Category: Issue 14

Joseph Butler

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You know that splendid tiny trill
That children think stars make
As they burn a billion backyards over?
No, little one, that tinkling sparkle
You’ve attributed to literal heaven
Is the noise of my blood when veins
Are too small to stop love’s rush to you.

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Joseph Butler, 24, is a queer British multidisciplinary writer, artist, monk, rambler and current PhD student whose work interprets the modern world through realism, spirituality and becoming, always influenced by people and places, moments in time and the soul.

Per Olvmyr

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I hold an unpeeled carrot.
It feels slightly hairy.
I could let it go.
But it feels like it has a
gnarly grip on me.
So I drop the carrot.
In the sink.
I leave it there.
Tiny little carrot hairs are growing in my hand.

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Per Olvmyr lives in Malmö, Sweden, and has been published by Evergreen Review, Bombay Literary Magazine, Glänta, Takahē, Baltimore Review and other magazines. His work was nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net.

Daniel Addercouth

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I have no intention of buying a car, but I always keep an eye out for good places to park in my Berlin neighbourhood, because you never know. Under criss-crossing autobahn bridges near the police station lies a parking lot where wrecked cars are dumped. Their fronts have been ripped off by unimaginable monsters, their wheels are broken limbs splaying out to the sides. Abandoned toys, baskets and denim jackets litter back seats. It’s the kind of desolate urban space where the experimental band Einstürzende Neubauten might have played an impromptu concert in the 1980s, back when West Berlin was a happily neglected island in a hostile sea. I saw the Neubauten perform a laptop gig in the early 2000s, after their apocalyptic mystique had helped lure me to the new German capital. Five black-clad musicians sat behind a row of laptops on the venue’s ground floor, while the speakers were stashed in the basement. We signed disclaimers when we entered, in case our hearing was damaged. Earplugs were mandatory. Venturing down to the basement, I encountered the loudest noise I’d ever heard. Individual notes were lost in the cacophony. The sound waves battered my body like a crowd-control weapon. I’d brought along my friend, a former punk singer, thinking he would enjoy it. But he didn’t approve. A laptop’s not a proper instrument. You don’t even need a car to transport it.

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Daniel Addercouth (@RuralUnease) grew up on a remote farm in the north of Scotland but now lives in Berlin, Germany. His work has appeared in New Flash Fiction Review, Trampset and Vestal Review, among other places.

Anna Mindel Crawford

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Not quite outside the house, they decorated the doorway.
Not quite inside the house, piled so high they covered the mezuzah.
Not quite appropriate for traditions of simplicity over extravagance,
soul over body which withers like a flower.
Not quite disrespectful to send them when intentions were good.
Not quite disrespectful to refuse them, when the excuse was bereavement.
Should the grieving worry about offending others?
They were not quite ignorant enough to ignore our grief.
They were not quite inclusive enough to know our culture.
We were not quite assimilated enough to adopt their culture.
We were not quite willing to accept the gesture, bury ancient beliefs.
Not quite offended enough to explain our beliefs.
Or perhaps not quite comfortable enough?
Not quite outside the house, the flowers were never discarded.
Not quite inside the house, they wilted on the doorstep.

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Anna Mindel Crawford’s poetry has appeared in publications including Interpreter’s House, Eche, Ink, Sweat & Tears and Propel Magazine, and has placed in several competitions, including in 2025: Edward Thomas Competition, Winchester Poetry Prize, Wolverhampton and Richmond Arts Festivals.

Deanna Faye

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I stumbled upon this little spot in a woodsy area near my home. I just thought it was so lovely and serene – a hidden gem, untouched by the ever-expanding suburbs of the Houston metro area. It reminded me to always strive to find my peace in a hectic world.

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Deanna Faye is a fine art photographer from Houston, Texas. As a disabled artist who struggles with mental health issues, art is her way of expressing both the joy and despair of the human existence. Find her on Instagram: @deannafayephotography

Warren Mortimer

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& my daughter eggs me on to tally up
this menagerie of wise & wandering foes

who live behind the sofa or in dreams
making their din across the mourning sands

the lance-wielding clatter of sahagin
arrives like magic   a cockatrice cries

while golems bed in the salted playa
the way flesh is drawn to sobbing flesh

& does she know we left the other world
of bleached stoneware   of stone-faced jokes

& anti-bacterial wipes   or has she realised
no mother is coming to find us in this life

of hiding eyes in dry & darkening hands

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Warren Mortimer placed first for the Jane Martin Poetry Prize in 2023. Warren is author of the pamphlet Fruit Knife Autopsy with Green Bottle Press. To date, Warren has been published in The Frogmore Papers, Magma, Orbis, Poetry Ireland, and Stand.

Joe Pearson

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She takes three steps then falls into dew. Early morning – she laughed us awake before dawn. Turbines rotate on the hilltop. My brave, impossible daughter regains unsteady feet. Earth’s damp glistens in her smile.

We never thought she would exist; no child should live in a cataclysm. Yet I pull her close and she is sweat and dirt and changing atoms. She does not speak but is always listening. I vow to help her cut through noise and build something that sings.

There was a time when we, humanity, could also not communicate. Isolated and prideful, we toyed with oblivion, believing our own untruths. But now we climb shakily to our feet as sunlight creeps over the meadow. Today, for the first time in a long while, I no longer feel like dying.

She takes another step.

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Joe Pearson is a British fiction writer living in Paris, France. He writes about climate change, cultural displacement, masculinity and fatherhood. His short fiction has appeared in Indelible and was longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. You can find out more about his writing here.

Lily Glenn

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my eulogy is performed,
flawless funeral colours
squawking above black glass,
a jaw drawn by death that
ruffles sprawling feathers,
claws mourned by the wind,
body gnawed raw by the land
that sustains and thaws,
we are always returning,
drawn to haunt decay.

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Lily Glenn is a poet with primary interests in eco-poetry and experimenting with form and voice. She is currently based in Norfolk and is studying an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry at the University of East Anglia.

Jaymz Lea

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Minding myself, horizontal on a broken sun lounger. Nursing this ankle, crisp
and hollow, like my bones finally demanded it was time for flight. I envy the Black Cockatoo’s
flirtation with air, feathers and breeze-block bones lifted in lover’s arms –
stealing space from clouds. From the roof they cawckle – just one more apple core.
If I lived in Cairns, I would always be living in tomorrow, my meat sack somehow not
yet here. How are we to meet each other in dreamworld if I cant feel them?
The alcoholic handyman strides over, handing me an orange ice pop that’s melting
like my face. I bet he wants to tell me I’m asking for skin cancer. Instead, he dresses anger
in sugar water and yellow teeth, “look at you champ, you’re all lovely
and bronzed, they’ll turn you into a medal when you get home.”

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Jaymz Lea (he/they) is a queer human, health professional, nature geek and writer. They find words about interiors – the edges – those othered outed and ousted. He’s shared much of his adult life with a queen, his cat, Effie.

A. L. Shahi

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Qawwali on repeat at the end of the church,
someone’s calling my name, but I haven’t yet heard.
Blank stares from stained glass windows
is an art I have mastered.
Ignoring stares of men who don’t mean well
is an art I have mastered.
A group of French tourists
invades the silence—
abrupt loss of privacy.
But what are communal spaces
if you refuse to confess aloud?
Sometimes it’s chin up, sometimes it’s head down.
I never learned which way to go: Keep walking forward,
or can I look back now?
So what if I never learned?
I’m still moving.

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A. L. Shahi is a literature enthusiast who studied Arabic, Persian and Comparative Literature in Scotland. They have published work from literary to musical analysis in university journals. They are an emerging poet with an affinity for the mad and mythical.