Issue 131

Peter Gizzi

‘was it wind or a creature / am I here or is it over’

Issue 119

Robin Robertson

Issue 119

Jamie McKendrick

Issue 131

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’

Mary Ruefle

‘Those flowers belong to the dead.’

Sumana Roy

‘It is difficult to imagine a history of trees / without man in it. Man as tree, Tree as tale.’

Angélica Freitas

‘amelia, the real woman, / ran away with the bearded lady’

Michael Ondaatje

‘The pattern of teeth marks on skin’

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. . .’

Jamie McKendrick

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

Issue 115

Gillian Allnutt

‘We waited quietly for the Queen who wasn’t there’

Lavinia Greenlaw

‘Do they dance for those creatures / whose unmade selves / come unbuttoning out of the dark?’

Lorraine Mariner

‘The psychiatrist’s wife / has a dress the colour / of that bottle of claret / you shouldn’t have drunk / last night.’

Issue 129

Mark Doty

‘an orange plastic basket of compost / down from the top of the garden – sweet dark, / fibrous rot, promising’