An act of militant futility, willed to upend the city’s sense of scale.
To demand a still point in routines hurtling at full pelt.
To subvert circulation, cutting halfway across a roundabout.
To toy with thoughts that even traffic systems have a heart.
To reconstruct a koan: this span will never be complete.
Julian Dobson’s work has appeared in print and online magazines including The Rialto, Acumen, and Stand, and on a bus in Guernsey. Julian lives in Sheffield.
We have journeys by bus, by tram and by foot. Journeys between places, between times, between looks, between cracks, between clocks. Dandelions and endings… and endings that aren’t really endings. Gateways, getaways, soup and Co-op coupons. Each piece explores the gaps between moments and worlds, all in the sparsest words.
In three acts, we travel through rich landscapes of poems, prose and photos. Read them in order, read them in disorder, read between them, read them in your head or out loud, or let the author speak to you. Read them, share them, sit with them. And let us know what you think: email contact@brieflywrite.com.
For Issue 13, we are delighted to pay all contributors thanks to the generosity of our supporters. Thank you for joining us for this brief moment.
You asked me what bird I would be if I were a bird and I told you I would be a Black Swift, living on the wing. I told you I would take the highest crag behind the waterfall and furnish it with the mossiest nest anyone had ever seen – even you would be in awe. And if anybody, bird or beast or man, ever saw my acrobatics in the fine morning spray, they couldn’t help but to believe in something higher, something more. At this point, you tried to tell me what bird you would be if you were a bird, but instead I told you that if I were a Black Swift, I would pepper the afternoon sky with shooting stars of charcoal grey, or hover on the current, in love with the Earth below. You told me that you would be a parakeet with green and gold – I told you that I would tell nobody of my secrets. You said that you don’t understand me anymore. I told you I would die on the wing.
We pay all contributors to Briefly Zine, as well as all writers published through our competitions. Thank you to everyone who has supported our little literary space for making this possible.
Briefly Zine – Issue 14
Submissions for Issue 14 will open in July 2025. Theme to be announced…
In the liminal space between the stunted Oak and the wild North Sea is Marram. Sharp edged grass. Slice your fingers grass. Don’t try clutching it grass. Root weaver. Sand binder. Dune stabiliser. Sun-bleached, bone-white skull hider. Breeze trapper. Foot tripper. Dagger leaves pointing skywards, seeking the sun. Roots always travelling, east and west, north and south. Each year inching their way out along the coast.
After a first career involving scientific writing, and a second writing people policies, Eileen Anderson now delights in creative writing. The natural world is a constant inspiration, and she is currently completing a collection of Badger stories alongside her poetry.
Absence sleeps between the waves. My father at the pier alone, picks up the language of endless arrival, lends his shirt to the wind’s wailing wardrobe. Take this, and this, and this too.
Somewhere in him, the trees are still bending to you humming Edelweiss. Through them, a forlorn road finds the pier. My father – your softest lover walks there all night, and comes back shirtless each morning.
Debmalya Bandyopadhyay (he/him) is a writer and mathematician based in Birmingham, UK. He was a finalist for Sweet Literary’s 2024 Poetry Award and Sophon Lit’s 2024 Poetry Contest. He is often in parks confabulating with local birds and bees.
The clearing at the town’s edge is a network of stillness muted by snowfall.
Two crows bolt black from the blank flat skies and shift a hawk out, over
slate roofs, uphill to the miner’s village, where we left the lines of rabbits’ skulls along the broken wall.
Ian Farnes grew up in Burntisland, Fife but now lives and works as a translator and writer in Barcelona. His debut poetry pamphlet is due to be published in February 2025. More details can be found on his website.
My grandfather, at eighty years old, climbs up the olive tree without looking down.
From up there, his bald head shines. He’s getting old.
The curly hair covering his chest was once his shield in the war. Now, back home, under this sun, it looks like a layer of foam.
Nazaret Ranea is one of Scotland’s Next Generation Young Makars. Her poetry explores themes of nostalgia, memory, and home. Her work has appeared in over 50 publications internationally. You can find out more about her work here.
–er of times our count –ry feeds us bull –ets and we
–eds, and we can –not remember how to be –cause the over
–fed has sold his tongue.
Prosper C. Ìféányí writes from Lagos, Nigeria. His works are featured or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Transition, Magma Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere.
white walls, white walls i want to rub my hands in ash watch them whisper on the white walls
i begin to hate my pink Mary-Janes tongueless, they gape at me grotesque against beige carpet, white walls
my father asks what i want to do the weekend is ours, but it is all white walls
i tell him i need new shoes so that he will matter again
Isabella Waldron is an American-British writer. Her play how to build a wax figure (Assembly/November Theatre) premiered at Edinburgh Fringe to critical acclaim. Plays Jawbone, Things I Never Told The Stars and Chatter were selected as semi-finalists for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival. Her poetry has been featured in Chewboy and won the Ruth George Poetry Award.
It was the year we ran out of lilies. There was so much loss that funeral wreaths were made of plastic bulbs.
That’s all that was left. All the other flowers had been pulled and offered to the dead.
And the new lilies had yet to bloom.
Jesse Domenech (1985-2023) was a Cuban-American poet and songwriter from Queens, NY, who championed compassion and generosity, often through humor, on the page and in life. He was a student of Billy Collins’ Poetic Hydraulics workshop and drew inspiration from hip-hop, standup comedy, and life’s curiosities. Although Jesse was a prolific author, his work had never before been published. He was a beloved friend to many.
Our stories are crawling, open-clawed, in another country where the ground is as soft as the beloved taking bullets into every piece of them we know.
The mountain pass is an endless line of mourners in the rain.
Walk, at dusk, toward another forest burning, make new homes in the fire, or grow wings and soar into the blaze.
Our prayers are with us until they too must be left behind.
Christine C. Rivero-Guisinga works for a humanitarian organisation. A SEA Lit Circle member, she shares short haiku-like poems on Instagram (@storyseamstress). Her piece in the After Happy Hour Review earned a Pushcart Prize nomination.
Briefly Write 