The King who ate himself to death But it was Fat Wednesday and soon to be Lent. But the blowhard lobster was centrepiece; his magnanimous...

Poem I know where you are, poem. The language that folds itself around my tongue, a parasite of ivy on the oak tree. The waves that lick...

First Sight Pushed by the white knuckle  of the moon, we fell. We tumbled and  rolled, our arms and legs making a lustrous beast. Past...

This Stubborn Land This is a stubborn place, I'd say. Old names live on here. Bits of wild cling to steep hillsides, linger in forgotten...

Author's note Baba Yaga is a witch from Slavic folktale. Sometimes seen as dangerous and violent, she is also a healer and a wise woman,...

Plasma Sundown is litmus, the cruellest hour to bear. "The silence is too loud." "The TV will drown the silence." The way light fell, it...

lenny's last christmas I. lenny might have made an effort for his daughter but it's as likely (legal papers; heroin) that christmas '65...

He whispered so the bathroom walls carry the scent of decaying argwood and burnt sage/ the perfume of a lover who plants kisses on your...

Zones of Avoidance I'm reading The Confessions of an English Opium Eater – I want to understand what drove my daughter out in the snow...

Empurpled the first poppies have opened dark murex purple greying lavender fragile as mourning silk with bumblebees drunk on nectar I...

There Was A Maskmaker I Called Corazoncito …before COVID he carved beaked masks – apropos of nothing, or to warn what we humans step on...

Dressing gown My grey dressing gown hangs on a peg in the bathroom, with its imprint of me. I bought it in M&S for the hospital, plain...

Does he read his reviews? Even though they're not all ripe 6.79 is not a bad price for a pound of cherries. I make a note to add this to...

The trouble between mothers and daughters is how to forgive the one to whom you owe too much what you see when you look in the mirror how...

When You Learn to Be a Lady On summer mornings you crave: blackened foot heels and backyard lakes, water shrinking barrettes to an...

Jaws Nothing's too strong for me to get through: iron chains, barbed wire, I gnaw bullets like al dente pasta, munch on jugulars; a...

Waterland There are still pike in Jesus Ditch. The length of three finger-joints, quicker than dactyls. Gone before you can say "Jack...

At the Traffic Lights The whole town is being turned over like a barren field. Patches of routed macadam turn their glistening...

Nkateko Masinga is a South African poet. She is the author of a digital chapbook titled the heart is a caged animal, published by Praxis...

Photograph by Richard Hillier Whale-watching Like thumbs, at first, testing the water. Swimming so fluently that they are pencil lines,...

Photograph by Laura Veres Like Mouthbrooders What I remember best is the snow. We were elbowing on the ledge, watching the never-ending...

Sky with Four Suns The first sun – a time bomb – was sucked into a black bucket and then – boom. Its igneous nodes touched and sparked a...

About a Span To Daniel, Emily and Edmund The year of our Lord Of the Flies. The year of Waiting For Godot. That time when Ike (Turner not...

Pleasure The knife handle was antique bone; I waited until I was alone, then peeled an apple in my head: the flesh stark white, the skin...