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
All That’s Left
After Liberty Brignall She fills the Emma Bridgewater mug with hot water—her daily cup of English breakfast tea, with more than a splash of milk. The mug has a permanent home on her desk, its polka dots striking as ever—red, yellow, green and the blueish purplish grey—which was it? They c
Dockyard Hymnal
You learned to love London at sixteen. All of it: from the streets around your home that your father wanted cleaned by baptism to the sludge of my banks. You had a love for that, though—the grubby, the many-sided. The only form of sacrament these streets ever get is when I am summoned to [&
Anna and Mary
Anna put her index finger to her mouth, found the sore molar and pressed down on it. The layer of phlegm in the back of her throat was still faintly sweet. She put the jar of honey back in the cupboard. As a child, she had ground her teeth as she slept; she couldn’t help […]
