survival

woven angst strangle
intervene thought relieving

grasp dragging suffocate
abnormal squirm wallow

tread beat relentless
nil flicker revival

exist sharp pain wrapping
clamp usual becoming

breathe in healing question
is flee black obtainable

light darkness twin opposite
rationale spelling possible

rally slow rising
take step glimpsing courage

recovery game muster
slide hopeful true stronger

walk lone swim coastline
reflect silent gift union

nurture preen calm trust
survival can will be me

Stephen House has won many awards as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s received international literature residencies from The Australia Council and Asialink. He has had many plays published by APT and two chapbooks published by ICOE Press. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

Schizopolis Awakening

What is a wind chime hurtling towards death
It is the familiar end of a dream

Honey it’s 8 o’clock, honey (??)
Why are you sleeping, the film is only over
And you’re nearing so many edges

Time is always now here forever gone

Recycling tomato puree entries
Captured as an image the concept of telling you
That jolts look like this from the outside
Not the burnt end of a film roll

What labours of love
What bothers distorted attentions
Distracted affections

What warmth extends structural integrity

The dust in her hair, the dust in his wounds
Oh god, awake

Elly Henkes is a writer and artist, currently studying journalism. Her creative work includes poetry, photography and music, shared with the world under the alias Unterwerk. It navigates emotion which should be lost in translation, but persists even when deconstructed.

Where The Darkness Gapes

He came
from the white shadows,
streetlamp-shine
through bus stop windows.

He shuttled forwards,
like a rising star—
pursuing us—
an eighties cabaret wet-dream.
I saw an arcane wisdom
in the combing of his gelled hair
and blasé demeanour.

He uttered gossip
from moisturised lips, but
hiving in the air
was some subliminal
unsaid message.
The drunken bums
and young feigned loves
trickled in through the
aqueducts of the streets.

He breached,
each articulation pre-meditated,
I studied him, in awe.
Said he was from Taunton
and asked if I knew it.
I said, I’ve never been but dated a local.
‘And judging by your face, he wasn’t a good person.’

Nova Glyn is a young feminist writer. Her recent poetry collection, Dark Columbine (2025), was published by Gometra Press. Nova’s poetry has appeared in The AUB International Poetry Prize 2023Anthology, Bad Apple Magazine, and Luna Luna Magazine. Last year she read at The Bridport Literary Festival.

Midnight Oil

burning the midnight oil on weekends tasting
like mezcal where the worm has already rotted away,
fighting against the page and against the urge to return to
old habits that can never be abandoned, only temporarily set aside.
afternoons going by excruciatingly slowly, nights dissipating into
the intoxication mist. memories and dreams collide, siring
nightmarish amalgamations meant to haunt the days of the shakes.
it’s during lonely weekends more despicable than warm Bacardi rum that
life makes the most sense as thoughts, dreams, and fears combine into
a puzzle never meant to be completed.

George Gad Economou has a Master’s degree in Philosophy of Science, currently works as a freelance writer, and has published three novels and three poetry collections. His latest book is Smoking Rot Gut Drinking Junk (Anxiety Press). His work has appeared in various publications, including Spillwords Press, Ariel Chart, Cajun Mutt Press, Fixator Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Outcast Press, The Piker Press, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review, and Modern Drunkard Magazine.

LOSING MY MIND ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON

Sunday afternoon and whilst outside
Town loses its collective mind in a
Show of pride from which no one will
Emerge with anything except damaged
Minds and damaged bodies i sit here
Deranging my mind, all in a bid to forget.

There is so much right now which
Begs to be set free from the recesses
Of my mind; a nemesis back in town
But only until tomorrow and, so far,
No word from them.  A drink in my
Local but this weekend that just
Repulses me with the idea of 6 pound
Pints served in plastic cups and then,
The thought of work, and how they
Phoned me earlier, asking if i could
Go in tonight to which i simply said
No way, not today, need more rest.

I crave a return to normality as here
More than anywhere else i can just
About handle that, provided the joints
Keep coming and the bar at the end
Of the road has a stool waiting for me.

Bradford Middleton lives in Brighton on England’s south coast. His debut poetry collection ‘Given Half a Chance Anything Goes Around Here’ is now available from the Alien Buddha Press. Recent poems have appeared in the Paper & Ink Zine, Mad Swirl, A Thin Slice of Anxiety and Beatnik Cowboy.

Street trees of Birmingham

I like to stop and look at the candle tips of
the white beam trees in the street
occasionally an oak 
more often a lime 
on Edgbaston Park Road there is a plane
solid reaching mass of green 
by the church swirling chestnut trees
and the coach station 
imported olives in giant planters 
made of composite stone 
along the River Rea 
pollarded willows 
alders and ash whipped banks 
in the sun
seared 
I like to rest beneath the canopy 
of the cherry trees on Cartland Road 
in the shade 
and watch shadows lace the long grass 
the council stopped cutting 
at the end of the world 
your flat feet
they sound like a reproach on the concrete paved floor
I’ve been here for so long 
I felt you recoil from me in the dark 
and come back again
in the sylvan scape 
every wrought and twisted branch 
drenched in electric light

Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki is a gardener and writer from Birmingham, England. He writes about trees and plants (mostly) and people (sometimes) and other unimportant things. His work has featured both in print and online including Pulp Poets Press, Lunar Sea Literary, Fixator Press, Password, The Lake, Sextet, Alocasia and 100subtexts magazine.

Psychobabble

I toss words around in my mind
which make no real sense. I mold them
into psychobabble and spit them 
out into a world where no one

is ready and willing to try 
to understand how painful it
is to form them. Like a riddle 
of gibberish, I create them.

None of these words have a name. I 
toss them against shadows. I see
them trembling in the darkest parts.

I cast the words into the void.
They are something from a dream I
would never welcome as I sleep.

Luis was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His latest chapbook, Make the Light Mine, was published by Kendra Steiner Editions. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories, and Yellow Mama Magazine. 

Receiver (Only) “Come Give”

“Synthetic ‘Emotions’
… the Mimic
and Pantomime…
if I ‘Reserve’,
yet be open
to ‘Receive’
… the Warmth
and Springtime…
of the ‘Courting
Stage’… up into
the ‘Middle-ish’
section of the
‘Honeymoon Period’
… lining-up
‘Options’
ready for cold,
harsh DISCARD
…I Gain
and ‘Win’ by Default.”

Paul Tristram is a widely published Welsh writer who deals in the Lowlife, Outsider, and Outlaw genres.  He wrote his first poem as a teenager following his release from the (Infamous) Borstal ‘HMP Portland’, and he has been creating Literary Terrorism ever since. His novel “Crazy Like Emotion” is published by Close To The Bone. Short story collection “Kicking Back Drunk ‘Round The Candletree Graves”, and full-length poetry collections “It Is Big And It Is Clever”, “South Wales Outlaw”, “The Gutter Symposium”, “The Dark Side Of British Poetry” and “Uncivil Disobedience Is My Forte” are published by Hunsbury Press.

Dandelions

He called me in for two hours a week
to hack back brambles, cut the lawns.
As I crawled from steps to terrace,
he followed, belittling his family
and his last gardener.

The next week it rained, so he pointed
from the window at weeds I’d missed,
and when I missed a weed
he’d pointed at, he banged on the glass.
I cleared dandelions

from the gravel drive. When I’d finished,
he held the money back and shouted
about how I hadn’t shaken enough
sand from the roots: Carry on like this
and I won’t have a drive left.

I nodded, and he relaxed his grip
on the money, which I took.

Paul Bavister has published three collections of poetry with Two Rivers Press. His work has appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Soup Can and Drawn to the Light.

Old Toys

The old toys
still sit in my mother’s attic
like retired soldiers
nobody thanked.

One missing an eye.
One permanently smiling.
One with dirt still packed
inside the wheels
from a summer
that no longer exists.

Funny how
children abandon things
the same way adults
abandon each other.

Quietly.
Without ceremony.

And somewhere
inside a cardboard box
a small plastic dinosaur
still believes
I am coming back for him.

Leon Drake has been published in Spill The Words Press, Horror Sleeze Trash,
Synchronized Chaos, S.A.V.A. Press and the Crossroads Magazine.