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String Theory

Samantha Wynne-Rhydderch

‘On tenterhooks / you think how string constricts, how / it connects, how you followed it back / to Rawtenstall.’

Handkerchief

Ghassan Zaqtan

‘Nothing’s left to say between us / everything went / into the train that hid its whistle.’

Flying Towards a Country of Rain

Wang Yin

‘Paper phantoms sit beside me / watching a two-hour movie.’

New Hotel Krakow

Adam Zagajewski

‘Now someone else lives in that apartment, / strange people, the scent of a strange life.’

A poem by Adam Zagajewski.

Bianca Burning

C.K. Williams

‘The sexual terror lions are roaring into my ears as I make my way between their cages’

In the Village

Derek Walcott

‘I came up out of the subway and there were / people standing on the steps as if they knew / something I didn’t.’

Two-Part Inventions

Anne Winters

‘The same way Bach’s motive splays out to the right, / swoons flatly, swans it, footnotes, follows up, / talks to itself, purls, mutters, dawdles, resumes. . .’

Trick

Sam Willetts

‘The unexceptional mystery takes place: / around eleven, love turns to matter’