Bradland
Brad’s arguing with his girlfriend when she turns into him. It’s a Sunday evening and they’ve driven to the rocky outcrop a mile out of town, to watch the sunset and listen out for the coyote with the banshee-howl, and to pretend that suburbia isn’t making their lungs collapse in on themselv
The Salmon
You wanted me to notice you, wearing those bright pink leggings – fuchsia, magenta, whatever. I noticed. I cared. Yes, I cared. Then you slipped into the fridges, swimming through the trolleys and pushchairs – like a salmon. That’s it! The leggings were salmon, and bright, oh so bright
The Oxford Purity Test
☐ Never had an essay crisis? ☐ Published fiction in The Isis? ☐ Haunted by Sylvia’s fig tree? ☐ Did anything for that first class degree? ☐ Identified as a Capulet or Montague? ☐ Worried that Donne’s “The Flea” would work on you? ☐ Have always been a tutor’s pet? ☐ Wrote
Mitch on a Kent Road at Night
Underneath the cold dust of night, skin coated in its sharp spit, he’s bobbing headlight first into the centre of the road, chin jutting out like a speedbump. Soon, the rubber will gravel him again—wrap and warp his skin—and slide him slick across the tarmac, beetroot nucleus pulposus.
Cordiform
Tick tick. Some animals need their loves far away from them. With the canned freeze, phone flickering under a blanket, I could almost understand. Pinecones in the boreal forest are right now closing up on their own warmth, Mr. Attenborough tells me, while long ears and pads have become pelt casings
Promised Lands
I saw you last on Hestia’s hill head high, solemn and waxed in weightpaste, holding the Olympic flare defiantly over the valley— its firelight, bright in marble-star night, falling softly on matted grass, its kindling sparks like flies in measle-blotch blisters and hives upon the scarfaced sca
family curses
after clytemnestra’s husband returns from the ten-year war, she hacks him to death with an axe. she says a curse made her do it. her son kills her in revenge. all the while — birdsong. i. the first year // petrification we were happy until the summer i turned ten. i hadn’t lear
Midweek Cooking
This is mid-week cooking at its best—long, laborious and deeply discomforting. Traipse through the door at six, unfeeling, you’re too tired to do anything but this only takes two hours. Dinner comes together in three pans and your rusty Le Creuset, which makes washing up a dream. It could
In St James
In St James I lay sun-brushed and smothered; The seeping day flowed beneath the midday Air, the slow June sky hung high above, Spreading swimming shadows about My feet. The multrees whispered as away – Far away – their branches and furrowed leaves Brushed felted rushes. They spoke
