2026

 

 

MARCH

 

 

Naned Bajevic, Daniel Cartwright-Chaoui, Holly Day, David Anson Lee, Beth Mcdonough, Gordon Scapens, Hannah Stone, J. S. Watts, Jan Wiezorek, Kate Young.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NENAD BAJEVIC

 

Wallpaper I’ve Seen Once

with no real tale to tell

this wallpaper is a conditioning
with no end in sight
on it a squared

ragged coastline
stamped mercilessly all around

 

at the very top
scattered clouds the rest clear sky
in the middle shore and palms
more like a sore thumb
than a common coastal flora
a small-scale drama

near the bottom
where every wave whitens
with matching intensity
and solitary boat that rocks 
free of symmetry constraints

 

maybe this beloved kitsch
with some labour

could even be endured
if it had stopped in time
if it weren’t repeated
at such regular intervals
as if this world were lacking
and had nothing else
to show

 

 Nenad Bajevic lives in Perth, Australia. 

 

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DANIEL CARTWRIGHT-CHAOUI

 

The Bristol Road

 

straight down

the middle

where the tram

tracks

used to lie

and now

just

hundreds

of lime trees

pressed against

an orange sky

and whilst

we’re stopped

at all the red

lights

briefly

all we can see

is the outline

of all of

this 

 

Colic

 

The oblivion of the hour

estranged new

born sounds

and the call of an owl

 

Bare feet padding

on a cold kitchen floor

 

Somewhere,

the night closes the door

unfurls the dawn

and a man

wakes

to pray for

a grandson

he doesn’t know he has

 

Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki is a writer and gardener from Birmingham, England. His work has previously been published in Brand Magazine, Pulp Poets Press, Bodies on Bodies Magazine and The Cannon’s Mouth.

 

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HOLLY DAY

 

Swiss Army Knife

 

The soldier stumbles in place

takes two tottering steps forward

before falling. He pushes himself back up a moment later,

but his legs are behaving like they did when he was a child

taking those first, wobbly steps from one parent to another.

It’s just easier to stay down.

 

Bullets fly over his head, he imagines he can see them sparkling

in the brief, bright rays of sunshine that pierce the heavy clouds of smoke

like stars peeking out through a dark fog

like fireflies winking through the leaves of a willow

overhanging the pond by his childhood home.

 

When you slow this last breath down

it’s like falling asleep

everything turns into something else.

 

The Depth of it All

         

Hobbled by the vastness of space

and the repeated questions of what could be

if only the stars weren’t so far away.

 

They say we know less about our own oceans

than we do about the stars and planets and our moon

but I’ve been in the ocean, if only a little bit of it

and I’ve never been to space.

 

Hobbled by the futility of time, we can only

write down what we know about these things

hope future generations can read our cribbed handwriting,

the scribbles in the margins, the last-minute notes

there’s never enough room for it all.

 

Holly Day's writing has recently appeared in Analog SF, Talking River, and New Plains Review, and her published books include Music Theory for Dummies and Music Composition for Dummies. She currently teaches classes at The Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, Hugo House in Washington, and the Indiana Writers’ Center.

 

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DAVID ANSON LEE

 

Shift Change

 

At dawn the ward hums: unfinished thought,
Fluorescent light on frailer, frailer skin.
The night’s last chart revised, the battles fought
On bleached white sheets where mercy might slip in.
A nurse bends close to hear a careful breath,
A cough that pushes back the dark unknown.
She maps the pain, resists its pull toward death,
Writes hope where fear has steadily grown.
Outside, slow bureaucracies still grind,
Thin compassion to approved degrees.
Inside, each pulse asserts its own demand.
A rhythm no ledger ever sees.
Still she remains, a light against delay,
Guiding the fragile body toward day.

 

The Bells Continue

 

Call it routine: the hollow, hallowed sound,
The beeps that stitch the pulse to waking hours.
They rise like tide, yet still the bells resound.

 

A doctor reads hope where fatigue is found,
Coffee gone cold in windowless towers.
Call it routine: the hollow, hallowed sound.

 

A secretary’s calm voice circles round,
Untangling codes where funding cowers.
They rise like tide, yet still the bells resound.

 

A nurse folds breath, one offering unbound,
In rooms where mercy weakens power.
Call it routine: the hollow, hallowed sound.

 

Charts stack like walls that hem the living down,
Consent reduced to lines that over-scour.
They rise like tide, yet still the bells resound.

 

Yet in their hands, the pulse breaks ground.
A fragile wing that lifts the hours.
Call it routine: the hollow, hallowed sound.
They rise like tide, yet still the bells resound.

 

David Anson Lee is a physician, philosopher, and poet whose work explores medicine, ethics, and the human cost of systems of care. His poems have appeared in numerous literary journals. He lives in Texas and continues to write at the intersection of clinical practice and lyric witness.

 

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BETH MCDONOUGH

 

How to disarm your Baptist in Siena

 

Possess his right arm, complete with hand –
scarcely-fleshed, take a mostly skeletal version.
Research suggests that could exist in Chinsurah
or Montenegro perhaps, whilst for many
his severed index finger still rests
somewhere palatial in Istanbul.
But, for your purposes, we'll consider it here,
in this liquoriced Duomo, silver-cased.

 

Commission some sculptor, advanced in his prime,
scrooge the odd ducat, pull a fast one on funds.

When Donatello's bronze work arrives,
find the great saint lacks a left arm.

Later arrangements, and presumably payment,
fix a prosthetic to gesture at all.
Though no-one's quite certain who actually cast it,
your Holy Man's fully-limbed now.

 

Give the gaunt prophet his niche. Let him call
across hordes who follow rolled-up stabby umbrellas.
Trap his ravaged patina inside walled stories,
floor them in marble, snaked over by more

of those seeking two most inadequate toilets.
In the loud search for that Guide near the door, now
you've disarmed him. Prayers escape into crowds.

John the Baptist still cries out for a wilderness.

 

Sounding out the Firth

 

Firth – that word, understood ahead

of any estuary suggested. Firths to fret

land, firths on maps, violet-inked firths

once rolled out in jotters, pencil-identified,

 

Now, this Firth of Tay; forward floods
with fff, to douse sung shingle's upturned boats.
A fff which fizzes small waves, rushes up

percussioning pebbles. Fff, storms in forte.

 

Fff shifts into its low-lying vowel,
grinds r to find an ebbing th's answered end

of each oscillation. Th, in the shape of this
great place, is never quite river or ocean.

Sifting the push and pull of long river news
stirs with the North Sea's mass, Fir
asks something of Fife, laps sand

at Kinshaldy, and offers up something

to the last of Tentsmuir's upstanding pines.

This Firth, no longer imprisoned by bridges.
Firth, where all waters bow out for Norway.

Firth, now sounding its dancing anatomy,

is that haul, wild between tides,
rocking between fff and th, which growls

deep in its girth, its dancing anatomy and it won't be defined by

estuary.

 

Beth McDonough is a Dundee-based poet and artist. Her pamphlet Lamping for Pickled Fish is published by 4Word. Her shared poetry collection with Nikki Robson, and a hybrid project on outdoor swimming will be published in 2026. She co-hosts Platform Sessions in Fife.

 

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GORDON SCAPENS

 

Counting Nightmares

 

He sends men off to war

where he would not go,

marching towards horizons

they cannot see,

 

and they have no songs,

words dying like flowers,

buried behind the face

of an unknown clock.

 

There is no time to waste

only time to lose,

and man-made trouble

stares in all our faces,

 

writing the small print

at the bottom of plans

for forceful policies

perpetrated as peace missions.

 

This is an uneasy world.

Living is watching peace

walking off the page

and being unable to follow.

 

War is never over,

man has its measure.

They count soldiers going out,

count nightmares coming back.

 

This war slays little dragons

while the big one waits.

 

Gordon Scapens. Widely published in various countries over many years in numerous magazines, journals, anthologies, newspapers and competitions, most recently first prize in the Brian Nisbet poetry award. His latest book is History Doesn’t Die.

 

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HANNAH STONE 

 

Orchard work party

 

Sam is six. His overalls are rooted beneath his wellies

with elastic straps. Sam arrived on the tag-along, pedalled

by his dad, uphill from the station on the bendy lane.

On Sam’s hat, red squirrels chase through oak trees;

it keeps him warm while he learns how

to plant willow twigs (find the nub of bud on the stick,

make sure it’s angled upwards).

Sam’s gloved hands pile woodchip

round newly rooted saplings,

to keep them cosy till the spring time comes.

Sam likes honey on his porridge, from the bees snoozing

in hives behind the shed.

Sam’s life is sweet as the honeycake he chews.

Between bites he chats to no-one and everyone

about the embers dropping with the rustflakes

from the potbellied stove, round which we sit, cradling

hot mugs of soup in muddied hands.

Fire is ‘his fave’, we learn.

Sam is bud and leaf, ember and flame,

feather and flint. Wick to the core.  

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2017), Swn y Morloi (Maytree Press, 2019) and several collaborations, including Fit to Bust with Pamela Scobie (Runcible Spoon, 2020). She convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Leider, curates Nowt but Verse for Leeds Library, is poet theologian in Virtual Residence for Leeds Church Institute and editor of the literary journal Dream Catcher. Contact her on hannahstone14@hotmail.com for readings, workshops or book purchases.

 

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J. S. WATTS

 

The Spirit of The Bed

 

The deep polished beauty of mahogany, iron and brass

stands proudly in my bedroom.

A present of the past, gifted to the future

as they parted company.

Memories of grandmother and grandfather;

the love with which he carved this colossus,

the love for which it was built.

 

Love is the integral part,

permeating each measured inch of rosy grain,

flowing through the dark wood he adored

like the sap which gave it life.

It caresses each sanded curve, each mitred corner

as he once did.

as she once did.

 

The craftsman remaking himself within his work.

With each chiselled effort less was left to give:

just enough for wife and daughter,

but what for a late arrival?

Had you stayed, granddad,

would you have crafted for me?

The spirit of the bed said, "But I did.”

 

Roaming Backwards Round the Circulade of Nezignan L’Eveque

 

Come stroll with me around the village. It is late afternoon,

the sun soaking the stones yellow with heat. In my memories

it is always afternoon, the bones of our feet flexing as

we step on, worn sandals slapping slowly across the cobbles.

Stories walk with us, echoing our footsteps now and sixteen

centuries past. Roman feet marching up the slope of the hill

to build the first fortress. Feudal workers, bishops, acolytes

naming this place their own, up, down, around concentric circles

through pestilence, persecution and health, healing, blood and war,

shadows and sunlight, the village stones soaking up light and time.

Cats flow down alleys and along time itself. Fountains spout years,

the church bells sound centuries: the twenty-first cohabiting

with the nineteenth, eighteenth, seventeenth. Passages cross and cut.

More years than bones in tired feet walk these streets. We stroll down days,

learn the bones of the village through our own, become its echoes.

 

J.S. Watts is a UK poet and novelist. She has had nine books published: five of poetry, Cats and Other Myths, Songs of Steelyard Sue, Years Ago You Coloured Me, The Submerged Sea, and Underword and four novels, A Darker Moon, Witchlight, Old Light, and Elderlight. See www.jswatts.co.uk and http://www.facebook.com/J.S.Watts.page

 

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JAN WIEZOREK 

 

Kennel Cough

 

The paws of a St. Bernard, as large

as the paperweight on my desk.

 

Red-faced, she walks for grief

over Thanksgiving Street, rambling

 

like her big Bernard, saying it like

burning, all lost, all hair and friendly eyes,

 

icy brown, to kennel cough. I took her to the vet,

and it was only a cough, but can you believe it,

 

her entire lungs filled with cancer. I don’t see

her anywhere on the street now. We’ve always

 

had a love for dogs, but I’m afraid of the mess,

the routine, and the constancy of owning a pet.

 

So, now you know how cruel I can be—and that

was the only sign, kennel cough. She turned

 

the corner somewhere around here and walked

home—that was going around last fall;

 

so many dogs had it. All the branches empty.

The hawk weathering from oak to hardest oak

 

to tallest pine searching for what is not there.  

 

Jan Wiezorek (he/him) writes from the Harbor Country of rural Michigan and is author of the poetry chapbooks Prayer's Prairie (Michigan Writers Cooperative Press, 2025) and Forests of Woundedness (Seven Kitchens Press, 2026). Visit him at janwiezorek.substack.com.

 

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 KATE YOUNG

 

Retinoscope

 

Are you not curious about my purpose?

In layman’s terms I measure the refractive

error of the eye; I also look into the soul.

Don’t be afraid, I’m a tool to aid vision.

 

Go on – hold me, feel the cool curve

of metal lick at your skin. I bring clarity.

Take this Arts & Crafts pewter vase –

shine my light into the vessel’s vein

 

run your fingers over hammered Tudric,

each dink and dent planished with intent

as if its maker could breathe life

into the inanimate. Inhale, catch the scent

 

of roses, freesias or bluebells in spring.

Can you see the wake spilling the room

with platitudes and sympathetic smiles

or hear the weep of water nurture a flower?

 

Look around. They all mean something,

these objects invisibly fingerprinted,

layered in wood, stone, rayon or glass.

In your hand you hold a vase.

 

It is more than a vase.

 

Upstairs, a Jazz club in Montreal

 

Downstairs

the club has a New Orleans vibe,

soft lighting

 

tables touching cheek to cheek

and musicians sound-checking

tap-tap-tapping the microphone head.

 

A firefly waitress

flits between spaces igniting candles with smiles,

the taste of jazz absorbed in walls.

 

A laminated menu

floats down to red gingham

sticky with last night’s oil and salt.

 

The buzz is tangible

like the thrill of stumbling across nectar

in an unexpected place

 

an augmented 6^th with illusive wings

brushing my skin,

a momentary passing.

 

The evening begins,

an opening riff defying convention

nimble fingers stretched over strings

 

drum and bass in answer and question,

chords I do not understand

but can appreciate their radiance.

 

Beside us, father and son sit silent,

stare at solidifying chips

and glasses of chilled water.

 

The boy fidgets, knees jiggle

waiting for the open mic to unfurl,

the father’s camera sweating his palm.

 

Only fifteen, he takes the stage,

piano fingers spidering keys

lost in a world of improvisation.

 

Traces of Ellington shadow-shift,

the applause deafening, drifting

upstairs.

 

Kate Young’s poetry has appeared in journals and online. It was also included in Places of Poetry and Write Out Loud. Her pamphlets A Spark in the Darkness and Beyond the SchoolGate have been published with Hedgehog Press. Find her on X @Kateyoung12poet or her website kateyoungpoet.co.uk

 

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