issue four

Janelle Elyse KihlstromPassive, slant

Thomas O’ConnellThe Consolation of Chaos

Ruth WigginsYour MoveTurning a Page

John ChallisDentistry

Sophie EssexUntitled [x3]

Mira MattarSparks

Daniel BarrowMorality Tale

Alice Wooledge SalmonOn Shapely Sisters Avenue

Jacqueline SmithDinner with GeorgeSusan’s House

Kirsty LoganJermemiah

Tobi CogswellThe Man Checks His Calendar and Schedules Contentment

Sophie MackintoshStowaway

Meg PokrassHardwood RoseSplit Ends

Ben GilbertShelley

WHAT’S INSIDE?

JANELLE ELYSE KIHLSTROM

Passive, Slant

The way it was with her,

was how she wanted it.

The dagger sewn into

her apron. You could say

She wanted it that way,

to paraphrase. Or say

She sewed the dagger.

Or say The moon burst

through the door, its guns

a-blazing. Say you pilfered

someone’s only alphabet,

and now you’ve come for

the mechanics. While you

whisk the pancake batter,

saucer-eyed. Say Tell me

your disaster. Call it mine,

my pet disaster. Furnish

your scene with spindly

women spinning wool

beside the window, in a frame.

Flash them the word

disaster; watch the way

their parched lips move.

Now it’s your movie,

where time creeps along,

until some little horror

drop its veil.

RUTH WIGGINS

Your move

It’s not so much that I’m lying

Here, trying to sleep off a migraine

It’s more that I’m waiting for you to come

And wake me. Not with a cup of tea,

But with what you sweetly assume to be

Your secret agenda

Turning a page

Every now and then you find,

In a book, a page that’s thicker

And you think it might be two, and so

Spend ages trying to split them.

To find the missing text, you thumb

Your way around the edges, and

When that fails, you lean in close and try

To cleave them with blown kisses.

You compare the last clause with the first

And wonder what it all means,

What once made sense, no longer does

The page is spoilt by thumbprints.

Till finally you fall upon the comfort

Of page numbers, and confirm there are no

Mysteries, no hidden depths to plunder

He simply is, just a little, thicker than the others.

RUTH WIGGINS

The Consolation of Chaos

Only false prophets, and telemarketers, call anymore. I pass the

hours removing fruit from a still life and lamenting the lies I thought

of too late. Your car is in another driveway. The night is nearer than the

morning; we are now free to be new animals. I blame the circus,

insolent girls on bicycles,

voodoo drums in drugstores,

calliope music on the radio,

zebras reflected in the eyes of lions,

moths and rust and flying saucers on the horizon.

Willows laugh behind my back; Wishful thinking produces

nothing but singing birds.

THOMAS O’CONNELL

Dentistry

The city has bad breath.

From the sky it’s an open pie hole stretched too far.It’s lips are the thin white strands of the M25.

We snuck in while it was sleeping.Stuck bridges in like braces across the Thames, the great dirty tongue stinkingits own brand of menthol juices.

Boats on the river are un-chewed foodsanchored to the frenulum of the tongue.Builders are dentists, embalmers,reconstruction artists, pouring cement fillings into landfill,hoisted up as window cleaners mopping plaque from the stone.There isn’t a toothbrush big enough.

Listed buildings are crooked statues of an oral surgeons gothic garden.Battersea power station is a wisdom tooth,Canary Wharf and the Gherkintwo sharp fangs.

JOHN CHALLIS

Parliaments’ the central incisorsof the dependable bottom jaw.

It’s definitely a British set of teeth.

Untitled [1]

Scribbled hearts and mine in bloom against a paper white backdrop. The

forecast is heavy with the low and constant hum of traffic. Tonight time

seems stable, unmoving and we equal its terms, with guttural breaths,

the odour of rum.

He swerves to avoid a collision, crashes through my emotions leaving

me curled within myself. Inside the beehive I pocket the honey and later

as he slips his hands inside me he’ll know what I know; that without the

other there is no I.

He recites lines from my favourite poems: coercion, subtle bribery. I’m

powerless to genius and soft tones. I slither from my cocoon.

From this angle the sky appears to shift, to travel through colour, to be

something unfamiliar. If we lived in black and white, would the written

word become meaningless?

I tilt my body towards tentative lips, he feasts, and within millimetres

the universe spins, sirens pierce through what had settled. The spaces

between our bodies form a maze of trapeziums filled with every crowd

we’ve been lost in together and this is perfection.

SOPHIE ESSEX

Untitled [2]

The heat makes him that little bit sweeter, a touch clearer. It’s the way I

imagine broken glass between the discoloured pages of science fiction

novels would taste.

Skin glimmers as though amber. We are entwined on a hillside watching

the sun set into the sea. We talk of how each night the sea swallows the

sun whole only to regurgitate the ball of fire many hours later.

We contemplate reality. I only exist because he thought me up. On

reflection he would craft me dragonfly wings, colour me mint green, my

mother tongue would be French, my eyes translucent.

He exists for me the way the sea only exists for nightfall.

We search for the hidden door on the moon’s surface, rename the dead,

fading stars, create new worlds that will one day crash into ours.

He tightens his grip around my body. I imagine that if he squeezes a

little harder my heart will break and in its place withering sunflowers

materialise.

Our motives are questionable, we are two bodies under sheets, we are

indecipherable.

Untitled [3]

We were years apart.

He was subtle in the way he was forceful. ‘Listen kid’. Seeing those lips

moving to address me: I could do nothing but listen. I always imagined

them pursed against mine. I was young.

Of course he was right but I wanted to learn from my own mistakes.

More than that I wanted to make mistakes.

‘Don’t worry kid.’

But I did worry. I worried about words. The words forming in my head,

stuttering their way out of me, the words they wrote.

They called themselves poets.

To me they were re-prints, cracked porcelain.

‘You’re the hollow moon, you’re yet to be revealed to the masses.’

He had games that I would never play. He was the ocelot hiding in Eden,

I was the shiver down his spine and the quiet rebellion.

Sparks

Tara in her drop waist dress, silver sequins surprised with pink, streaming

black feathers, opens the door whispering happy new year, kissing me

on both cheeks and lips once. Last year’s Christmas tree sprayed green,

throbs gold light over everybody; cigarettes glowing orange, pleasurable

inhalations expose exhaling smiles, warm eyes, good will. Yvie, guitar

in hand, we sang, this is the number one song in heaven, written, of course,

by the mightiest hand. I’m apocalypse happy, I think as parma violet acid

taste seeps into my tongue. Never like Blue Cheer and Windowpane so

Tara wisely drops two. Soon her smile hostages her face, pupils black,

round, full to burst and marble into the whites. Excited she whispers

as I successfully dance in heels, I am definitely in favour of this party. Her

fervour builds, her voice shouts, I am definitely in favour of everyone here.

James Dean kisses her forehead. A Native American pours divine spirits

down his and her throats. She is all of her selves; whispering, screaming,

crouching, standing, dancing, embracing, kissing, talking so fast she

collapses on the stairs, hands clasped together, held to her chest, eyes

huge looking up at some demon possessing her with joy and poisonous

fear of that same joy. Then face down screaming with increasing volume

and foot stamping her heart breaks open with tears and sudden bliss.

Like a champagne bottle shaken and popped she explodes, but instead of

a bottle it was Tara and instead of champagne it was puke. Puke covers

MIRA MATTAR

the stairs, our coats, her dress, the collected works of Robert Frost, the

bathroom, toilet and tub. Yvie scrubs the carpet with bleach and spritzes

her expensive Christmas perfume over it but the smell holds true. People

gather wide eyed at the stairs to see the show. Tara’s dress now in a

puke covered heap at the foot of her red bed, some sparkles still showing

through. She saw past, future and present, in analogue and digital in her

eyes through lenses and screens and did not look away. I took my coat

to the dry-cleaner a few days later, I held it to me, proud, with her vile

magic all over it.

Morality Tale

It’s an exhausting job sometimes. By the time I caught up with the bear,

it was stood, a towering, turgid black post, in between the pines, its

trunk shaking as if being electrocuted. There were slashed claw-marks

on the trees marking his progress, smashed branches, an owl on the floor

with its quizzical face caved in. The condensation from its breath as it

bellowed joined with the steam rising from its shoulders; it shook and

twitched its snout furiously, from which a little blood trickled.

I was stood behind the tree, wondering what my motivation was for being

near the bear at this time of the morning. One only needs reasons in order

to tell stories, something in which I have only a Sunday painter’s interest.

Anyway, it was then I considered the cocaine. Empty Tupperware boxes

– about the size for your husband’s lunch, say – piled and flung around

the clearing, some miles back, where they had apparently fallen: a well-

known dumb-fuck of a smuggler had jettisoned them, before trying to

parachute with a sack of blow the size of a small horse strapped to his

chest. I imagined the bear getting more and more frantic as it got through

the first ten, finding the taste acquired, perhaps, but eagerly, as if its body

were guided by some other agency, clawing the next open for more.

And, yes, there was an ending of sorts. Perhaps the bear died. Such, I

always say, are the wages of sin.

DANIEL BARROW

On Shapely Sisters Avenue

Seb Jenkins’ succession of pithy films will, he’s sure, encapsulate

Wandsworth just as The New Wave -- Rohmer/Truffaut/Godard and

the rest -- has immortalised Paris. Emerging from his high-up flat in

red brick and rendered Sisters Avenue, he’s breached the privacy behind

lit bow windows of Avenue Mansions opposite, swept his lens over

Royal Mail’s random elastics strewing footways, and chronicled the

iron geometry of manhole covers from pear shapes to STANTON PLC

WARRIOR shielding currents of Thames Water via squared-off

Seb has deleted a succession of pedestrians trudging with iPods in favour

of provoking street interaction: beside Avenue Mansions’ stuccoed garden

wall, he places a wooden chair, heaps the seat with salvaged Post Office

loops, prints ‘free change’ on cardboard next to a coins-filled box, and

priming his HD camera, discreetly waits. A youth gathers flowers in the

Mansions’ garden, fastens stems with one of the red bands, and presents

his bouquet to a passing girl. A skinhead chooses ten springies to run up

each arm in order to equal his number of piercings. An elderly woman,

gripping her cane, reads the sign, removes several crimson strips, adds a

coin to the box, and pockets some ‘free change’.

ALICE WOOLEDGE SALMON

GG A S

S

There’s nothing further till a bloke appears with his ‘reth!nk rubbish’

recycling which he drops, bags filled to bursting, on to the kerb. After

examining Seb’s display, he piles remaining elastics atop the coins, picks

up the box, picks up the chair, and walks away.

‘Ye gods!’ cries Seb, who will miss the chair. He pans his camera towards

the privet arch hugging a permits dispenser where the curve of Sisters

meets abbreviated Thirsk, and notes that his sound should fade-in the

clack-grumble Battersea-hoot of Clapham Junction trains.

Dinner with George

The agent, the publicist, his Vietnamese pot-bellied pig – all of them make

this difficult – the girl fans, brazen in lip gloss and Juicy Couture, the

paparazzi who ambush his immaculate dentistry on every boulevard,

and we are so on/off there’s barely a flicker. But tonight he cooks for

me – fajitas again, for he’s a one recipe kind of guy. He chops tomatoes

and jalapenos for the salsa, grills strips of steak, pepper and onion,

worries that guacamole is never enough. He makes a show of mixing

a mojito. Too much like Tom Cruise? he asks, and I shrug, certain he’ll

guess soon that I’m not Californian and that I don’t tan. Then he’s back

on to basketball, how he shot hoops with the guys and could have been a

contender, and he’s losing me – I could drift and forget the Maserati and

his polished days of red carpet and canapés, his sculpted Armani to my

pure flat pack. My wardrobe hides no hidden depths, but still he persists,

and shows me an intense jaw, and as we work this union of air and stone,

I feel a slow erosion, atom on atom, a lifting and settling of particles as I

am slowly weathered to a new form.

JACQUELINE SMITH

JACQUELINE SMITH

Susan’s House

We drive to Susan’s house on the edge of town, out through a purgatory of

Barratt homes and retail parks, loaded with a crate of Fosters and enough

speed to break a coma. And there’s her semi, the end one with a sofa

in the garden and suburban trains rattling past her bathroom window,

taking commuters anywhere but here. The party’s already breaking up.

It’s true that we love each other, she says, glass eyed to anyone who’ll

listen as he, bare-chested, with a galaxy of crop circles tattooed over his

shoulders, grinds his way through the last of her friends still drinking

Lambrini dregs in the kitchen. We take Susan to bed, tuck her in, murmur

a gentle psalm. We find him prowling the living room with enough loose

ends to hang us all. O, Ave Maris Stella, he was good.

Jeremiah

Inside the front hall of the school, a girl stands with a brown leather

satchel hanging loosely from one shoulder. A group of children surround

her in a loose semi-circle, their breathing perfectly in sync though a little

quicker than usual.

The girl rummages through the bag and pulls out an object small enough

to be hidden in her palm. She says something – a magic spell perhaps, or

a prayer – and throws the object up as high as she can.

The ceiling above the children’s heads is three storeys up. It is a curious

layout, a space meant for a stairwell that was never built. Three dozen

pairs of eyes watch the object flash up towards the glass ceiling above

their heads. It does not reach, of course; the strength of one girl cannot

send this item up three storeys. It falls and without ceremony explodes

on the buffed white floor of the hall.

The floor is no longer white. Now it is spattered with what had been

contained in the girl’s fist.

That’s him, the girl says. Now you have all met him.

KIRSTY LOGAN

The children stare at this new addition to their group. A moment ago

none of them knew that the new addition was a he, but now they all

silently name him: Noah, Copernicus, Winston; their favourite or least

favourite of the characters in their history books.

The girl prods at the new addition with the toe of her saddle shoe, being

careful not to smear the delicate pattern he has made. Noah-Copernicus-

Winston gives no response. She takes a step backwards, out of the battle-

ground, and stamps her heel. Still no response.

Don’t be rude, Jeremiah, she says, and the other children slot that name

in over the ones they had attached to him before. He has always been

Jeremiah, and perhaps Jeremiah is rude, because he is not responding

to the toe-prod or the heel-stamp or the dozens of eyes still peering at

every shred of his being. Perhaps Jeremiah’s inner world is so vast – or so

miniscule – that he does not need or understand this semi-circle of eyes.

The girl sighs. Jeremiah will not play today, she says. She lies on the

buffed floor of the hall, feeling the liquid seep into her grey wool dress,

until Jeremiah has gone.

The Man Checks His Calendar and Schedules Contentment

May I come see you this Thursday?

I hate my wife, I want only to see

your toes peeping out from beneath

your black shoes, and your collarbones.

I want to watch diamonds winking

from your ears and your short hair

pushed back, trace the line of your jaw

with my finger, then kiss it,

then hold it to your lips. Let’s

have tea then unfetter the wine.

I am poor in terms of funds

but wealthy in love I will bring a

small bottle, enough for one glass each.

Let’s toast the quiet beauty of escape,

our free hands poised softly on the table.

Turn around, let me trace the zipper

of your dress as it runs up your ridges

TOBI COGSWELL

and crenellations, finally to the back

of your neck, where small hairs whorl

in a pattern of silent chaos.

Let us butter some bread and have

civil conversation I want to bask

in the hush of you, the grace. To see

you this Thursday, I know there is time.

Stowaway

1

I talk from the inside. Pulsating like an egg reaching its term. I think of

this town I’ll be born into. And of my mother who never knew of me

until thirty-three weeks had passed. I knocked my fists against her and

she never heard me; the stowaway glazed with tallow, alien, wrapped in

amnion like cellophane. I’m here I cried out. You don’t know me but I’m

here.

2

I lay slow and silent at first, a slick of cells forming a nebula. I clung on to

the sides of the wall and hoped to survive. All day I listened to her voice

and knew not to make myself known, not yet. I curled myself small so

that she wouldn’t show. Tenuous and shrimplike, inhuman, but loving

her already.

3

I rock, seasick, in her stomach now. A minnow slipping in and out of

blood. No more need to hide. She speaks back to me. Baby, oh baby, why

SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

didn’t you tell me you were here sooner? I transmit answers down the

cord. I did; you weren’t listening. She sighs and stretches, the clicking of

her spine a popped echo in my ears. We’ll just have to make the best of

it. Sore and dragged with heat, she rubs ice cubes on her stomach, the

electric prickles of the too-tight skin. I feel the coolness against the crown

of my head.

Spilt Ends

Sometimes my hands felt as old as they really were. They were so icy, I

put them around my neck to warm them. Or I put them around Soho, my

cat. I had a real date that evening.

My boyfriend Chuck was fine when he in Ohio, but in California he

turned small and brittle, then lost his singing voice. He blamed it on

cigarettes. He spent most evenings at The Full Cup, became pals with a

skinny pink-haired bitch. He admired how confidently she wore leather

everything, even shorts.

I googled Sam Trexter, my date that I had met through a personal. He

was a grouting professional, a “grouter.” I’d be meeting him later for

sushi, and on the phone, we’d agreed to split the tab. Sam Trexter told

me he had bright blue eyes, I could spot him across the room, which to

me signaled colored contacts.

Cleaning the cat litter, I crushed my knuckle. I went and stood in the

garage near the ashes of my other cat, Herman. I still couldn’t bring

myself to sprinkle.

Chuck said I was wallowing. When we fucked, he’d grab my waist and

MEG POKRASS

say “oooooh” and I’d try to ignore how my body wanted to run like a

small, ruined rabbit. Gravity grabbed my body and made me compliant,

but my mind was a leprechaun, jumped over greenery and escaped to the

cool ground, somewhere clean. Afterward, I always took a teaspoon of

emotrol to settle my stomach. It worked perfectly, though the pharmacist

said it was just sugar and food coloring.

The pharmacist knew my name, which made my day both better and

worse. I felt known and welcome at Walgreens, as I might in a small

town, but I felt like a loser for buying so much anti-nausea medicine.

My cell phone clinked like the sound of two wine glasses toasting. The

name Sam Trexter appeared on the screen: Here was a real person,

telling me something. His voicemail said he especially loved Unagi.

He probably thought I’d be impressed he ate eel. I already hated Sam

Trexter, the sound of his name, the sharp sibilant sound of the “ext”, like

a door slamming.

The Hardwood Rose

Taylor, my former life-coach, had sexual dexterity, and so did I. Some day

I’d be old and rickety and have only vague, dusty memories of athletic

sex... and with my family’s luck, I’d be dead before then anyway. Since it

was our honeymoon, I packed lots of Purell.

My emotions were muted, which is why I hired Taylor to heal me. “Meta-

moments and other flickers of hyperactive thinking” Taylor called it,

back when he was still my professional life-coach. Taylor was tied to his

online world - often receiving an important ping or text right before I

came - and I disliked it when he’d have to answer just then.

At the Hardwood Rose Honeymoon Inn, no cell phones or blackberries

or laptops were allowed. There was no cellular reception, which is why I

chose it. It was the only Inn left in the state of California with no internet

access. Their website said, “unhook your life and come back to heaven.”

That’s what decided me, and though Taylor went into a tiny melt down

the day I told him, I soothed him by running to the superstore and buying

him the new Wii Fit which I couldn’t afford.

On our honeymoon, there were no fake cricket ring tones - only our real

MEG POKRASS

animalish sounds, echoing off the cedar walls - mimicking the smell of

pork chops and champagne.

Only a few times did I think about my dentist, Doctor Green. He was

a good listener, would ask questions when I couldn’t speak, when my

cheeks were stuffed with cotton. When Taylor came, Dr. Green (more

than once) got stuck in my imagination. I thought about the dental

suction instrument dentists used to extract saliva - a kind and practical

solution to make a patient comfortable in an uncomfortable situation.

But mostly, I remembered the way Dr. Green would blush and giggle like

a boy when using his special instruments.

Shelley

Blue lipped and arguing, we are house hunting, which I

wish was literal, hats with flaps and whisky flasks, chubby

little bungalow with creamy body in the binoculars

sniffing a well kept lawn, bounding along, finds itself flung

headlong above the dew bespeckled foliage through the bloodshot

sunrise nursing night before in dulcet curses, woke up

next to some clouds it didn’t know the name of and

tiptoed behind them, whilst house dangles in a crude snare,

hoops like the girl you once dated who wore ear rings so big

circus animals could have jumped through them, a sprung

for sale sign demise, that old story, single storey building seeks

soul mate, looking sadly through its ten windows, the eyes of

the soul, no lover but the new promiscuous, brutal patriarch, an

eighteen stone hunk of pure Gilbert and his skinny son on initiation.

BEN GILBERT

‘Got him pops!’ Swig, manly hugging, but it’s

a sober affair under the crimson sky. Dad... measures up

the new home the way an undertaker preps the coffins

for stiffs, cheeks bulging with cotton wool, pencil lips

made up, praying to some domestic demi God that

smells of pot pourri for clemency so he can fit within

the four walled remains all worldly things, but you see him

counting other elements. The cost. How he is going to cram

mercilessly his broken hearts piled high to the heavens in the

musty oak beamed attic that moans with him, his hours of

disappointments in the walk in wardrobe, his fifty four score

years bulging in black bin liners which begin to erase themselves

from memory the way a child an etch-a-sketch

in melodramatic attempt to redress it’s lack

of talent, to begin less ambitious projects

a dog, or car. A house. Grandad in tow,

forever vocal, tells us what’s the point of settling

down, I jest for all the kids I may not know about,

he relays to me that the countryside is for pigs

and farmers alone and for my information, marriage

is a Chinese finger trap but he keeps squeezing

his, her, until the shine pops out of those swollen

jaded bridal eyes, whilst she nurtures things that can’t

love her back like plants and birds but at least

know the difference before she is gone.

Spoiling for fight, it isn’t death that stalks

that tragic couple, the gap toothed Italian idly thumbing

her cross, disappointed stares at the fatally flawed cockney

vampire, but boredom, the silent killer, the lack of

commonality whittling the noose for flabby necks.

And if this is your love, timeless love

keep it. If this is devotion, I will wait until

the sequel. A home, a marriage, a life, shouldn’t

be prison or substitute. You won’t ever

need to fear me polishing your trophy wife, that

isn’t my style. I’m more a roving reporter,

asking the questions you haven’t got the guts for,

like if I’m such a catch then why

do all the girls wading in our mutual shallow end

throw me back, claiming vegan lineage through

those quicksand pupils, shifting all the time,

left to right. And why don’t her knees buckle

under the weight of this. My name isn’t

short for benevolent or benediction,

but my surname in French

means ‘bright promise.’ I will make you

one right here, right now. My soul can’t tether me

to the Earth however rich the soil but I will grow,

out of my shell, through these converted barns

I will burst my head through the roof meteoric

and I love you but I won’t ever be like you pops,

with your baggage, nor will this home be different.

My sofa does not define me. I will not be

remembered for my bewitching combination

of raffia mats. Not will I be a sum of my mistakes

and loves I never chased. This home,

They will take it away from me again. Like they

took the money and the girls and the good wine.

Ivory thighs come from endangered species, those

candle lips? They’ll burn out before the wax

was hot enough

to seal our deal.

It isn’t about the girls or the homes or the demons

hanging over us. It’s about survival in style.

These homes you chase, they are just graveyards

waiting for names, details. You are a monolith.

A living legend.

You are

my Dad.

So let me let you in to a little secret about

what I know about permanence. Today,

I am a one man legacy, a self sufficient drink

they will neck down to the last milky drop.

My body can’t be buried, it’s a

red dwarf seen through telescope eyes

years after death, a mellow irrelevance.

A kaleidoscope of colours that heightened

infatuation, that gave them house

worth worshipping for all the stories

not objects, that I will accomplish.

And my brain? Well my brain

is the monster I will build and

build to terrify the villagers.

Daniel Barrow’s fiction has been published in the anthology ‘Vertigo of the Modern’ and his poetry has appeared in ‘Tapfactory’ and at ‘Horizon Review’. He writes regularly on music and books for a variety of places.

John Challis’ poems have appeared in the Wild Women Press anthology ‘The 3am Club’ and ‘Citizen 32’ magazine. BBC Manchester once described John’s poems as ‘raw & sensual’. He is one half of theatrical construction team Bubble & Squeek and co-founder of music and literary night Trashed Organ. John also reviews poetry for digital literary compendium Hand & Star. John blogs at http://keyholesurgery.blogspot.com/.

Tobi Cogswell is a Pushcart nominee and co-recipient of the first annual Lois and Marine Robert Warden Poetry Award from Bellowing Ark. She has three chapbooks and her full-length poetry collection “Poste Restante” is available from Bellowing Ark Press. She is the co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.sprreview.com).

Janelle Elyse Kihlstrom lives in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., where she received an M.A. in Writing from Johns Hopkins University in 2008. Her poems and book reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in several journals, including Gargoyle, elimae, Arsenic Lobster and Lines & Stars, and her electronic chapbook was published by blossombones. She edits the online journal Melusine.

Sophie-Marie Essex lives in the Leicestershire countryside and has had work previously published within New Horizons and The Delinquent. She maintains a simple website at www.sophie-marie.co.uk where you can obtain her poetry chapbook Unspoken Words.

Ben Gilbert was born in Cambridge, the mobile phone theft crime capital of Britain, but is desperate to shake its image from these roots of depravity and impoverishment to something more scholarly and socially acceptable. When he isn’t moving home or dog sitting in order to evade and pay his creditors respectively, he can sometimes be found pretending to be French with improbably long cigars in the pitiful hope of forging largely ephemeral romances with girls who ultimately always know better. He can sometimes by found battling hecklers at Trashed Organ, armed with a can of cider and witty verse.

OUR LOVELY CONTRIBUTORS

Kirsty Logan is a writer, editor, teacher, grad student, waitress, and general layabout. She lives in Scotland with her girlfriend, who is slightly less of a layabout. She holds a MLitt (Distinction) in Creative Writing from Glasgow University. Kirsty’s writing is in print or upcoming in Word Riot, PANK, elimae, Wigleaf, Popshot, Polluto, .Cent, and others.

Sophie Mackintosh is a student and occasional struggling musician. She has been previously published in Pomegranate webzine, had a short story anthologised, and has been recorded by Poetcasting.co.uk (mumbling the whole time).

Mira Mattar is a tutor, freelance writer and reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and other publications. She is also one third of Monster Emporium Press. You can read her at http://hermouth.blogspot.com/

Thomas O’Connell is a librarian living in the mountains of southwestern Virginia. His poems and stories have appeared in Caketrain, Sleepingfish, and Noo Journal, as well as other print and online journals.

Meg Pokrass’s first full length collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” (Press 53) will be out Feb. 2011. She recently co-authored “Naughty, Naughty” a book of flash fiction. Currently, Meg serves as as as Solicitations Editor for SmokeLong Quarterly and runs the popular “Fictionaut Five” author interview series for Fictionaut. Meg has published over one hundred stories and poems in magazines like: Mississippi Review, Gargoyle, Gigantic, elimae, The Nervous Breakdown, Necessary Fiction, Storyglossia, SoMa Lit. Review, Everyday Genus, Night Train, Juked, Pindeldyboz, Women Writers, and the Istanbul Review. Story links and writing prompts can be found here: http://www.megpokrass.com

Alice Wooledge Salmon, an American in London, writes about Paris, New York, and her adopted city, in fact and fiction, variously published in Britain and the USA. Her most recent UK writings have appeared in The PN Review, The Guardian, Stand, Pen Pusher, Red Ink, Iota, The Frogmore Papers, and elsewhere.

Jacqueline Smith lives in London and works as an interviewer. She has previously been published in Ambit and South Bank Poetry.

When Ruth Wiggins is not writing poetry and fiction she likes taking photographs of women who dress up as super heroes:http://www.myspace.com/wwoa

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We would like to thank all of the lovely writers who have kindly permitted us to publish their glorious words.

All work is copyright of the author who spawned it;all rights belong to them [we are just sharing the joy]

Images probably came from Sam

issue four - September 2010

ISSN 2044-0111