There is no lyricism, it’s the melody that gets you. It keeps circling back like an ice skater with compasses for feet. There are qualities to it, the quaint shyness of a newly-coined word and the urgency of a trombone fleeing an angry polar bear who thinks it’s a runner leaving a block. Without this power, I feel incomplete, I lack a shadow. I am a sundial separated from its gnomon. As night betrays light, the architraves are a makeshift racecourse, shadows shuttle up and th

Ursula Wildt, 2022, Doll’s House after Ibsen, acrylic on paper, 11x17 (cm) They were rich They wore mink They called themselves bohemians And lived like us suburbians They played like us They payed for us At liquor-coloured nights They lolled around And dreamed of us

The not-in-service train ran past, almost sucking her in its trail. As she steadied herself, she heard a familiar voice. Mrs Gardner? She turned to look at the young woman who had gently put a hand on her shoulder. The woman was different from how she remembered her. She wondered whether she could pretend not to recognise her, but then something made her say: Sarah? Is that you? And before Sarah could point out she had been much, much too close to the track, or worse still as

R A B B I T H O L E S A R E N O T H O M E S we tip back peach vodka mixed with gatorade. alice in wonderland flickers on the television, and bridger teaches me to hold my breath when I take shots to make them easier to swallow. we talk about the rabbit hole and you, who has one for a mouth. bridger was there when we split the court apart with our yelling, couldn’t decide who to follow afterwards. tells me you wonder out loud if you spat me out too harsh; if trial should h

A lump of shame spread throughout me as the doctor laughed, his whisper-white office adorned with degrees and expertise and cynicism. ‘You don’t look ill.’ Biting my lower lip. ‘But I feel it. I have felt like this for almost three years.’ He looked over the top of his oval glasses. ‘Sometimes people exaggerate their illness. Have you tried sleeping more?’ Have you tried showing empathy? I wanted to scream. I gripped th

T/W - Suicide remembers the past and will see the future. How things turn, and yet, stay the same. A gash on a forehead. Blood on the rocks. Plunging into the river like Black Tuesday. We forget the steps the future will trace. Not too far, there is (will be) a party. A band plays. The people dance while a man attempts to take his life with the blade of a pencil sharpener. And yet, the water flows. Time is fical, forgetting even those wrongly imprisoned. Only a pic

Help me build a breakwater on our beach, a bold brise-lames, like the one we saw in Brittany, when we were still in love with possibilities. After so much time has passed in facing fraught challenges, les vagues whip up daily. Exposed, scared, we lose patience with our lives, with each other. Let’s set to – protect our habitat. Working together, recalling what works, from those early days, collaboration might save us from going under. Let’s build a breakwater on our beach. No

It’s a funny thing, nature/the sea, makes other things seem small/diminutive. The waves smashing on a windy day, stealthily creeping up the beach and catching you out water over the rims of wellies and then rushing back out leaving behind just the dusk light. The beach gleams with a vivid display of colour pink orange pale blue and deep indigo form mackerel patterns on the surface of the sand. If you look down and walk forward through the sh

It wasn’t the dark cloud of destiny that descended. YouKnowWho didn’t emerge with his terrible swift sword to separate the Be from the Bop. No, this was much worse! At precisely 10:45 ET, on December 7, 2021, a day that shall live in infamy, the Amazon Cloud crashed! Forget Pearl Harbor, this was a real catastrophe! The litany of misery this evil caused is legion: When his internet feeding machine failed, Kyle Lerner, cloudless in Marina del Rey, California, had to feed his P

Arden Hunter is an ND aroace agender writer, artist and performer. They have words, audio and art hosted and upcoming with Full House Literary Magazine, Fifth Wheel Press and Kissing Dynamite among other places. They have two books of experimental visual poetry coming out later this year, 'Drifting Bottles' through Gutslut Press and 'Stop Fidgeting' through IceFloe Press. Find them on Twitter @hunterarden, Instagram @thegardenofarden and at ardenhunter.com.