AA Manza

and the wind is gentler than some people I know. 
Children pass by and I am smaller in my own head. 
I miss the blues.
Not the music, not the sky.
Just the sad surrender of dust:
every room unattended.

AA Manza is a genderless gremlin from the Philippines who tries to write between their day job and practical duties. They frequently require copious amounts of coffee, long walks and unnecessary line breaks. 

Suzanne van Leendert

A single apple tree does not bear fruit,
I once heard someone say.

I didn’t have the heart
to reply for me it is enough

to see pink flowers along the edge
of its branches each year, to sit

underneath the wide canopy
in the shade, a hiding place

with gnarled arms spreading out
in all directions.

Suzanne van Leendert writes in English and Dutch. She has been published in many countries and won the Zaventem Poetry Prize (Belgium), Parade der Poëten competition (the Netherlands) and the Off Topic Poetry Contest (Canada). Suzanne also works as a documentary maker.

Dianna Morales

There are heart-shaped crevices in the world
where people like us exist,
tucked away in a corner of our minds,
the world is so incomparable,
the world is so fleeting,
the world is so What we make of it.
We are tall because we are large,
we are large because we love,
we are love because we exist.
The sunrise is brighter today—
the yellow-orange of the smiles and good food,
the purple-blue of the comforting hugs and imagination,
the pink-white of the flushed cheeks and freedom—
just because we say so.

Dianna Morales is a young, queer Mexican-American writer residing in Austin, Texas. Dianna’s work has been published in several magazines, and has two poems forthcoming in The B’K Lit Mag and Passengers Journal. Find more of Dianna here.

Elena Chamberlain

In morning light, you might be
forgiven for thinking
a spine pulling itself
above layers of tar and cement
is a shelter. 

Excavation always begins around 11:03pm:
a shovel to the stomach,
burial grounds for dying cabbage whites. 

Funny. They have replaced the playground
on my pelvis, concrete for cedar. 

The primary school in my right palm
is growing exponentially.

Listen. Gravel pits overgrown with nettles,
I can no longer feel my toes, 
imagine they have stopped searching
for survivors. 

Elena Chamberlain is a poet, creative and student from England. She has been published in stages, pages, and online. Elena was part of Apples and Snakes Future Voices and longlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry in 2023.

Myra Stevens

One day you will read a book that will change your life. It won’t be some self-help bestseller or a psychology text, but an anthology of wildflowers, perhaps, or a novel about a city you will never set foot in. One day you will take up a new hobby, a new dance class that cracks you open and teaches you something about yourself; perhaps composting that whispers to you every morning with its sweet aroma of decay that new life is possible and old life nourishes—even if it’s slow work. One day you will meet someone who you didn’t know was a type of person that could exist. It will crush you and grow you all at once. Suddenly, people like this will be everywhere, and a whole new plane of people you didn’t know could exist will open up to you to encounter in future moments. One day devastation will meet you in ways you didn’t think possible, and all you will do is laugh, because you spent too much time worrying about tragedies that never happened, and the tragedies that did come to pass you could never have prepared for. Now, in this moment, the person who is capable of taking these trials on has been born, dirty, screaming, but alive.

This photo, titled ‘Camino Field’, was taken on an Olympiad Stylus with Kodak Color Film, on the final 50 kilometers of the Camino De Santiago outside of Pontevedra, Spain. The tail end of a journey taken by thousands of people over the centuries. 

Myra Stevens is an artist from Southern Arizona. She holds a masters degree in Public Health from the University of Arizona, and works as a Public Health Professional.

Jack Wright

I tell her I’m trying to read two books
at once again. She starts laughing.

I say, What? and she laughs harder
and harder, and now she is crying

with laughter and I say, What? and
she says I pictured you as a lizard

eyes pointing outwards, scanning
a paperback in each of your sticky hands.

Jack Wright is a poet from Essex. He lives in London and works at a university. His work has appeared in Swim Press and Snippets Magazine.

Nazaret Ranea

MESH

A wire mesh
covers the stones
on both sides of the valley,
as if nature
could be contained
behind this layer of grid:
a metallic, frail net,
that will dissolve
as soon as the mountain
awakens.

BONES

You were only five,

and probably can’t remember now,

but I once took you to the

Natural History Museum.

I wept

in front of the big skull,

thinking of how many like you

could fit in there.

Nazaret Ranea is an emerging poet recognised as one of Scotland’s Next Generation Young Makars. She has published the zines My Men and My Women, and is the editor of the anthology For Those Who Tend the Soil. You can find out more about her work here.

Catherine Sleeman

I turned 18 sat on a blue sofa under one-to-one supervision on the psychiatric ward, and so the music my friends remember as their first tastes of the ultra-violet unshackling of adulthood is, to me, the sound of being pressed up so close to death that he can feel my ribcage, and the frightened thud of my butterfly heart not yet emerged from its cocoon.

Catherine Sleeman is a writer and dancer who takes inspiration from the natural world and her observations of the relationships between people. She is new to writing submissions. She has been supported by Creative Future.

Sam des Fleurs

This photo was taken in Camden, London during the week leading to International Pinhole Photography Day in 2023. It is my favourite pinhole photo to date. I love how the bridge is still, yet the leaves of the trees seem to be merging with the water.

Sam des Fleurs is a poet / spoken word artist, writer and photographer who loves exploring movement in images and is constantly looking for new ways to write about love. See more on Instagram (@sam.des.fleurs).