a lost friendship dormant in the mind’s steeple is an unstruck bell
a furled sail, tethered horse behind a fence, ignored by cars rushing past
as I rake yellow orchard leaves, the last apples – like red foxes in snow
K Roberts is a professional non-fiction writer, and a volunteer reader and editor for literary magazines. Artwork and poetry credits include Rundelaria, Pensive, Novus, Writing in a Woman’s Voice, and the now-shuttered Panoply and Otoliths, both of which are much-missed.
‘windfallen’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
It is 6am in the city and we are sharing a wet morning walk and it is still dark and you are still a wrinkle in my nose on the worst days. I hold up old clothes and cannot fathom them being new again. I was so sure that she would die and I cannot imagine seeing you live, seeing you sleep in the space between the present and the windowsill.
We could only find five fingers at the last ultrasound. I imagine the others curled into a fist around my lowest rib.
Amy Devine is an artist from a lineage of artists, based in Sydney, Australia. Her work has been featured in several publications including The Antigonish Review, flashglass and Beyond the Veil Press. She is a Best of the Net nominee and her first book, ‘Speaking of Bees’, was published by Harvard Square Press in 2025.
‘Starting Over’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
My mother, the fourth of five children—or the sixth of seven, if you count the ones granny gave away—used to sing me to sleep. Tales of famine and fever, lyrics of the lost and losing—she raised me on old Irish grief, dirges dressed as lullabies.
I still wake to the ghost of Molly Malone, to plaintive ringing in my ears.
Cailín Frankland (she/they) is a British-American writer and public health professional. They live in Baltimore with their spouse, two old lady cats, and a 70-pound pitbull affectionately known as Baby. You can find them on X as @cailin_sm.
‘Alive, Alive, Oh’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
Here is oppression and high poetry: death made slow, frequent, staggering. And we turn away. And when it comes for us, we will be gazing at a painting of a tiny body wrapped in white, oblivious to the grief of the artist and his canvas he rips out. The wood in art burns well. He cooks for his family. For ours, we build our monuments to civility.
Anaum Sajanlal is a genderqueer femme lesbian who writes on queerness, survivorship, colonialism, and resistance. They are a settler in Tsi Tkaronto from colonially-named India and Pakistan. She can be found knitting surrounded by her abundance of niece and nephew pets.
‘Golden Shovel Against Bureaucracy’ was Highly Commended in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
He sharpens oranges with a blade too clean, peels them spiral, like he’s undoing a year. His shirt reads NASA. He’s never left Makola.
Coins clink like small regrets. He ties the bag, hands it over, juice trailing down his wrist like truth.
Behind him, a radio coughs into static. He doesn’t flinch. The sky threatens rain again. He bets it won’t.
Ghanaian writer, Kafui Mawunyo Siabi writes with quiet humour, observing everyday life. ‘The Boy by the Kiosk’ is a subtle portrait of labor, unspoken dreams and hope waiting its turn. This poem won Third Prize in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
We found you lying on your left side, your right arm reaching out in front of you pushing away the top sheet like it was something to fear
the cannula resting peacefully on the empty side of the bed tossed as far away as its plastic umbilical cord would allow still breathing
Cindy Kluck-Nygren strives to craft poetry and stories that prompt readers to pause, to reflect, and to feel. A native of Chicago, Illinois, who now lives outside Austin, Texas, Cindy insists she misses the Midwest’s snowy and frigid winters.
‘Homesick’ won Second Prize in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
We had front seats on the long coach trip to the capital through hills that ramped down from high tors and ramped back up. The whole way we gazed straight ahead.
At our lodgings the landlord leant out of his kitchen window to eulogise the view of lights pricking out over the dark estuary: ‘used to be Europe’s longest bridge’. Stood in the hallway, each holding an overnight bag, we saw none of it.
Lawrence Bradby writes poems and short non-fiction prose texts and is a creative writing tutor with City Lit in London. Since October 2020, he and his family have lived in Portugal and he blogs about being a foreigner.
‘Shade’ won First Prize in the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025.
The Briefly Write Poetry Prize is back… and bigger than ever before!
An annual poetry competition that celebrates and rewards bold, succinct writing, the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2025 is the fifth instalment of this popular free-to-enter writing competition.
Being a translation of an Old English (Anglo-Saxon) riddle. The tenth-century Exeter Book manuscript in which this metrical riddle is preserved does not record a solution. The solution generally accepted among modern scholars may be found below.
Four strange companions I beheld. Their track
was sable, and their footsteps wondrous black.
Swift was their pace; yet swifter still it grew
as, visiting the realm of birds, they flew
through open air to plunge beneath the wave.
With unremitting industry then strave
the diligent retainer who once more
began to steer the passage of those four
collateral travellers as they made their way
among the treasures that before them lay.
[Translated from Old English by Thomas Sudell]
PROPOSED SOLUTION TO RIDDLE 51
A quill pen held between a thumb and two fingers. The black footsteps are the ink that they leave behind. Lines 3-5 refer to the scribe lifting his quill from the page in order to refill it at his ink pot. He then resumes his writing, guiding the quill among the splendours that adorn his illustrated manuscript.
Thomas Sudell is a graduate of Oxford University (2015) where he studied English with a speciality in Old English. His translation of the Old English poem ‘Maxims II’ has recently appeared in Issue 32 of Littoral Magazine (October, 2024).
Central Train Station Leipzig, January 1st, 1989, 2 AM
Inspired by Maxim Gorki
As to find ourselves Buffered Barely lit Delayed
Withdrawing A working-class shiver
Your swollen tongue Down my throat
Ancient Solyanka A brand new year
My last drop Of the Blue Strangler
Our glasses in very slow motion And the sun to rise in the west
Note: The Blue Strangler was East German slang for a popular, state-subsidized vodka brand.
Frank Thomas Rosen grew up in East Germany and moved to the United States in 1997. He taught English at colleges in Ohio for ten years before becoming a nurse practitioner (FNP). His latest collection – auschwitz of the digital age and other poems (new cognitive poetry) – was published by Cherry Castle Publishing in 2019. Rosen’s poems have appeared in Ambit, Dongola, The American Journal of Poetry, Belt Magazine, The Skinny Poetry Journal and many regional and international anthologies. In his writing, Rosen addresses social injustice, cross-cultural struggle, and environmental challenges.
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