My blood appeared as a stream of thought, a light bleed; red, yellow and blue into my palm.
I put my head back letting it drop, cold keys counting on you.
Jowonder lives in London. Her first venture into poetry was ‘6 Days Goodbye Poems of Ophelia,’ a painting of Ophelia in bacteria, funded by the Wellcome Trust with poems left on a haunted answer phone as a video. Her recent illustrated poetry book ‘Surrealist Poems About Clocks’ was published by Sulfur Surrealist Jungle 2024. It invites you into a world, where clocks tick with a sinister rhythm and reality.
She received honourable mentions for her poetry in the Thirteenth International Poetry Competition 2015, and in New Writers International Poetry Competition 2024. She likes to see images as poems. Find out more about her work here.
Phi Phi AN is a Vietnamese independent multi/interdisciplinary artist-director-curator-producer-researcher-activist. Since 2011, she has multifaceted herself with echoes—chambers, deep understanding, building, development, reformation and involvement in closely over the stages, the scenes, the spaces, arts and intercultural forms; locally and internationally. Find out more here.
Lavana Kray lives in Romania. Her work has appeared in many print and online publications, as well as in haiga exhibitions organised by the World Haiku Association in Japan and Italy. In 2015, this Association awarded her the title of Master Haiga Artist. The Laval Literary Society from Canada awarded her the André-Jacob-Entrevous Prize 2023, for a literary text (haiku) combined with an artistic visual. She currently serves as editor of Haiga at Cattails (UHTS).
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…
The photo was taken in Komatsu, Japan, in late winter earlier this year. I can’t help but wonder about the past inhabitants, and their life after leaving this house. Do they know how the current inhabitants (mostly withered plants) have grown into this place that was once a home to them?
Jacelyn Yap (she/her) recently started focusing on her art proper, having persevered through an engineering major and a short stint as a civil servant. Her artworks have appeared in adda, Chestnut Review, The Lumiere Review, Barren Magazine, and more. She can be found here and on Instagram (@jacelyn.makes.stuff).
To “haunt” is to be pulled back, to remain in grief for a memory. To consider what might be next when you are still cornered in the past is an impossible task. So is it best to forget and move forward, or remember and remain?
Alastair Jackson has spent the last 18 months photographing & travelling around his native Hebrides of Scotland, putting together enough work for a book-length publication. Concurrently, he has been accumulating images of the slightly odd, unique things he has seen by these island roadsides. These images are part of a small series, ‘Strange Currencies’. Alastair likes to move between and amongst different genres of art, and his first book with poet Kenneth Steven was longlisted for the Highland Book Prize in 2019. He also published a zine, ‘Futures Past & Present’ with ADM Publishing in 2021. Find his website here.
These photos were taken on the Oregon coast near sunset as a storm was beginning to blow mist in from the ocean, which, combined with the expired film, resulted in a pleasant, almost silkscreen-like effect in the form of large, prominent grain. The title is inspired by a man who was praying aloud at the water’s edge for hours (pictured in “Acolyte #1”). He and I were the only two on the bluffs that day, and the solitude and his spirituality, coupled with the incoming gray storm, lent a powerful yet peaceful aura to the area, which reminded me of being in a cemetery – but for something much larger than us.
Raye Hendrix is a writer and photographer from Alabama. Raye is the author of the poetry chapbooks ‘Every Journal Is A Plague Journal’ (Bottlecap Press) and ‘Fire Sermons’ (Ghost City Press). She is the winner of the 2019 Keene Prize for Literature and Southern Indiana Review’s 2018 Patricia Aakhus Award. Their written work appears in Poetry Daily, American Poetry Review, 32 Poems, The Adroit Journal, and others, while their photography appears in North American Review, Olney Magazine, Press Pause Press, and various newspapers. Raye is the Poetry Editor of Press Pause Press and co-edits DIS/CONNECT: A Disability Literature Column from Anomalous press. Raye is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Oregon. Find out more here.
Claire Nora is 25 years old. A bored poet living in the city of Lagos (Nigeria), she loves writing, taking pictures, reading and thinking. She believes in the simplicity of life and the Chaos of being subtle. When she isn’t doing any of the things above, she’s studying law in a lawless Country. Find her on Twitter (@Clairenora1).
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