tea. Unable to soften the slamming of doors, or water down the blue of language bouncing around walls, she checks her domestic appliance face in the hall mirror, throws her supermarket brand, cheaper version, conditioned hair into pony tail, regrets the rain. The brood follows in reluctant dribs, school-uniformed drabs. Everyone belts up. She drives. Dropped off, they slouch away. Their grunted goodbyes drown out her wished for hugs and kisses. She considers a fag but, even if she had one, some bad-tempered bastard is beeping his horn, bad-mouthing and two-fingering her to get the hell out the way. Sometimes she wishes she could. Instead, she automatic-pilots herself to the store for family packs, BOGOF deals, remembering when her youngest loved to ride the trolley. That cow, from the part of town she'd love to live in, makes her usual snide remark about the father of her kids being away again with work. She presents her nothing to see here smile, worries just a little, resolves to lose some weight. Back home, the cheeky postman with his wink and banter, mixed messages through her like an adolescent crush. She puts herself on the naughty step. She runs the ancient vacuum round threadbare carpets, curses cold calls, bungs on the washing machine, thinks how beautiful are the swirling colours of towels. She guilt-trips out to only daughter duty visit her lost the plot mum.

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It's nothing but an on a loop run of all the chores she did before, but with incidental music from a losing it woman in her seventies. She's got to go. Why can't the old dear ever remember she's got three grand kids now, that their dad has to work away sometimes, that she has sons who could visit if she asked them. The new bread has been ripped open when the old bread still needs using up. Music streams through headphones. She is barely worth a nod. There's a text to say he's got to stay another night. She gets the dinner on. She uses worked before tactics to bribe them to load the bump and grind dishwasher, risks asking about homework, accepts the looks that kill, sidesteps sarcasm. She rings her mum just to check. She sets up the arthritic ironing board, steams away a family of creases, watching you call this gritty realism soaps. The youngest actually looks in to say goodnight. The others need telling to get off their 'phones, put out lights. She knows they will eventually. She checks her own 'phone for his good night, sleep tight, wishful thinking message. The bed is cold, needs changing really.

Pat Edwards

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Announcement The Eurostar departing from platform 1, full of money and jobs, is a one-way service calling at Paris and Frankfurt, where it will terminate to the sound of guffawing. Will those left behind please dry their eyes and be assured we have secured control of the ticket barriers. There will be a farewell party amongst the weeds and pulled up rails. The theme is Back To The Good Old Days. Fancy dress is encouraged. St George t-shirts on sale at a reasonable price. There will be footage of Churchill and spitfires, to a soundtrack of Elgar and Warner (for which there will now be an added fee). Warm beer, half price at the Buy British bar, just surrender your passport to the guards at the door. We regret our keynote speakers can no longer attend. Something about country houses, security locks to mend. *Invitation only open to those who still have jobs. No Irish. No blacks. No dogs. Harry Gallagher

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this does not affect your statutory rites Richard Biddle

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Sketch Artist on the Train in June When he was younger, his mother told him “Always take the train—nobody can steal you and they don’t crash.” Like all his mother’s rules, he followed it—even now, as he rides to work, he believes that no one can steal him and that he will not crash. The seats on this train face inward, towards its center, where the doors are, so that someone who sits on one end of the train is able to look directly at a person sitting on the opposite end. Someone is doing just that. Across the train, some seven rows away, is a boy of seventeen. He has an artist’s pad, and wisps of black hair above his upper lip. They look like tufts of black grass. To this boy, the man looks like a clown out of costume. His face is raw, like he’d just scrubbed off layers of white with a coarse sponge, and the black half-moons hanging from his eyes look like the remnants of eye shadow. The boy, picturing what the man had looked like the night before, just as he left the circus in his tiny yellow car, begins to draw. Six months ago, the boy had a crippling fear of clowns. To help him overcome the phobia, his therapist prescribed exposure therapy, tasking the boy to draw clowns whenever he could. To the boy’s surprise, this has been working. Drawing allows him to place himself in positions of power over the clowns he creates. He can make them big, or small, or ugly. He can draw them with open arms, ready for hugging, or he can draw them in front of a train, one he is driving. What was once a fear has become a source of security for the boy; what was initially a painful process, all the more so for being selfinflicted, is now a cathartic one. The man can tell that the boy is drawing him by the way his eyes dart up and down, up and down, bouncing like black basketballs in a snowstorm. The man was

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never any good at dribbling, or so his father had told him whenever they played together on the church court on Wednesday nights. He’s unhappy to be reminded of this, almost as unhappy as he would be to find out the boy is privately making him out to be a clown, a fool. To make matters worse for the man, the sun is falling through the train window and onto his head, weaving its way around the thin shield of hairs that try but fail to protect his scalp. He knows it will leave a burn, red, like lipstick left by lingering mother’s lips. His mother would’ve told him he should’ve worn a hat today, or that he should have had a better father, one that could’ve taught him how not to lose things like hair or patience. The man is becoming more and more irritated with the sun and with the young stranger with the tufts of grass on his upper lip whose eyes keep dribbling better than he ever could. He opens his briefcase and puts it over his head like it were a mask he could pull on. His papers spill about, white leaves with black veins. The boy goes on anyway. He sketches the man’s exposed chin, and then the crease where the man’s chin meets his neck. He imagines painting it white later, letting the paint fill the space like spackle. Then, he imagines painting the man’s face white, his actual face, using a delicate brush designed specifically for painting skin, taking great care not to tickle the cheek or knock an eyelash. This makes the boy wonder who the first person to have their skin painted was, and who painted it. He wonders if it felt good, wonders, with a slight sense of guilt, “when will someone do this for me?” The man can still feel the sun on his scalp and the basketball eyes dribbling around him, expecting him to be able to dribble too, daring him to try and steal. He can

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feel straight through his leather case. He fidgets in his seat as a child would fidget in their steel chair at their older sibling’s clarinet recital. He imagines the pinch of his ear his mother would deliver to him, if she caught him squirming like that. He resolves to get off at the next stop and wait for another train, regardless of how long it takes for one to save him.

Alec Prevett

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Therapy in the Accounts Dept. I take a break and separate from the Daily Creditors

Spreadsheet

to find solace in the rest

room.

Washing hands becomes a

rite

foaming, soapy fingers glide and slide on palms and fingers that comfort

till

the

warm

leaves them clean shakes takes

rinse

and ‌ three

me to the

altar.

Praising Dyson I offer my hands fingers the

hot

down. Insert digits .into chasm that

ripples

my loose skin in waves. ..The roar erasing numbers from my headcell upon cell of numerical data units Excel formulae:

alien

territory

space devoid of words or humanity makes loo breaks blissful therapy. Tee Francis

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Winning at Losing

“This place is definitely working. I’ve lost two stone since I had Tom. But some things Weight Right Here can’t sort – Jane will know what I mean. Carrying three kids murders your pelvic floor. I took the eldest to a trampoline park and I was like a Sarson’s vinegar shaker. Every jump. It was embarrassing.” Marg sniffed and looked over at the scales where the last members were being weighed. Marg and Jane had saved Fern a seat next to them thirty minutes earlier. They had done every Tuesday since Fern joined the community centre group, four weeks before. “I had too much coffee cake this week.” “You always have something you shouldn’t Fern, you’ve still lost more than us two every time you’ve been.” Marg sniffed again. “Do you need a tissue Marg?” Jane held pocket hankies ready. “Nah.” Jane held them out a moment longer then put them back into a tidy handbag. “You don’t need this place Fern. You’re a gypsy’s whippet. What are you – twelve stone?” “Thirteen.” “Less than me. I wouldn’t bother with this place at your size love.” “My clothes don’t fit though.” “So? Buy new ones!” laughed Jane. “No, I need my old clothes back. I miss them.” “God forbid you have kids when you’re older,” said Marg. “You’d hate stretch marks. There’s no reversing them.”

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Fern smiled narrowly, thin lips pressing away colour underneath lipstick. “Ah ignore me sweet, I’m only jealous. You’ve got a couple of decades more fun than me.” Marg flung a strong arm around Fern and squeezed. The lady who ran the meeting stood at the front of the group, thanking them. “And this week’s Loser of the Week is… Fern Chapel! Six pounds this week, well done!” The group applauded from horseshoe seating. Jane nudged Fern. “You and your quick metabolism!”

When she got home after the weigh-in, Fern had coffee cake again. She brushed sweetness from her teeth, got ready for bed, and applied more Repair Oil to the recent pink streaks below her belly button. Fern wouldn’t go back to the group. She’d leave her old clothes folded and placed gently in bags.

Joely Dutton

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What the brain hemhorrage says

Pretty blackout. Soft, simple cortex. I cannot guarantee you will be cerebral. So focus on all those beautiful black holes. You might have nothing but ether and wish to stand on. So don't focus on all those other people with their lightbox brains, their neurons firing like a symphony. All that brilliant cartography is nothing but chaos. Maybe you’re lucky. Better a still room than an anxious house. Better no ballet lessons than the choreographer’s rage. Look at what I've spared you! I'll stop bleeding now if you give into crooked feet; these crutches. Maybe I'll be nice and leave you Broca’s Area, intact and nestled above your left ear. Look at all that pretty activity. Your own supernova inside a dead tundra. There’s no need to cry into either hemisphere. No need to resist what is spastic.

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I know I made it hard for you to relax, but relax baby. I gave you all the verbs you'll ever need. Be grateful I left your tongue alone. Natalie Illum

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Wearing My Skeleton on My Face, No.1 Christine Stoddard.

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Treasure Map

I drive myself to the emergency room. The admitting nurse in his heavy blue scrubs takes a look at me and ushers me right in. When the nurse later asks me if I have an emergency contact, I shake my head. My left arm swells to twice its normal size. A water-soaked log, heavy and inert. The infection rampages, a broad red band moving slowly like a Dopplered storm, hour by hour, up and around the arm, toward the shoulder, hot to the touch, tender to Doctor Trabulus's prod, painful if pressure's applied, an 8 on the happy to sad face scale of pain. Polly, my nurse, marks up my arm, lines drawn in thick Sharpie black around the first manifestation and dated the 24th in her neat printing, Her eyes are brilliant blue and she can't seem to stop smiling. She offers to get me anything I need. With a wave, I decline and sink into the bed, hoping the fluid they pump into the vein eventually numbs me. The infection continues to spread. Polly draws a second line encircling most of the first, a larger area with the number 25. Doctor Trabulus fears the bacteria will make it to the lymph nodes, the transportation route to the rest of the body. Mortality could be at stake. I make a joke about cutting off my arm and Polly, changing my crumpled IV bag, looks upset, exclaiming, “Don’t say that.” Hours later a third dotted line exists, the 26th, today, demarcating the largest boundary, how far the infection has now spread. Polly refers to my arm as a treasure map with all the lines, random marks from Sharpie mistakes, and dates.

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The arm grows bruised in multiple spots from needle marks, abandoned marks covered with gauze and strips of tape, spots where the blood was withdrawn, vial after vial, to use as a strategy in my narrow war. Still the infection creeps up toward my armpit, the lymph, the heart, victory. My left arm shines red, a beacon, a sunburn from within. It burns like a flame. Polly's gentle with me and I tell her how thankful I am. The doctor consults with others to stop the war. To reduce the swelling, to ease the pain, to return to the peace so that my arm may be a functioning arm once again. But it's not working and he suspects something else might be going on. Polly looks on concerned, her smile faltering. She takes vitals, moving on to her next room. I listen for her voice but only hear the thrum of machinery around me. I awake in the dark. Polly works on my arm. She's ready to get in there, she says, if I'm finally willing. I smile at her and tell her to go ahead. Holding up a sharp scalpel she says she's digging for gold. I hope she finds it. She opens me up and plunges in, going deeper than anyone's been before.

Ron Burch

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Feelings In Words Hang

shadows filaments under a microscope we are photographs oneiric scenes clothed under nets of smoke houses with hearths there the shedding of skies here open the door if you want me

you are human enough

push wood you are inside my house

your eyes form it in colour see these worlds

skimming

this one is black and white

the ones in the front

sepia in between clouds tunnel of thick souls latching memories in cusps my mother is trying to fly in a church she lived in america she keeps trying to lie down in an irish lake

wet dust

fixates into rock

her head

a spear steadying through the middle sticks in the woods

a fist

orbiting

the routing of the sun

my body is folding up

a mouth of a hole

the scattering of

inside out like dresses

my father stands close to trees but never inside a woman’s singing it unsettles him like rain

a constellation of string keeps

are living

uncanny assumption

someone else screws

i lived long ago

tightening webs

propped with salt

these children belong to

mist walls of people who evaporate

our fists

words which never

never rocked inside the wounds of our crux

never

of feet like roots

i remember

longing is in black and white

when i was a child my mother cried in my hair i wasn’t

as civilized or as comforting as straw steam

we believe we

children need to keep a mother until they learn to unspin

flowed between warm fingers as i die

the gathering of children

she keeps looking back

bodies trying to kiss like wet tongues

kicking down an indian hut

her father is burning

a child plaiting their legs

fire

his shoulders boned like the skull of his church

i look for you in drawers of trunks in fine legs of trees branches are hardened hooks the waiting of souls synchronistic leaves tied to wind thunder spitting of light are both drinkable swim through shadings to shed fluid a cross

hybrid roads

bridges of grass walls fossilized her clothes stuck inside the cave of her skin will they ever come for me will they remember to push open the door alive for the grimaces of mirrors this closed bowl Annie Blake

50

fist

of rolling fields


In a Previous Life Steam rose from black farmfields in the velvet before sunbreak. And when frost glittered like sweat on the shadow-bark of wild orchards, I was there to see its glint. Dirt clung in the caves of my chests, my feet dug and rooted and drank from nameless underground rivers. I pushed plows down the ditches of my legs. I swung from trees and ate their apples, sank my axes into their trunks and danced on their shorn stumps. And when night’s coal scattered like heartbeats above the mountains, I drank the moon’s sweet and sleepy milk, uncorked oceans that only ever knew their dark bottles. I died young—snuffed out by a fever that slipped its fire into me like a star skipping across the night sky. Samuel T. Franklin

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I Will I'll wash the stars with my hair like that whore that came to Jesus. I'll plant sprigs of words in my eyes and let them grow mint wild. I'll study the work of an egg. I'll taste the pass of the seasons. And I will write it down, I'll write it down. Kelli Simpson

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Contributors

Richard Biddle has an MA in performance writing from Dartington College of Arts. He teaches creative writing at Chichester College. His visual poetry is an experimental approach to using the abstract qualities of language rather than its linguistic meaning. He tweets as @littledeaths68. Annie Blake is a writer who enjoys research in psychoanalysis and metaphysics. Her poem ‘These Grey Streets’ was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize by Vine Leaves

Literary Journal and her fiction ‘How I Swallowed a Snake’ has been nominated for the 2018 Pushcart Prize by The Slag Review. Ron Burch's fiction has been published in numerous literary journals including

Mississippi Review, Eleven, PANK, and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Bliss Inc., his debut novel, was published by BlazeVOX Books. He lives in Los Angeles. Katie Chicquette Adams is an educator and writer in Appleton, WI. She is a live storyteller with Storycatchers, Inc.; she has appeared or is forthcoming in River + Bay,

Mothers Always Write, Heavy Feather Review, NewVerse.News, the regional radio segment, Soul of the Cities, and on the regional blog, Storycatchers. She works as an English teacher for at-risk young adults at a public alternative high school, with hopes they will remake their own stories. She can be reached at k.chicquette.adams@gmail.com. David Cook’s stories have been published online and in print in a number of places, including the National Flash Fiction Anthology, Stories For Homes 2, Spelk, Flash

Fiction Magazine, Pygmy Giant and more, and he has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. You can find more of his work at www.davewritesfiction.wordpress.com and say hello on Twitter @davidcook100. He lives in Bridgend, Wales, with his wife and daughter, who loves ballet but wouldn’t fit in a matchbox. Joely Dutton writes short stories and pretends to write a novel. She’s had stories published in Salome, Prompted Tales, Dear Damsels, Ellipsis and the Worcester Lit Fest anthology Pat Edwards is a writer, teacher and performer living in Mid Wales. She writes mostly poetry and has been published in Picaroon, Prole, Amaryllis, Ink Sweat and Tears,

Poetry Space and others. Pat runs Verbatim poetry open mic nights and curates Welshpool Poetry Festival.

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Tee Francis is a Dorset-based poet and writing facilitator, in the final stages of an MSc in Creative Writing for Therapeutic Purposes. She regularly performs her poetry in the South West and runs workshops promoting wellbeing and personal development through writing. She can be found wandering along the Jurassic Coast, covered in a cat hair, or caressing brightly-coloured pens and notebooks in stationery departments. Contact: tsfrancis@outlook.com Samuel T. Franklin is mostly from Indiana, by way of Clayton, Terre Haute, and Bloomington. The author of a book of poems titled The God of Happiness, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, Rabid Oak, Scarlet Leaf

Review, and others. He can often be found building semi-useful things out of wood scraps and losing staring contests with his cats. He can be reached at https://samueltfranklin.wordpress.com. Harry Gallagher's current collection Northern Lights is out now from Stairwell Books. He has previously been published by Prole, The Interpreter's House, The Ofi Press,

Lucifer Press, Rebel Poetry, Poets' Republic and many others to whom he apologises for temporarily forgetting. He likes poetry, kindness and dislikes Brexit and its hellish minions. www.harrygallagherpoet.wordpress.com Pete Green is a poet and singer/songwriter whose subject matter includes islands, coastlines and edgelands, railways, walking, getting lost, lower-division football, whisky, underachievement and impossible things. He grew up in Grimsby and lives in Sheffield. Pete’s most recent album We’re Never Going Home was released in 2016 and his pamphlet, Sheffield Almanac, is published by Longbarrow Press. Visit petegreensolo.com and follow @petenothing. David Hanlon is from Cardiff, Wales, and currently living in Bristol, England. He is training part-time as a counsellor/psychotherapist. He has been writing poetry over the last two years, drawing mostly on his own life experiences. You can find his work online at Ink, Sweat & Tears, Fourth & Sycamore and forthcoming at Calamus Journal among others. Caroline Hardaker lives in Newcastle upon Tyne with her husband, a giant cat, a betta fish with attitude, and a forest of houseplants. Her poetry has been published widely, most recently or forthcoming by Magma, The Emma Press, Neon, and Shoreline of

Infinity. She is a guest editor for Three Drops Press, and the in-house blogger for Mud Press. Her debut chapbook Bone Ovation was published by Valley Press in October 2017. Natalie E. Illum is a poet, disability activist and singer living in Washington DC. She is a 2017 Jenny McKean Moore Poetry Fellow, and a recipient of a 2017 Artists Grant from

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the DCCAH, as well as an instructor for Poetry Out Loud. She was a founded board member of mothertongue, a DC women's open mic that lasted 15 years. She competed on the National Poetry Slam circuit for many years and was the 2013 Beltway Grand Slam Champion. Her work has appeared in various publications, and on NPR’s Snap

Judgement. Natalie has an MFA in creative writing from American University, and teaches workshops across the country. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter as @poetryrox, on her website, and as one half of All Her Muses, her music project. Natalie also enjoys Joni Mitchell, whiskey and giraffes. Adam Maciejewski lives in Buffalo, New York and began writing as an undergrad. His works explore the different ways writing can express our hectic lives as we experience them. He has published one book, American Insurgent and an expanded, 5th anniversary edition of that work is due out January of 2018. When not writing, he’s usually running around with his wife and two sons. He can be reached on Twitter @Adam_is_Writing and Facebook as MaciejewskiAdam. Rachel McGladdery is a poet living and writing in rural North Lancashire. She has had several poems published in anthologies and journals, (both in print and online) including Prole, Clear Poetry, Three Drops From A Cauldron and Atrium and has 3 poems due to be published in an anthology for MIND in the near future. She lives with her assorted children and cats. Elizabeth Moura lives in a converted factory in a small city and works with elders in a small town. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in several publications including The Heron’s Nest, Chrysanthemum, Ardea, Presence,

Shamrock, Paragraph Planet and Flash Fiction Magazine. Anna Nazarova-Evans is a Bristol based artist. Her illustrations have been published by Palm Sized Press, as well as Salome and Firefly literary magazines. She enjoys painting and drawing in the style of surrealism and magic realism, but sometimes prefers to draw nature or everyday objects. You can find more of her artwork on Instagram @AnitchkaNE_art. Laura Pearson lives in Leicestershire where she blogs about having breast cancer while she was pregnant and writes novels and flash fiction. Alec Prevett is a senior undergraduate student at Georgia State University, where he studies creative writing with a focus in fiction. He is the editor-in-chief of

Underground, Georgia State's undergraduate literary journal. He lives and writes in Atlanta.

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Lesley Quayle is a widely published, prize-winning poet whose work has appeared in

The Rialto, The North, Interpreter’s House, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Angle and The Morning Star among others. She is also a folk/blues singer, currently living, working and singing in the wilds of rural Dorset. Kelli Simpson is a mother and poet living in Norman, Oklahoma. She still believes in newspapers, books with pages, and poetry that rhymes. Her work has most recently appeared in Bop Dead City, The Cape Rock, Five: 2: One #sideshow, and The Five-Two. Laura Steiner is a writer, performer and improviser, positioning herself at the intersection of these three disciplines. She is originally from Colombia and is currently based in London. Her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Revista La Mono,

ViceVersa Magazine and We Are Broadway Market. She is â…› of Lester City, a London based improv group. You can follow her short (short) story project at youcancallmelouder.tumblr.com Christine Stoddard is a Salvadoran-Scottish-American writer and artist originally from Virginia. She is also the founding editor of Quail Bell Magazine and the author of titles from Dancing Girl Press, Spuyten Duyvil Publishing, Another New Calligraphy, and elsewhere. Her words and images have appeared in numerous national outlets, such as

The Huffington Post, Bustle, and The Feminist Wire. Meanwhile, her films, installations, and mixed media works have appeared in special programs at the New York Transit Museum, the Queens Museum, and the Poe Museum, among other venues. She is currently a Connor Art Fellow at The City College of New York (CUNY) in Manhattan. Sneha Subramanian Kanta is a GREAT scholarship awardee, with a second postgraduate degree in literature from England. Her poem 'At Dusk With the Gods' won the Alfaaz (Kalaage) prize. She is co-founder of Parentheses Journal, a venture that straddles hybrid genres across coasts and climes. Her work is forthcoming in VIATOR project, former cactus, Verdancies and elsewhere. Rebecca Williams has always wanted to be a writer and completed the first draft of her novel in August 2017. She is killing time during second draft edits by dabbling in flash fiction. She has had work in The Same, Retreat West, Cabinet of Heed and Ellipsis Zine. You can find her on Twitter @stupidgirl45

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ISSUE #8 COMING APRIL 1st 2018

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