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Elizabeth Langemak back next the poet Elizabeth Langemak’s poetry has appeared in AGNI Online, Shenandoah , Pleiades, The Colorado Review, Literary Imagination , Sugar House Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal and elsewhere. Her work has twice appeared in Best New Poets: 50 Poems by Emerging Writers , and been featured on Verse Daily . Elizabeth lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is the recipient of fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and Breadloaf. the poems What Everyone Has Done vs What Everyone Would Do 00:00 / 01:36 Even taught hard and so long the truth is we have and would always back out again. I think. Really, who has not, is not still ready to erase their own name, to flip and come up new. Not unsing the Song, precisely, just stop singing. Like seeming stopover or changing clothes, like promised return but stepped or stepping out for good, into Gray: how simple it was and would be again. Each wolfthought behind us reappears fresh, everyone did and keeps flicking back hoods, revealing our faces changed and still changing. So many faces behind and beyond us. With lap-hands, with crossed legs, an upright spine of baked bricks and stiff, Virtue forgot us and never remembered. Unfooled and refooled by gnawing and guilt, each breath and Choice was and still would be lastingly fixed, decisions made wholly from cinders, from shadows and sparks hopped free of our fists. So here’s what we did, what we would still do despite having done: eyes shut and necks turned we reached and keep reaching shoulder-deep and our hands fell still falling on something blind but Beating O Beating and warm. We are pulling it into the Light. All My Questions Become Their Own Answers 00:00 / 01:23 When her legs struck out shuddering like fat lightning bolts. When my breasts turned to stones within stones on my chest. When I couldn’t tell hindmilk from foremilk, and my collapsed tent of gut held no guess. When she wouldn’t sleep and so no one would sleep, or vomit flew like a fist on the end of a long, gloved arm from her throat. When I knew better, but still. When over a phone, when in fever, when in the puce doctor’s office with my list and all I’d forgotten to write there. When I held her up to the mirror I looked like a person holding her question like it could be her answer if only she could coax it to speak. Is she sick. Should the doctor. What should I. Who should you. When I finally nippled a finger into her mouth would you believe I felt first punctuation squatting under her tongue full stop like a fat bud of cartilage, an unfused bone of statements from which all questions understand how to grow. I asked then, I keep asking: who planted this pea an inch under soil, who waits for that pea to lift its hand into the light, who knows what it will want to know. Conspiracy Theory 00:00 / 01:48 In Arkansas, the red-wings go down, nearly two thousand slapped out of the night. Beaks pointed, wings drawn to their sides as men shot from cannons, they land unseen, on their sides, like pepper shook out on a small Southern snow. They fall in a scene now cut from the movie. They fall together with a noise mistaken for gunfire, or soundless as dust falls, one to the ground at a time. One burrows up from the earth. Like a stone from a sling, one kills a deer with a crack to the head. When they’re poisoned or struck or sucked whole through the props of a low-flying plane, when they cramp, when wind ices their sails or God licks them with lightning, they fall. They fall from great heights, not as Icarus fell, flailing, but they duck into the dive and go down as though grateful, or, some say, they fell upright like jumpers whose chutes wouldn’t open, feet first toward accordion crush. Not every faller makes for the grass, but some plunge into the false skies of blue cars, some are delivered to doorsteps like badly thrown papers. Before you wake up, some are dog-gotten or swept downstream like small ships, one lands in a nest, one is not dead but crawls into the hand of a man dressed in orange. While you sip coffee and news of air travels over the ground, an enemy folds one into your bed. Most are gone by noon. Some were never there. Wherever they go to, they stay. Publishing credits What Everyone Has Done vs What Everyone Would Do: earlier version appeared as The Be Good in Yew All My Questions Become Their Own Answers: originally appeared as The Answer to Everything in Storyscape (Issue 19) Conspiracy Theory: Shenandoah (Vol. 63, No. 1) S h a r e

Rachel Deering back next the poet Poet Rachel Deering lives in Bath, England, with her cat, and works in the field of mental health supporting those who are homeless. She has a love of the natural world and what it can tell us about ourselves. Rachel is a director of writing website ABC Tales – where she also shares her own new poetry under username onemorething . She supports Signe Maene with Book Worm Saturday on Twitter, and can also be found tweeting poetry, art, nature, myth, folklore plus photos of her cat from her own account. Her first poetry collection is Crown of Eggshells . the poems Crow 00:00 / 01:07 My heart is a crow, its wingbeats, a pulse; the doctor declared it a medical impossibility, but these pills are seeds, I said, and this hospital bed, the black earth. Krähe, I called it – its name, the bark of its sound, ‘yes,’ I lie, ‘yes, every morning now seems to be a bright welcome to life.’ I am used to saying yes. In laboratories, crows have demonstrated their magic – this is how I wield stone to make water, this is how I bend metal to make food. A doctor diagnoses, and I try to hush the night sung inside my chest, of battles and their fields of dead, I do not tell anyone ‘no’, I understand cras, I understand how to endure today for the liberty of tomorrow. The Dead Want Their Moon Back 00:00 / 00:55 The toad winked an eye into the side of his head, unrolled his tongue and snatchgulped slippery the lozenge of a slug. The darkness said – do not steal the moon or the dead will find you and fetch it back, their pearly stone, their lifeless rock. Dew settled upon the toad’s cratered back, the seas no longer ebbed and flowed, owls were struck dumb. I weighed the night on the scales of absence until nothing was or ever could be marvellous anymore, I cut the moon into new quarters, I buried the light. Salamander 00:00 / 01:32 When it rained, you blamed me, and when your cattle died or the well gave up bad water – it was all my doing. So much so, that now you do not speak my name, fearing its mustard breath will flame a pouched poison and released, will fire and hiss if uttered. But I have never been that mysterious. Still, I speak in little clicks, undaunted, mutter the meaning of each star upon my back, upon the worm of my body. And I swim in the murk of aquatic dreams, sinewy, watered beneath the smell of pinewood warmed in the sun. Here, you ask me to put out the blaze I started and yet, I only know the cool of wet and stone. I think of the soft, round of my eggs, sticky as creamy mistletoe berries, and what if I could change my skin, regenerate the broken parts, so that when, scales falling away, I can reveal the white dove of my virtue, and how then, maybe then, you might again see the truth of me. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Jemelia Moseley back next the poet Jemelia Moseley is a primary school teacher, poet and spoken word artist from London. Her poem United was published in The Fly On The Wall Magazine in September 2020, while her poems Black , Dying to bloom and Visions of possibilities were published in The Melbourne Culture Centre. Jemelia recently appeared on Numar 17 Radio in the US alongside fellow Alien Buddha Press poets and artists. Her chapbook Love, Joy, Tears, Beers and Poetry is out now. the poems Travelling in Mind 00:00 / 01:16 My body wants to get on a plane and travel far away I want to get away from this life of pain but my mind is thinking all these thoughts in vain because I’m stuck I can’t even really get on a train if it’s not for work or an emergency but I really do need to rest my mind with urgency as my thoughts are hurting me, potentially taking control of me My body is yearning to be free free from masks and free from COVID free from restrictions free from daily predictions I’m yearning for vitamin D yearning to be by the sea my mind and body is just yearning to travel and yearning to be free Imagery of palm trees, the cool breeze COVID on freeze in the pool up to my knees handcuffs released my mind feels free The sun is blazing I feel amazing As I let the sand fall through my fingers the thought of COVID still lingers like the memories of all our lost ones' unfinished stories but we live on in their hope and glory and respect each day as a present as our love for them will never pass The sun sets, stripes of orangey-red my hearts desires have been fed, my mind is at peace and body is filled with ease I lay back on the sunbed and I embrace the tranquility Misery Loves Company 00:00 / 00:42 I am watching TV as the TV watches me I see movement but I hear no sound In my own head space, my own maze, feeling really lost and I really want to be found The comfort of misery keeps misery surrounding me, they say misery likes company yet I am so very lonely I pray for strength and that my ancestors guide me my history seems to define me the unspoken, the untold the truth and the hidden the secrets and the unforbidden all the things I did and didn’t get to love and hold holding on to the things you love, that you outgrow holding onto things that get old And it’s true what they say … peace of mind and love can never be bought or sold Hope 00:00 / 01:07 Cold chilled nights Left outside frost bites Big bears and tiny little mites They hide, hibernate, I procrastinate Work rates, relationships, money How I give, how much I take How much I need, how much I make, The world, the villages, the cities The birds, the bees, the flowers, the trees The growth, my growth Promises, broken and kept the oath I took to love, to cherish To death do us part I wish we could go back to the start It was bright, the sun, there was light There was you, there was me There was hope, there is hope, room to scope A room full of laughter and hope Where there is hope there is love And where there is love there is hope, there is truth There is you, there is me, the sun, the light Piercing through our troubling nights, our mazed minds The wind it sings we listen Our tears they glisten, our hearts are a miss Our love it is missing We yearn for yesterday Sealed with a kiss, smothered with loss The predator's caught its prey Publishing credits Travelling in Mind: exclusive first publication by iamb Misery Loves Company: Harpy Hybrid Review Hope: Love, Joy, Tears, Beers and Poetry (Alien Buddha Press) S h a r e

James Giddings back next the poet Born in Johannesburg and now living in Sheffield in the north of England, James Giddings is the author of Everything is Scripted , published in 2016 by Templar Poetry. the poems Look inside 00:00 / 01:00 At the base of the back of my neck is the button you press to get a look inside. One firm push with your thumb and FWIP! my head pops back like the top of a kettle and a noise strikes the same tone as a microwave casserole when it’s cooked, a mushroom cloud of steam ballooning from the neck hole of my thin cigarette body. Once you’ve released all that hot air, take a peek, you’ll see there’s not much there: no gold elements, no dial tone of great intellect, just a feeling, as if staring down a deep ravine. There seems as if there’s no end to it, until you throw something down and a sound calls back from the bottom. There are versions of us in alternate universes 00:00 / 01:37 One where we’re partners on a buddy cop show who stand back-to-back with our guns raised as our theme tune swells to a crescendo and the screen detonates, our names exploding out of picture. Another where we bloom on trees like bright fruit and our lives are spent waiting for the great fall. Then there’s the one where I am your father and you are my son, and you are crying because you’re hungry and I am crying because I can’t get the car seat to bloody fit, but we stop, for a few seconds, each of us near silent when we catch the eyes of the other. One where we are giant glass shards reflecting. Another where we are bank robbers, our ears pressed against a safe door like expectant fathers listening for a heartbeat. Another where we wait in a long line for the entrance to Hell and both complain about how long it’s taking. And even though I know there are worse universes than ours, I can’t shake the one in which each night you tell me all the unextraordinary words you know like spam , hardcopy and telemarketer, then right before you leave, say a couple of extraordinary ones, which are only so because of how rarely I’ve heard you utter them in this world. No requests 00:00 / 01:55 I’m working on my vanishing act, an homage to my father. To learn more I attend a show where the magician starts by sawing a ladle in half. To further subvert the genre he pulls a hat out of a rabbit, places the rabbit on his head like a toupee and shaves it into oblivion with a set of clippers, leaving the cue ball of his bald head shining. Do the one where the father disappears and you bring him back on stage! I heckle, but he doesn’t do requests. Next he does a card trick entirely with birthday cards, which, in a feat of anti-gravity, levitates the heart in my chest. With love , one reads, then his signature, a single kiss. Impressed, I shout, do the one where you bring back the father! But he still doesn’t do requests. Next he stretches a ten pence piece leaving the Queen’s face visibly frustrated. Then he solves a Rubik’s cube by throwing it behind his back; it is so convincing and easy, I hope a policeman might hand him a murder case. I rise from my seat, plead, please do the one where you bring back the father! He gestures off-stage theatrically, magics up security and I’m escorted out through a plain grey door. No traps. No secret panels. I never got to see the big finish, whether he did the trick, but I waited anyway, checking every face that left the auditorium, hopeful he had pulled it off. Publishing credits Look Inside: exclusive first publication by iamb There Are versions of Us in Alternate Universes: Poetry Wales (Vol. 56, No. 2) No Requests: Poetry London (Issue 97) S h a r e

Ruth Taaffe back next the poet Hailing from Manchester and having lived variously in Sheffield, Thailand, Australia and Singapore, Ruth Taaffe is now settled in the south of England. She writes about her experiences of living overseas, the idea of home, and how the natural environment finds its way into our identity. Ruth has taught English internationally for more than 20 years, and has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. Her poems have appeared in such literary journals as The Poetry Village , Acumen and One Hand Clapping , and her debut collection is Unearthed . the poems Driving Over the Snake Pass Under a Shed with a Goldfish on my Lap 00:00 / 01:04 These were the final items to repatriate taken over the hills to my first home – the cats had gone ahead two weeks before. Young enough to still depend on parents, we knew the baggage that we did not take could be left at their door and kept for us. Tied to the roof rack like a tortoise shell, the shed, unconstructed, was just boards of wood. I peered skyward as you drove, for any shift in light foreshadowing some avalanche of splinters. We kept the radio off, tuned in to creaking and the steady slosh of fish water that I was powerless to stop. We had no idea how our life would be rebuilt a thousand miles away, or why fish, when moved into some larger water, grow. Acrobat 00:00 / 01:23 He toes the wire which sways like a hammock, outstretches his knotted arms of rope. Ears ringed gold as a sailor of air. His back and chest inked by compass, star. Fixing his eye low on the horizon where he’ll land in time with our ovation, he climbs the unicycle, inches backwards, slowly unwalking the plank. We buoy him up with our applause, become his crew, his wave and tide, life vest of his triumph. And he ours. Four clubs fly like seagulls mobbing a fish, or words trying to land on a line. Each catch sharpens our awe. Then, he’s passed a fifth on fire! We stow the clapping, trade in calm. For this moment we anchor him with our belief, as the solo drumbeats start. He catches in time, leaps to land, and signs a charter of hope on our hearts. Nightjar 00:00 / 00:58 Squat like a knot of dark upon dark at the edge of dusk. Folded blades of downed chopper, landed mound of bark and leaves. Your snake eye opens up like a moon glassing the night. Bug-eater lacking fangs to pierce the nocturne skin, only your baleen beak sifting plankton from the sky, flat as an unsent valentine. You shoot soft tuts of fireworks cluck up Morse code. Heart monitor for the forest, it was told that you stole milk from goats, but you preserve such sweetness, Chupacabra. Open wide, let the world pour its song back into your throat. Publishing credits Driving Over the Snake Pass Under a Shed with a Goldfish on my Lap: 192 Magazine Acrobat: exclusive first publication by iamb Nightjar: Finished Creatures (The Poetry Village) S h a r e

Clare Proctor back next the poet Clare Proctor's poetry has appeared in Shooter , The North , The A3 Review and Finished Creatures , as well as in anthologies from Yaffle Press and The Frogmore Press. Clare's writing also featured in Handstand Press' This Place I Know: An Anthology of New Cumbrian Writing . She placed second in both the 2018 Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year and 2021 Ware competitions. Clare lives in Cumbria where she teaches English, and is a member of Brewery Poets. the poems This Woman Wears a Green Dress After Julian Cooper’s Bella Vista Hotel 00:00 / 01:09 This woman stands in the doorway, wearing a green dress. This woman wears a green dress, clenches her fingers. This woman clenches her fingers – her nails make crevices in the skin of her hand – this woman makes empty crescents on her palm. This woman is the body that makes a shadow on a side of the bar. Her body blocks the light trying to shuffle through the door, through the window stained with street dust. This woman breathes in the bar-room smoke, lets the clatter of an empty tequila glass fall into the back of her mind, lets its stickiness become salt, the salt of the sea breeze that she senses behind her eyes. This woman sees nothing. She is listening to the wind crossing a far-off ocean. Her green dress lifts in it. On Falling in Love with Poets 00:00 / 01:06 I have fallen in love with poets, with the spaces they hold within them like underground caves. I want to be lowered into those caves with a head-torch, reach my hands out to the walls, scarred with their stories. I want to fall into their voices, when they do not hesitate, but resonate, like the deep note of the viola. I love the idea of falling in love with poets, and in love with all that poets have loved; with their moments of climax, with their late-night tears, with their unchosen words that slip from their lips when angry or drunk or tired. I want to fall for their suffering, dip into it as if it is a well, wash in its dark water. I want to feel their pain, like splinters stuck in the skin of my fingers. I have fallen in love with the word – poet – how the two soft syllables shape my mouth. Sappho's Leap After Felicia Hemans 00:00 / 02:24 The women are ceaseless. The women are ceaseless as the waves. The women are ceaseless as their own echoing sighs. The only way for the women to be still as the sea-bird hovering on the death wind, is for the women to throw themselves from cliffs. If the women want to jump from cliffs, they should dive in a perfect arc. The sun should be setting behind them or fingers of the dilated moon sifting over their bodies, the sea a molten silver. Their fragile forms should be the shape of a crescent as they dive, a flattering silhouette. The women can be gentle and sentimental or fierce and tragic, but at all times when jumping from cliffs, the women should be beautiful. Men may want to paint the women later. The women should hurl themselves into the sea because their love is unrequited. Their unrequited love must not be for other women, but for a man/sea god. The women’s pain should be private unless they are jumping from a cliff; they should cry in a pitiful fashion, a few tears on the cheek subtle as pearls. They should avoid ugly crying, or they may not be a fitting subject for a painting. The women should consider the weather, should pick a day that best fits their form and colouring. They should pair their outfit with the sun/moon/white cliffs. Their dress should flit around in the wind enough to expose bare legs and should cling enough in the rain/sea mist to delineate their breasts. The women should keep their hair long so that it can whip around their faces and stream behind them as they fall. The women should fall in slow motion, over and over again, into the mind of the man/sea god. They should never land on the rocks, breaking their body and shattering their face, neither of which would reflect well on the man/sea god. Women who are planning on jumping from cliffs should check the tides. Women jumping from cliffs should be recovered in one piece, their free dark hair pushed back from their pale faces, that should look at peace now that they can sleep forever in the unslumbering seas, dream about the man/sea god that they absolutely, definitely love. Publishing credits This Woman Wears a Green Dress: came joint-second in the Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year Competition 2018 On Falling in Love with Poets: Byline Legacies (Cardigan Press) Sappho's Leap: won second prize in the Ware Poets Open Poetry Competition 2021 S h a r e

Michelle Penn back next the poet Michelle Penn’s debut pamphlet, Self-portrait as a diviner, failing , won the Paper Swans Prize in 2018. Her poetry has appeared in Perverse , MIR Online, 192, The Rialto, B O D Y, Poetry Birmingham and other journals. Michelle plans innovative poetry / art / music events in London as part of Corrupted Poetry . She’s also a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen . the poems In air 00:00 / 01:58 She sees only the flies, flies flitting about the bed in the operating room, Field Hospital C, Danang, the name echoing like two bells, chiming then fading to stone, replaced by a distant beep and the flies, flies and a slurred recollection of her daughter's voice on the telephone, something about after, something about Thailand and the flies, their wings like rotors, a strange sound for flies but maybe Vietnamese flies move in a different language, and they’re flying while she lays still, encumbered by strings or wires, trailing from her nose, her arms, something beeping, and the flies with their rotor wings, darting squares in air, landing on the tray where the scalpels are spread, then taking off again, and why do they trace hard squares while their wings are rotors and rotors are round, none of it adds up and maybe she’s also a fly, somehow snared in wires and strings, a fly tethered to a bed or maybe the earth while the others beat their wings, the steady rhythm of rotors but then the flies all land at once, their feet tickling her face, her hands, no more rotors, just a soft buzz and a distant beep then she is lifted, hot air, a deep cool, a cloth brushing away the flies, flies fluttering silent wings and disappearing into a clean white wall, then a white bird surfaces, a featherless bird, whispering, you're in Thailand now, your daughter is flying over, and her daughter, flying from far away, she hopes her daughter will wear her feathers. talking philosophy 00:00 / 00:40 we were meant to discuss eternal return but the fires were blazing again & the riots & it all felt — the sunshine a bit too bright & the last time we said this has to be the last time we’re all in the same storm but not in the same boat, not in the same ghost things have to change, we say & take to the streets yet again but I've heard how sometimes firefighters join the flames, how they become so entranced, they burn Hotel October 00:00 / 01:21 the woman has become her blue-tint portrait another autumn in this room season oblique as the underside of a chin, the hard corner of a table, October tricky-sweet, like liquorice on the tongue outside, the gentle mobs dissect her life ten-second censors, all of them and yet she longs to believe in the attraction of thing to thing, life to life, each drenched in some god’s love another October in this room, another fall fall , that Americanism, so blunt, no Latin gymnastics, just fall , from the Old English for fail, decay the Old Norse for sin gravity always feels strongest in fall an apple tumbles from a branch, the moon plummets towards Earth, space and time collapse into one another withering leaves sink in conspiracies, autumn the moral to summer’s fable, October asking questions to which she is the ghost Publishing credits In air: The Rialto (Issue 94) talking philosophy: 192 (Issue 2) Hotel October: The Alchemy Spoon (Issue 1) S h a r e

Lauren Thomas back next the poet An MA student in Poetry Writing with Newcastle University at The Poetry School, London, Lauren Thomas has had work in various print and online publications. Her poems have appeared in Nine Pens' Hair Raising Anthology , Black Bough Poetry's second Christmas/Winter anthology , and most recently, in Lighthouse Journal and Magma . Lauren's pamphlet, Silver Hare Tales , was published in 2021. the poems Garden’s End 00:00 / 01:02 Once I found a fallen body under leaves, beneath the pear, kneeling at the garden’s end with others in the dark. I’d always feared those shadow trees, the tenet of their bark, their hard rust fruit with nothing but the pull and barb of wasps and browning apples bruised and thick with slugs. I shifted on the ancient moss, regarded the sharp ends of grass. Her wings were spread as if to touch the purple edges of this place. Eyelids closed, her slowing breath, holding less than songs. I put her in a cardboard box offered up the vivid pink umbilic twists of worms. Murmured drops of milk as words, whispered less than prayers. Far away my mother’s voice, was calling to the garden’s end. I thought of salvaging our lost and sunlight trapped inside green glass. Ysbyty Ifan 00:00 / 01:17 Ancient backcloth upland moor, shifting with the currents of a restless wind Beneath quiver-grass parched runnels, lie brass rubbings potted into ground A bronze-agronomist cured and historied within the glug and clag of peatland bog His green shallow-pool whispers flow through leather bones, chambered underground Iterations rotted into earthtongues, gills and seeds. A carbon keep, embogged We patch the purple-orange hummocks so that muddied river crossings can rewind Time speckles gold upon the Plover, returns Whorl-Snails and sculpts the bog Back to ewer. Stagnant moss births fruiting bodies, rafting spinner silk enwinds With Sundews trapping raptors, feeding rooting bonnets. This is when the earth regrounds Upland bog. Oxidised Pitkins pink the wind. History sings through the quenched ground L'Origine Du Monde After Zena Assi 00:00 / 01:00 We found her floating in a stream folded like an origamied boat: a woman made of paper. Her closed eyes did not reveal the truth — her green roots trailing anchors in the red-rushed water. We thought she had been left for dead after they had picked her up and sewed her shut to stop the sound of sea. We lay her flooded body underneath a weeping tree, casting light upon a bird cage hanging there in homage to her bones. Cold wet fingers flayed her printed skin like peeling robes from a drowned daughter like lifting memory from stone. We gazed at her beauty, peered inside to see how she was made. Her catacombs all glittering and lined with live grenades. Publishing credits Garden's End: Silver Hare Tales (Blood Moon Poetry) Ysbyty Ifan: Magma (Issue 81 – Anthropocene) L’Origine Du Monde: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Ed Garvey Long back next the poet Life coach Ed Garvey-Long is a queer poet from North London. He has an MA in Creative and Life Writing from Goldsmiths, University of London, and published his first pamphlet, The Living Museum , in 2019. Ed's poems have featured in Under the Radar , Perverse , clavmag and harana poetry . His hobbies include hand-sewing quilts, and long walks with his husband. the poems Visitor 00:00 / 01:06 I look up from my muesli and Jane Austen’s in my kitchen, red-cheeked from dancing and tiny like a museum mannequin. She comes to join me at the table, doesn’t say a word, smiling warmly like we share a funny truth. I don’t say a word either – what would she make of my accent? She looks around bewildered but taking it all in her stride. Maybe she often falls out of time to join gay men eating their muesli? We look at each other awkwardly again with beaming smiles and a sense of when is this going to end? She goes to speak, looking at me directly, but she fades out, and then she's gone. Sunday in the Woods 00:00 / 01:10 All the dogs follow us home. At first we pretend it’s an inconvenience, but then we start dancing and skipping with a conga line of cavapoos and dachshunds, labradors and cockers, huskies, newfoundlanders and chihuahuas gambolling and prancing behind us. Once home, we thrive drenched in dog slobber, swimming in kibble and poo bags – our flat’s a Pets At Home warehouse. But we love them all endlessly, yes. We love them all more than the bored middle-class families did. We love the chaos of it, we love the glory and the noise. And the love: we love the love of having them with us, falling over each other in an abundant pile, a glorious fur phantasmagoria. Borrowed Light 00:00 / 00:43 Friday and I pick off the moss of this week and let myself stand in brightness streaming through our modest windows yellowing my books the snake plant likes to be crowded and the song thrush is back to nest if we have anything it is borrowed light warm on our faces large and powerful and second-hand Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Jenny Byrne back next the poet A newcomer to writing, Dublin-based Jenny Byrne had her first poem published in 2020. Her poems have appeared in The Galway Review , Impspired , Dust Poetry Magazine , Drawn to the Light Press and The Madrigal – though Jenny still thinks her biggest achievement is being a mum to two lovely people. the poems Danseuse 00:00 / 01:25 I do not want to lament the day you died, each year, purging up the aisle of expectation to kneel and prostrate I am ready for the day to come and know there is no must, no proper, no should I may trace a fingertip across your scarf of orchid silk, allow jewels to glisten in my palm, scatter photos, hold linen to my face and breathe you in — less of you with time; but still, a tiger knows her cubs, animal instinct reciprocates This pace, once chaotic, stumbling, shape-shifting to satisfy others has slowed, is gentle; with desire to gratify fading I move, a rising relevé in satin slippers to my tentative, delicate rhythm I may look back from time to time as I lead myself forward towards my skyline I think you would raise a celestial hand, urging me onward. Love (Classified) 00:00 / 00:45 I don't write about love it's ours, it's private. Where we are queen and king passions force bloody battles some won many lost We grieve poultice womb wounds with salt purging the demented Orchid roots reach toward light and air epiphytes survive supported freely I don't write about love, it's ours, it's private. Sapere aude 00:00 / 00:59 The wise child omniscient, sensing, absorbing full up, engorged, overflowing No reprieve, corridors closed, dam bulging, deluge certain walks within the gilded mausoleum, sham, chaos mire Instinct knows what can and cannot be said perception is reality they say a ten-year-old cannot play with perception Sensitivity has no place in dysfunction systems are not made to be broken wise children, bearing all weights, eventually crumble. Publishing credits Danseuse: The Madrigal (Vol. 2) Love (Classified): Impspired (Issue 11) Sapere aude: The Galway Review S h a r e

Devon Marsh back next the poet Since serving as a pilot in the US Navy before embarking on a career in banking, Devon Marsh has had his poems and essays published by The Lake , Poydras Review , Black Bough Poetry , Split Rock Review and River Mouth Review , and has been featured on periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics . Devon lives in the North Carolina piedmont, and is currently searching for a good home for his first full-length poetry collection. the poems Driftwood – Olympic Peninsula 00:00 / 01:24 Children throw driftwood into the sea, rebuking the wood’s audacity. Limbs and trunks lie ashore, bone-like rather than a severed part of forest. Yet the skeleton-white logs pay homage to shadow-black forms. Trees above wave-carved cliffs oversee the beach. Tall firs look ahead. The firs turn from the ocean, put breath into the sky. They look back and think again. Children cast pieces of trees to withdraw with the tide and feign they won’t return when we’re gone. Tall firs regard the sea. They look back and think of me, know I am of the forest even as rhythmic waves pound within my veins. How many will pulse the shore where I stand rooted to a spot on the sand? I take evergreen breath from the sky, look back, breathe again. I watch my heirs, relish their audacity. My children throw driftwood into the sea. Own Fault 00:00 / 01:36 Last night’s rain bowed the stream. Water cranes to peek above the rim, see beyond the channel of its world. On green hillsides, scattered orange firs resemble derelict sculpture, ignored rather than poisoned, like a forest erected when we built bridges that threaten to collapse from negligence. How could we fail to maintain our means of traverse? I would find another way to you, swim a raging torrent, tasting with each dip of my face the rusted tang of failure. Distracted by thoughts of a crossing I won’t make, it’s a verdant tree, lovely with life I curse when I misjudge my cast. This is my own fault, no one else to blame for a hook sunk to its barb in this summer’s terminal growth. Wade ashore, cut the leader, leave the mayfly perched above the current. Its name —Ephemeroptera —gives a nod to its day in the sun. Tie on line, knot nymph to tippet, eye the yellow slice of sky backed by faience, by cobalt. I wade in, cast again, try not to squander light. Around me, trees agree on a color for night. Storm 00:00 / 01:18 On the porch, close to 10pm. Enjoying red wine, lingering rain, thunder moving off, songs of at least three types of frog. Lightning flashes at greater and greater intervals, building tolerance for a gap that will carry to the next storm. This is when I replay our conversation wonder why you wondered what I meant. And also wonder if I should remark to you, inside, about the storm as it subsides. Something obvious, a point of sure agreement. The darkness rather than what’s in it. With no flashes I see the sheen of the screen. Pixeled black covers the yard, drowns the pond, obscures field and forest and sky. Night tries to mist onto the porch like rain, pool with shadows. The candle keeps it at bay. I’m on the bright side listening to frogs, replayed conversation, and receding thunder until it’s time to blow out the flame. Publishing credits Driftwood – Olympic Peninsula: River Mouth Review (Issue 4) Own Fault / Storm: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Simon Middleton back next the poet Simon Middleton lives in Dorset with his wife and small children. His writing has appeared in Envoi, IOTA, The Cadaverine, Firewords Quarterly and The Best New British and Irish Poets 2017 . His poetry has been shortlisted for The White Review's Poets Prize 2022 and The Magma Open Pamphlet Competition 2020. Simon's work was also highly commended in the Winchester Poetry Prize 2020, and has earned him the 2018 Bridport Prize's Dorset Award. the poems Daedalus III 00:00 / 01:18 The parameters of our prenatal world are governed by the gospel of The Pregnancy Bible where life is measured in weeks and foodstuff. (I feel uneasy likening embryos to food. Like Saturn devouring his children.) Still, Kate marks each new seven-day cycle with a new object of comparison: from the first, tentative days as a poppy seed to a kidney bean, from fig to peapod to lemon. It challenges my knowledge of fruit and vegetables. I was scuppered at week ten, when the baby was the size of a kumquat. The weekly shop has become a scientific exploration where the grocery aisle spans an installation of life. The Bible says, 'Fully formed, head to heel, baby will be the size of a small pumpkin.' Near term, I find myself standing absently at supermarket shelving, head tilted, imagining bodily features on a melon. Space Was a Material 00:00 / 02:18 Next time we see him, he is a still-life arranged in a plastic box. A Special Care Nurse leads us like a guide at a museum, where we stand, examining the thin rise and fall of his back. We stand as we did once in Hepworth’s studio, natural light alive against whitewash walls, our focus centred on a table with a plinth that held the polished form of an ‘Infant’. Remember how little air there was? How the whole fabric of our lives seemed to fray then re-thread, so the room felt pliant? And how, standing before ‘Three Forms’, we were told, For Hepworth, space was a material, distance a quality – as much a part of the composition. In the ward, machines draw his life on a screen in shallow peaks, as he lies beneath a knitted sheet. Remember how little air there was in Hepworth’s room? Seeing the child she shaped, knowing ours was forming in the dark of your womb. Was that the texture of longing? Or do we feel that now? Seeing his half-strapped face. The ventilator trunk. The scalp crowned with gingering blood. The newness of his body mapped by wires. Remember how the air seemed to cement, suddenly? As we found our hands parting a break in the air, venturing a terrified palm inside to trace the frightening space above his tiny form, afraid to cup a part of it, in fear we may dent the fontanelles, disrupt the shallow concertina of his lungs. Is this where we are now? Feeling the material of our lives tighten around us, as we wheel him in a tank through the world’s corridors. Isolette 00:00 / 01:13 Thank you for holding him while we can’t, for keeping him safe inside your little frame, for the solace in knowing, clear plastic crib, that at the end of a long white corridor, you exist to prevent his life from faltering, that an object of such sadness, with a most beautiful name, is there, whirring quietly like an undertide, like a holy mother, blessed altruist. Let’s praise these small mercies, despite their slightness: he’s warm, at least, we can still see him through your transparent walls, in your crystallising brightness, and we can pray the grey-lilac of his newborn form will settle, that his knotted pulse can harden, that the prone lightness of his body will brace. Thank you, small plastic island, for bringing him back. Publishing credits Daedalus III: IOTA (Issue 98 – 'Bodies') Space Was a Material: The Bridport Prize Anthology 2018 (Winner of the Dorset Award 2018) Isolette: exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Susie Campbell back next the poet Susie Campbell's poems have appeared in many UK and international journals, visual poetry anthologies and exhibitions. Currently studying for a practice-based poetry PhD at Oxford Brookes University, Susie is the author of six poetry pamphlets – I return to you , Tenter and Enclosures being her three most recent. Her newest work, The Sleeping Place , will be published by Guillemot Press in 2023. the poems A Deictic Miracle, This Boxwood Prayer Nut Exhibit: Waddesdon Bequest, British Museum 00:00 / 01:41 To hold and be held, an uncracked walnut, a little earth. There is something strange about this richness, growing into its own boundaries, rank and subtle as a hunted creature. Time has become a strongbox of interlocking branches. Global complexities, plumbed with pipelines of gold, are reduced to wafer-thin discs, slotted one into the other, light bevelled into a compound syntax of mortise and tenon. An articulation of honest wood, it holds the shape and hard veins of the forest by fitting it to the palm: an armillary sphere circling an internal sun, opened by flicking up a tiny hinge secured on its pin. Ahead, glimmering through a tiny screen, carved and fretted to this terrestrial cage, a thimble saint with his trembling hound bows before the stag. Kneeling here, prayer beads in hand, an intricate system of shadow blows from antler and slender branch to form the cross, thorn-sized and lifted to the wooden sky, as outside bends to imitate this reconciliation. if magic 00:00 / 01:24 if such ordinary box jar tin or burlap and if tested unbought night finds an opening past neighbours fought for squeaking and scratched open by tiny razor- sharp and left beyond and further how the night is done with moss and damp and squelch and how quickly attaching themselves to dark are wet marbles if tied up in a pouch and with mercy new-opened and sticky and still smelling of sleep as sap is and here a soft clink of word against word could be taken for protection a charm new-minted from darkness against theirs ours some dispensable such brittle claims across this globe of glass could be soothed or silenced if won by this as talisman Hush 00:00 / 01:43 A hill beneath and a filled-in door. This bench, its damp wooden flowers. A dead tree stripped clean and time fucking stops. You reach a corner of you are there. You are there. An edge of grief you can park in an empty tongue. The fields are empty. That’s near enough. You expect you have come here to honour the dead. An open field looks like battlefield words: gone, absent, missing. You come to hold it in memory but it becomes spongy underfoot. You do not mean to remember her, the time you brought her here. A list in a notebook of useful words: Blank Nil Null Hush-hush Ssh Shush Sodden ground but your body remembers so you try to follow even as it is hardening and solidifying, becomes a whole, no longer possible to enter nor be held by it. Nil. Null. Hush. Ssh. Shush. You cannot enter nor explore its spaces nor the dead in their apophatic silence that gap in words. Listen. Hush. Publishing credits A Deictic Miracle, This Boxwood Prayer Nut: Shearsman Magazine (125/126 – Autumn/Winter) if magic: Stride Magazine (December 2021) Hush: Tenter (Guillemot Press) S h a r e

Nóra Blascsók back next the poet Nóra Blascsók is a Hungarian poet based in Manchester. Her most recent poems can be found in bath magg , Acumen and Atrium . Her debut pamphlet, of work , will be published by Broken Sleep Books in June 2022. the poems Draw Myself 00:00 / 01:17 from behind body of a baby owl sleeping arms limp the small of my back yes turn over childbearing hips like grandmother said we bled for the original sin brackets around sentence drenched it’s fake run pen over thigh line wider and wider leave a gap for the imagination the pause before you go under can’t look roast potatoes would be nice later draw big areolae remind myself my breasts have an underside a lump in my throat as I check for hated them touched now I don’t watch my skin fade colour my teeth into lips draw curtain for hiding off the page amorphous Play-Doh make me in the image of Goddess of Woman or something that passes The Truth About Swans A found poem using text from a website with facts about swans, as well as questions suggested by Google's autofill. 00:00 / 00:48 Can swans fly? The only sound is the wings beating. Do swans mate for life? The male is known as cob and the female as pen. Are swans protected? It has been known for swans to die of a broken heart. Are swans aggressive? Cygnets are grey with black beaks when they hatch. Do swans kill? A cygnet weighs a block of butter. Are swans territorial? A gosling floating. Salvation 00:00 / 00:37 Standing still Misplaced reed Calm summer day Strange new God on spindly legs The congregation In state of trance Thrash around Speaking in tongues Prostrate with beaks Bowed in submission Silent sermon The flock in awe Twitch The heron’s wings Envelop the pond The gulls Briefly silent Resurface Cleansed Publishing credits Draw Myself: Dust Magazine (Issue 5) The Truth About Swans: Dreich Magazine (Season 2, Issue 2) Salvation: Exclusive first publication by iamb S h a r e

Samantha DeFlitch back next the poet Sam DeFlitch, author of Confluence , is a National Poetry Series finalist. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review , Colorado Review , Iron Horse Literary Review , Appalachian Review and in On the Seawall , among others. Sam has received awards and fellowships from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and the University of New Hampshire, where she completed her MFA. the poems Confessional 00:00 / 01:39 This is what happened: I found the wren frozen stuck to the ground and I kept on moving. The onion snow came too late this year; the hard freeze took out the plums. Some farmer kept the coal barrels burning through the night. Another lit half his land on fire to save the grapes. Some theologians think God gave us grapes— but not wine—so we, too, could find joy in creation. See: we make bread to be torn apart, hot. Hot and full of yanked-up wheatsheaf. We love the dog even though we know, we know— be it love or oats, we know it when we plant it— most things don't make it out alive. This is just to say: I'm not a theologian, or a farmer, or even the woman who scooped up the wren's body, tucked it in a plastic bag, and kept it in her freezer between the berries and winter greens, waiting patiently for the final thaw to bury it in soft earth. I'm just a girl with an emergent deer in her cupped palms; a girl saying: Look! This is what I have created with my grief. This is what love has made out of me. Garbage Night 00:00 / 01:54 It is Thursday night. It is garbage night. The trash is my old clothes and my old clothes are slipping through my hands. My hands are a box full of flies. The flies are taking off with my hair – look! I am bald. I am my mother’s truck engine. I am the space the deer left sleeping in the ferns. I am 7:52 in the evening. See, the sun has already set and the dog is crying to go out. Am I her, too? Her nose raised, twitching, into the evening air? My parents are getting old. I don’t like to say that out loud, but it’s true. The dog is old, too. I am rubbing the dog’s legs. I am a car full of empty coffee cups – see, I can’t bring myself to dump them. They remind me of yesterday. I am all the days that the sky has broken clear and cold, spilling oranges across the dawn-line. I am the Ohio line. I am West Side Road after all the tourists have left for the day I am laying myself down on the asphalt to watch the stars come out in real soaring spires above my head until the dog begins her howling. I am waking all the days. I am the ferns, and I keep space for you, for the coffee cups. I am peeling my long body off asphalt, and gone round back to feed the chickens. Final Thaw of Soft Earth 00:00 / 01:29 Something's not right with my river, my mother says. And it is Truth: each night the beavers pull apart saplings, pull them apart fresh and at the edge. The river gets blocked. The water stops and at night I hear howling in the east. In the year of the year of the plague — this the age I restring my mother's mother's Miraculous Medal and hang it from my dash — the days are long as a year. Ticks fall like spring melt from branches and cling to the legs of the moose calves. A great fir tree falls on a man as he sleeps. The mountain is angry, my mother says, and it is Truth. In the days after this, another surgeon would open me. There is never any good explanation for my pain, which is real. I must have it. Night after night, this racket in the woods; the re- building of the thaw-rushed dam which, this time around, might make a good home. This remarkable rumpus chirping hope. Publishing credits Confessional: Barren Magazine (Issue 19) Garbage Night: On the Seawall Final Thaw of Soft Earth: Moist Poetry Journal S h a r e