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The Easel

Sharon Olds

‘When I build a fire, I feel purposeful.’

It was discovered that gut bacteria were responsible

Kathryn Maris

‘this dream that might have been pleasant for an / 8-year-old could instead emerge as a nightmare for a woman / on the brink of menopause’

Après

Jamie McKendrick

‘greener / for an alien crop of hogweed higher / than us’

The Wife

David Katz

‘Ever notice the change that comes over / your gentle wife the minute she sets / foot in a grocery store?’

sleeping far from home

Soledad Marambio

‘They told her a thrush came into the house / and fell asleep by the TV.’

From the Flood Plain

Jamie McKendrick

‘No flood as parched as this’

Never did amount to anything

Dorothea Lasky

‘Hi there, dear sister, I’m sad / But here to tell you / That you never did amount to anything’

Two Poems

Ivan Landzhev

‘My chess teacher / used to tell me: / ‘Play your own game.’’

Oak

Jamie McKendrick

‘When my father saw an advert in the Echo / for a big house at a peppercorn rent / he rang.’

Linked

Ruth Ozeki

‘old poems, like polished stones, / tumbled words to break my teeth on.’

Requiem

Jill Osier

‘I watch her help, / gathering the leaves to her like love, / hiding herself.’

Dilation

Ben Lerner

‘My role in the slaughter doesn’t disqualify the beauty I find in all / forms of sheltered flame.’