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.
How can I help you take the dandelions, the grass,
out of the bricks, bring the morning, the river
into your eyes, turn the day, the clouds
into a place to sit?
Winter Stone
The forecast predicts a storm, destructive winds, fallen trees. Gulls fly over slate rooftops, settle on antennas. The morning sky starts blue, then turns low; I decide we will go into Hull, as planned.
A man sits on winter stone under the awning of a coffee shop, wings hover over chips on the ground, light rain. When I tell a local that we are going to Withernsea, he tells us of other places – the moors, fish towns,
and York. As light diminishes, we trudge a sodden path, quarry names for the birds along the river.
Ion Corcos was born in Sydney, Australia in 1969. He has been published in Cordite, Meanjin, Westerly, Plumwood Mountain, Southword, Wild Court, riddlebird, and other journals. Ion is a nature lover and a supporter of animal rights. He is the author of A Spoon of Honey (Flutter Press, 2018).
In the thin light it’s less a wedding ring than something from a flat pack kit, some bit left in the box at the end with no apparent use.
Between his forefinger and thumb, he angles it to catch the dawn. When the light at the heart of light finally rises, raw above the horizon, he surrounds it entirely in gold.
Craig Dobson has had poetry, short fiction and drama published in various magazines in America, Europe and Asia. He’s working towards his first collection of poetry.
Only special places have dandelions growing between cracks in the pavement. The kind of places that leave the holes in the windows to let in the light. Someone was playing with a ball or measuring the weight of abandoned ball-bearings. They didn’t throw away the old piece of rope coiled in the corner under a pile of splintered wood.
Children will be here soon and they will skip, twenty at a time in unison. The older kids will hoist that rope into the nearest thing to a rainbow. And little children will be lying on their bellies blowing at the puff-white of the dandelions making wishes, leaping up to catch the sugars on their tongues.
Hannah Linden won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, 2nd Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024 and other prizes. Her debut pamphlet, TheBeautiful Open Sky (V. Press), was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. BlueSky (@hannahl1n).
I’m looking at you looking from the clifftop out to sea.
I’m looking at you looking from the clifftop at the horizon where the sunken sun has left a soft, pink glow on that far cloudline.
I’m looking at you looking from the clifftop and learning how I feel by reading into how you feel.
I’m waiting on you looking from the clifftop as I wonder where we go from here.
Doomsday Hand
Friends, there was a time where it was good form to extend a hand to those who reach back into the mists.
We are not yet washed away, but the taste is in the air. Petrichor petrified, infused with noxious pangs for millennia trapped under ice. Dearest friends, it is only us that we speak between. A promise of future became hope, became myth.
There is a hand on the clock which does not reach back for us.
Hayden Boyce lives in Brighton and works as a mental health practitioner in the NHS. He has self-published two books of poetry, HOME (2019) and FIRE POEMS & Afterglow (2022). Hayden can be found on X (@boyciieee).
Spices and boiled vegetables, all in one big pot— The French windows licked with a layer Of condensation. My eyes burn. I stir, And sit back on the sofa, in the softness of his arms. We talk about the story I wrote last year: The very young woman standing under The sky: a giant sheet of white hung Between the buildings outside the Royal London Hospital. Her insides feeling like an iron fist squeezing them. A giant pad between her thighs; thick With blood, and nothing to remember. I say how ironic is it or maybe I am a fortune teller? One of his tears lands on my cheek and My whole body heaves with ugly sobs; between My thighs, nothing to remember. I stand up—I still have to check on the soup.
Born and raised in France, Lou Grimberg moved to the UK three years ago and began writing in English. She teaches languages, and lives in London with her partner and cat.
Bought in Lisbon, first port of call. A blue pottery bowl.
It holds Co-op coupons, two wrinkled apples, a cutting about dead
Japanese soldiers being identified by the soles of their feet.
Tram No 1
is old – narrow doors, steep steps, red and creamy-yellow livery. Most generate revenue through striking colours: Cola red, Hommerson Casino green, purple for the popular new Aladdin at the Circus Theatre.
I double-checked documents, allowed an extra half hour to travel. The atrium is the largest in The Netherlands. The official welcomed me to the country, but, yes, I must belatedly (no rush) bring authenticated copy certificates of marriage (1973) and death (1977).
Fokkina McDonnell now lives in The Netherlands. Her poems have been widely published and anthologised. She has three collections and a pamphlet. Fokkina holds a Northern Writers’ Award from New Writing North (2020). She blogs on www.acaciapublications.co.uk
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.
Briefly Write 