Poetry

Dusk

by Tom Davy The audience departs. A discerning moon watches them, Watch-checking coated herds Emerge into the street, phones out Like fireflies as they flutter about. There’s a dusk around all of them, Its tusks tucking night’s handiwork Swiftly over chimneys. One of three Compliments the lead, another agrees, The third sneezes abruptly to the […]

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Poetry

Serenity

by Anna Wawrzonkowska serenity in the city of spires, choirs and fires is serenity at the side of the river cold springtide shiver is serenity in the candlelit burning waiting and yearning is serenity where the grief is expected and truth rejected is serenity serenity serenity wordless playwright in mirrors fashioning heroes is serenity where […]

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Poetry

The Naked ‘I’

by Lizzie Searle Every day I sport a cloak, A cloak I wear but do not own. I fashioned it from want and smoke And it clothes each frail bone. And with that cloak of smoke and blight, I wear a heart pinned to my cuff. Only to remove at night That sad and desperate […]

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Comment, Diary, Prose

Slow Travel: Castro’s Cuba

by Tobias Thornes Entombed forever in a place where sunlight never shines. Beaten and broken by remorseless hands and feet. Tortured until I no longer recognise truth from falsehood. Consumed by fear, is there anything left of what I once was – anything left of myself? This was not my reality. But it was, I […]

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Creative Writing, Prose

Watching Night Fall

by Amanda Higgin Xanda and I sit in the window seat of the cafe, watching Oxford as it slips into darkness. People below are barely distinguishable coats laden with bags as they scuttle through the damp streets towards some dry, artificially lit haven. Some dusks are beautiful blends of mystery and sunset blush; tonight is […]

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Prose

Twilight Illuminations

by Aidan Chivers ‘Ubi caelum condidit umbra/Iuppiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem’ (Aeneid 6.271-2) – ‘When Jupiter has buried the heavens in shadow, and black night has stolen the colour from things’ ___________________________________ Drawing on traditional Greco-Roman mythology in his assignment of a powerful deity to explain the grandeur of this natural process, Virgil […]

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Comment, Prose

Turning Up Trumps

by Eleanor Harris It is hard to put a positive spin on an inexperienced man, who is also vocally racist, sexist and homophobic becoming the next President of America. But over the past few weeks, that is the difficulty that we have been facing. Time and time again, our words have seemed to ring hollow. […]

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Poetry

Upon Waking

by Miriam Stegmann The gravity of an ending In the fleeing dark Anthracite clouds of breath Hanging low Over the curve of your heavy skull Your globe, world of worlds Allegory of bones, blood, brain Your thoughts A black box Weighing me down. In foreboding shadows you rest Below my collar bone Pressing onto my […]

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Creative Writing, Prose

Fragile Figures

by Samuel Irvine The heavens continue their onslaught. Frozen rain beats down on the rusted exterior of the aircraft, already lost in the storm. Inside, I stare at the small mound of poorly cured furs and scraps of cloth serving as blankets, resting across a row of worn seats that lie on the far side […]

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Prose

Noch

by Kryssa Burakowski  «Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека, Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.» – “The night, the street, the lamp, the pharmacy, A senseless and dim light.” (The Russian sounds much better than my translation.) These are the opening lines to a short poem of October 1912 by Alexander Blok, a Petersburg poet of the Russian Silver […]

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