cherry chapstick
by Jenny Danes
my brain in a hopeful bow in the first pub our knees
touch & i remind myself that she will be able
to feel it that she too has thoughts & nerve
endings & the freedom to move away if she wanted
in the second pub we hold hands first nudging
fingers & eventually interwoven stroking we leave
& she tells me two women had been smiling at us
in the third pub we are huddled perpendicular
hands a sweaty bundle my sleeve rolled up for her
to take her nails manicured in a way mine never are
& run them over my forearm & everything everywhere
is just lightning rods it takes us an embarrassingly long
time to kiss she asks me if i need her to be brave
most of it happens outside & so as if the evening or my life
is in its climactic fifth act its emotional payoff
i am kissing a woman in the streets & it’s like sinking into
what? something waist deep & velvety we part & immediately
the bell on the marketplace clock tolls & i spend the next
five seconds weeping like a moron i text my friends
WOMEN ARE SO SOFT my married lesbian friend
says i can call her mother the shutters have come up
i am emerged made new one part corduroy three parts arousal
Red Lace
by Ellora Sutton
Take my body away from me or take me
away from my body, Copernicus, save me –
touch my throat like you just know
it’s where my soul is, like you believe
I have a soul, genius, it came to you
last night, barefoot, in a dream,
those planets with fifty-day nights
and no poets, no one will believe you –
who cares? You will be dead.
I doubt that I am capable of dying.
blind faith
by Ian Irwin
very naked outside your youth
club an asbestos church hall
where ping pong balls tick
in the dark you are face down
on concrete but no-one minds
your bare skin except maybe
Jesus standing there arms out
wide this fighter jet god robes
stiff with lichen you won’t meet
his eyes & daffodils argue night
after night fourteen hundred
tonnes of explosives wait under
waves the colour of gravel —
this will outlast faith your tongue
weaving around each thin wraith
Part of the Woodwork
by Megan Pattie
After the photography of Francesca Woodman
No longer able to fight it,
I have become one with the house,
I was polishing one day,
and with a flick of the cloth,
there I wasn’t. As women will,
I dissolved into the walls.
Now I grace the rooms: the curves
of my body in scalloped lace,
my laugh in the curtain cast
wide and splayed across the light.
I run through the floorboards:
acreak-aclunk, afuzz with dust.
I moan in the night.
I hold you as an armchair.
When I was a picture hook,
the plaster crackled, cracked,
my tack-eyes bursting from their sockets.
On the day I was the bathroom tap
I sang to be close to your hands.
I’m sorry about the flood.
Don’t you remember my wet
silhouette on the floor?
Don’t you feel my hot breath
in the clanking radiators?
This house is my work:
I am the windows looking back at you.
I am the mattress beneath
your blissful bodyweight.
I am your favourite teacup;
my perpetual pet lip
yearning until I wobble myself
clean off the table.
Jenny Danes is a poet and workshop facilitator based in Norwich. Her work has appeared in magazines including Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Magma, Under the Radar, Butcher’s Dog and bath magg. In 2016 she won The Poetry Business’ New Poets Prize, and her debut pamphlet Gaps was published by smith|doorstop in 2017. You can read more about her work at www.jennydanes.co.uk.
Ellora Sutton (she/her) is a poet based in Hampshire. Her work has been published by The Poetry Review, Oxford Poetry, Berlin Lit, Propel etc, and she reviews poetry for Mslexia. Her pamphlets include Artisanal Slush (Verve, 2023) and Antonyms for Burial (Fourteen Poems, 2022), which was the Poetry Book Society Spring 2023 Pamphlet Choice. She’s on Twitter/X as @ellora_sutton, or you can find her at ellorasutton.com.
Ian Irwin is a Bristol-based poet and teacher. He was selected as an Out-Spoken Press Emerging Poet in 2022 and his poetry has been published in The Alchemy Spoon, Trasna, Propel, Blue Bottle Journal and the Poetry Pulpit anthology.
Megan Pattie is a previous Foyle Young Poet of the Year who lives on the North East coast of England with her husband, two cats, and a rabbit. Her debut pamphlet Tracts was published by The Black Light Engine Room in 2021. You can find her on Twitter @pattiepoetry.