by Monim Wains On the podium There was uproar in the air! A deafening cacophony of miscellaneous noise. Cheering, jeering, standing on their feet. All for me. I could barely hear my own thoughts as I took the steps, one by one, to the top. As my eyeline rose above the horizon, the applause tore […]
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by Madeline Dougherty ’Look, there, the way the sunset peeks between those buildings? Isn’t it beautiful?’ Her excitement, awe, is infectious. It would be impossible to disagree, but I look to where she’s pointing anyway. My breath catches in my throat – the sunset isn’t just beautiful, it is stunning. The sky all around is […]
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by Monim Wains I can see the lights around me, sparkly and bright. And there is glitter on the trees, little fireflies flickering in the wind. Music and colour fill the scene no matter where I look. Here and there, giants curl over steaming hot drinks, smiling and laughing, all their noses bright pink. I […]
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by Samuel Skuse I. Long drive home. Roads blur into hours. I pull over twice for coffee but I’m not really tired, just bored. Roads blur into hours. I said that already. A name comes sharply into focus on an approaching road sign. A warmly smiling face in the crowd, the only face that makes […]
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by Monim Wains Weeds and vines caught his ankles as he trudged through the undergrowth. He needed to stay quiet, unseen and unheard, but it was too difficult to slow his breathing. He panted and grunted through every step, drowning in the heat. The air had baked his lips dry and hard, but his skin […]
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by Monim Wains [CW: mild offensive language] There was a red hatchback on the motorway, almost standing still. It was sticky-hot in the driver’s seat. I had turned on the fan, but there isn’t much that it can do when the air it blows in is even hotter. The traffic wasn’t helping, inching along bit […]
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by Monim Wains I looked up across the carriage at the man in the hat, swaying from side to side with the travel of the train. The rolling rumble of the wheels on the tracks screeched beneath the city. There was a breeze through the window, but it was stale. Dust and darkness carried through […]
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by Fanxi Liu I had intended to write about language, twisting together the various strands of my degree and eclectic personal interests into a modern monstrosity that reads as if it had been processed through the digestive system of a very sick cat. Coy, cryptic sideways-glances at complex philosophical concepts with impressive institutional pedigrees, with […]
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by Leo Gillard Yes, it was the end. But was it a triumph? The whole city was alight, though not literally. That was the fate of cities elsewhere, but not here. The war, that long, seven years of conflict, had come to an end, and the city was full of celebration. Citizens and returning soldiers […]
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by Monim Wains The muddied ground sagged with the weight of weary legs. Dazed bodies stumbled around, groaning and aching, trying not to trip over the lumps in the soup of soil beneath their feet. It was too dark and wet to tell what they were stepping through; the huddle of the melee had left […]
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by Leo Gillard On a normal day, Bel woke up when an alarm went off. Sometimes that alarm was just his alarm clock, sometimes it was the gas warning, sometimes a medication alert, sometimes a car on the street below or the house across the road, and sometimes it was an air raid alert. That […]
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by Monim Wains Old crusted sand baked under the searing sun. Thin cracks stretched along the surface, marking allegiance, marking blood. Shadows loomed over the lines, walking with slow, heavy intent. Links of chain rattled in the quiet air, as they looked over the earth. They, the powerful. They, the inheritors. They, the nations. One […]
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by Leo Gillard Annie woke up to the sound of an emergency alert on her phone – the screen lit up, the ever familiar sound of an alarm played. The proximity of the strike was three miles, enough to justify hurrying everyone into the shelter at five in the morning. Normally those things were accurate, […]
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by Leo Gillard Kieran was perfectly aware that his life had… not exactly gone as planned. That he was stuck in something he couldn’t quite see the end of, couldn’t reach the bottom of to push himself back up again. He’d gone down the wrong path, somewhere along the line, and he’d sunk somewhere without […]
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by Iona Cowley The snow came over the night, as we thought it would. Slowly white piled up as duplicate of all, inching its way upward, cruel and faded shadow’s opposition. The sky was unusually light, no doubt the work of the millions of tiny crystals that were diffusing the neon street lamps as they […]
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by Leo Gillard He’d never dared think about something like hope. Hope was for fools, for those reaching out in the dark, expecting nothing but still seeing everything, somehow. He didn’t have the luxury to entertain something so trivial, so baseless, so- Orion hoped for many things. He knew the hope was futile. He hated […]
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by Monim Wains You stood at the bottom of the waterfall, pelted by the deluge, punches of weight pounding down on your bones, thumping a tonne on your shoulders. You had been brought to the forest some time ago; not out of your own volition, but by those who decreed that you should exist. Like […]
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by Leo Gillard Content warning: implied/referenced emotional abuse The sky was dark, and as Zach sat on the chair next to the radiator, he could watch snow falling. The street they lived on was always pretty poorly lit at night, but the light from the single streetlamp he could spot illuminated the flakes as they […]
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by Monim Wains A blank white lit the room, harsh surgical light on every sterile surface. It would have felt clean and empty were it not for the sombre that stained the air. Silence echoed through the room. All the colours were muted: pastel blue and that green that looked like plastic dyed in washing […]
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by Kate Whittington My birth is a juddery one. I am seized by quick, tight spasms and then torn jaggedly from white unborn skin. I am imprinted quickly in strong black lines. There is little after-flow of blood. Into her hands, her fingers, warm jittering fingers and wrists damp with scent and sweat, little nicks […]
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by Leo Gillard The sunlight was streaming through the trees, dappling the ground with ever-shifting patterns. As they walked, Sasha in front and Zach next to him just behind her, leaves steadily fell from the trees with every gust of wind. Further off in the distance, Arthur could hear Willow somewhere in the stream. Well, […]
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by Monim Wains Skin pulled tight with springs and coils tense and stiff. Cold attic on a dry winter day, lit only by moon-blue beams that cut a chill in your chest. Each breath ebbing out in gasps. Anguish for a single sunlit ribbon to swim through it all, awashing you in warmth. To lay […]
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by Monim Wains Love has a thousand shades from the mellowest yellow to the deepest red. It paints the grey wrinkles of a face onto a canvas, traced with lolling eyes and a lazy smile. Love. Passion and heat, calm warmth, drowning emotion and friendship. Inside jokes and a decade of moments, threads of memories […]
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by Leo Gillard It was mid-June, and the sun was probably burning the back of Sasha’s neck by now. She’d regret it later, but right now she couldn’t bring herself to care all that much. No, her priority was the ground in front of her: weaving her fingers through the warm earth, rooting out the […]
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by Samanwita Sen You have always marvelled at the immaculate gloss of supermarket aisles, the shiny pages of magazine covers categorized into pristine, neat little sections which spring out to accost you with a lurid burst of colour; lurid, precisely to compensate for the depthless caricatures they celebrate; lurid, as if in contrived rebellion against […]
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by Leo Gillard ‘Ready?’ Arthur asked, his eyes fixed on the building in front of them. It was… small. The garden was covered in weeds, the grass overgrown, leaves still on the ground from autumn. The house itself was built of red brick, a squat-looking bungalow with shuttered windows, the blue paint of the door […]
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by Monim Wains Crisp air blows at my hands and ears; spring breaks from winter. Some days that chill and others that mellow. Freshness surrounds me now; everything filtered with a screen of sunlight behind the clouds. The green grass is shaded a slight yellow, as if the air is coloured warm. My legs are […]
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by Atinuke Olu-Lutherking The silver streaks in her hair glistened in the white light. I stared into her kola-nut coloured eyes. Her delicate wrinkles softened as she smiled. I couldn’t help but grin at her. She couldn’t help but smile at me. Life was sweet. The door creaked open. A woman strolled in. Suddenly, the […]
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by Leo Gillard He’d always been the object of desire. Not… not always in the way he was now, of course, but people had always wanted something. And they felt like they could get it from him, or because of him. When he’d been young, it had been about power. Then again, maybe it was […]
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by Monim Wains I was born green, but thrown into red, white and blue. Two tsunami waves crashing into a grey ten-tonne wall. Tall and loud, rushing and gushing with full force right at me. Two oceans, continent-sized, pushing into each other. A ridge of mountains right between my lungs. You must stay home, says […]
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by Monim Wains Behemoth blocks of glass and concrete rolled by the window of the bus, wobbling in the streaks of London’s rain. Alex gave no notice to the wet-smelling air from the window, too busy tapping his foot on the floor. He kept biting on his lip, his head stiff and restless. Butterflies flitted […]
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by Monim Wains I have watched him, the cherub, from the moment he cried. He opened his eyes and gaped at the sky. His penny-sized heart just fluttering by; pulsing for the clouds, woollen and white. He reached from his cot, with his fingers he stretched. In his eyes, I could see the stars reflect. […]
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by Tobias Thornes I could not know, as I scrambled through the suburbs and savannah of Kenya and Ethiopia while May slipped into June of 2019, that my long Slow Travel – over a year by then in duration – was so soon, so hurriedly, to come to a close. Since that sunny spring day […]
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by Tobias Thornes Cecil Rhodes once dreamed of a railway that would run right up the length of Africa, from Cape Town to Cairo through a long line of conjoined British colonies. One by one, most of the necessary tribes and kingdoms of ancient Africa had fallen into Britain’s grip by the end of the […]
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by Chloe Jacobs In an alcove before the Rad Cam, there has been a shipwreck. Some small vessel has run aground on the cobblestones and left the debris of life behind, floating on thin waves of pure foam. Or, perhaps, these are the remains of an ancient civilisation. Great Pyramids have spilled onto English pavements, […]
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by James Page Crofton’s Seat was built upon an ancient rock overlooking the fields below. The single wide tower was surrounded by a low wall into which a great pair of iron gates was set as a mouth. It seemed as old as the land itself, and as likely to be abandoned as sheltering a […]
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by James Page Beyond the tumbling hills, the great storm brewed on the horizon. Katherine found it mesmerising: its devastating vastness, the way it twisted and changed from moment to moment, the flickering light from within it flashing and fading. There was something strangely calming about its intricacies, despite the inevitable destruction it contained. She […]
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by Michael Angerer Our memories are the stories that we tell ourselves: to remember is to scribble in faint pencil across the fabric of our lives. When inspiration strikes – a light across the ceiling, the warmth of a bed, a cup of tea – we conjure up an image of the past that neatly […]
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by Aidan Chivers The air around me is calm and still as I wake up, but if I keep my eyes closed and breathe slowly, I can still hear the fading echoes of church bells, morning lectures and Latin grace. They have not vanished, but are softly receding into old, fading patterns which hold glimpses […]
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by Peter Pencewing What you are about to read is absolutely true and, although it happened to me, it could just as easily have happened to you. You see, last weekend – after a frightfully fearsome week spent in the Bodleian cramming for an essay due at the precise time of 2:37 p.m. on Friday […]
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The Poor Print 