August hauls deep green dreaming into the woods. Even the bracken is so high and thick I am up to my neck. I feel its lure – who doesn’t desire to trust in what’s sprung, the emerald caves, to lean in and be lost. So writes Carola Luther in one of the new poems we […]
Fiction
Gold Diggers Come Cheap
In my second year of training to qualify as a plastic surgeon, I signed up for a research secondment in Amsterdam. Jon insisted on picking me up from the airport. My flight arrived early, and I walked around feeling irrationally annoyed. The arrival area with its high ceilings was dry and chilly, chiller than Google […]
In Praise of Fire
When you stand in front of fire, your clothes absorb the heat and there is a whisper of time, shred thin as a wafer of ham, when the heat is pure pleasure, like the anticipation of an orgasm, before skin cells send a message to brain cells shrieking “Hot, hot!” The neurons fire back a […]
Madrid
Given I’ve been allowed this very special very personal access I can say that on my travels over you on top of and under and around you I have moved more or less continuously without following the least compass direction or straight line rather I’ve been on barely plottable curves natural curves on momentary […]
Object
For a woman of her age, Sally maintains a spirited social life. She has, since her return to Dublin, been part of a group of five that she met at work. Though she is the eldest in the group by twenty years, Sally thinks she does a good job of keeping up with the […]
Blooms Galore
Anne is implicated, folded into his black mood like dry ingredients into wet. Together they make a pudding. A black pudding. Not the delicious kind. Not figgy pie. David claims that Anne has an anger problem. He mopes on the couch. Innocent, and manipulative. Anne waters the garden. She likes to watch things grow. David’s […]