The Amphibian issue 8

Cassandra Delaney Chitra Gopalakrishnan Ann van Wijgerden Jenny Vuglar Patrick Wright Robyn Braun Thomas Jackson Trynn Kennedy Suzi Mezei Reeya Thampi Moseka Ole Ntiyia Paul Dylan Kristin Zimet Leyla Josephine Alexander Etheridge C.H.Lieberman David Banach Mariam Saidan The Amphibian Andreas Senoner Christina Bothwell Lucy Glendinning Blair Martin Cahill Mel Perkins Grace Hailstone Berber Maria Rip Valerie Wong J.S. Watts Robbie Coburn Natasha Deonarain Marianne Xenos Rosemary Jefford Jo Cora Kayleigh Cassidy Jenny Purdy Charlie Sanderson Angela Gardner Tricia Lloyd Waller David Milley Gabriella Ekman Issue 8 Spring/Summer 2025 Metamorphosis Note from the Editor 7 Kristin Zimet Daphne as a Tree 9 Grace Hailstone Expanse 11 Robbie Coburn Communion for Horses 13 Christina Bothwell Metamorphosis Soul 15 Natasha Deonarain Dream Study 25 Kala Leyla Josephine Toreo 29 David Banach Trans 33 Awakening Andreas Senoner Metamorphosis 36 Valerie Wong Tea Drunk at a Hojicha Tasting 41 The Great Resignation As if You are not The Very Definition of Success Marianne Xenos Furies Unlimited 45 J.S.Watts Deeper Diving 51 Grace Hailstone Starry Sky 63 Paul Dylan (P.O.E.T.R.Y) 55 Grace Hailstone Starry Sky 56 Jo Cora The Last Frontier 57 Mel Perkins Rushing Forward 61 Rosemary Jefford She Wolves Taking Tea 63 Kayleigh Cassidy Psylocibin 65 I am Lichen Lucy Glendinning A Feather Child 69 Jenny Purdy Perhaps I've Been Planted 81 A Work in Progress Contents Front Cover : Andreas Senoner- Mask (Moulting) 48x15x12 cm walnut, feathers Instagram @andreassenoner Back Cover: Lucy Glendinning : My Animal wax, feathers Instagram @lucyglendinningsculpture Founding editor - Anna Potter For Submissions, writing and poetry www.theamphibianlit.com Illustrations and design by Anna Potter www.annapotterarts.com Published by The Amphibian Publishing 'For the Culturally Amphibious' Robyn Braun Bear People 137 Lucy Glendinning 140 Thomas Jackson So Long Left Foot 141 Lucy Glendinning 142 Trynn Kennedy Lovebombing 143 Suzi Mezei The Oppositional Duckling 149 Berber Maria Rip A Swan's Tale 151 Reeya Thampi Turmeric for all Wounds 153 Mariam Saidan I Watch myself Disappear 155 Be Salamati Moseka Ole Ntiya In the Quietness 159 Next Issue's Theme: Refuge 161 Contributors 162 Charlie Sanderson The Night of The Angel 83 Grace Hailstone Expanse II 87 Angela Gardner An Imago considers... 89 Until it's Light... Alexander Etheridge Becoming the Earth 91 Mel Perkins Wild Bound 93 Grace Hailstone Reynisgrandar Face 94 Tricia Lloyd Waller An Act of Poetic Grace 95 David Milley Mariposa 101 Ignition Gabriella Ekman Unhouse 105 He who left for the Labyrinth Whale Cake Blair Martin Cahill HMS Piscaria 108 Andreas Senoner Regrowth 114 C.H. Lieberman Salem 115 Medicated The Moult Cassandra Delaney Stirring Head to Tail 119 Instructions from a Phoenix Ann van Wijgerden Waking 123 Road Rage Berber Maria Rip In Flower 124 Lucy Glendinning 126 Chitra Gopalakrishnan Necromancy 127 Jenny Vuglar Unmothering 131 Goodbye Andreas Senoner Moulting 134 Patrick Wright Changeling 135 Lucy Glendinning Note from the Editor What was remarkable to me working on this issue is that writers, poets and artists instinctively understand Metamorphosis in all the myriad ways it can be interpreted. Beyond physical transformation in the manner of a butterfly or a frog, to the bone deep, painful transformation of the self , the spirit into something different. Transformation into the Other: threatening, beautiful and subversive. Within these pages we meet feather covered children, girls cocooned in glass, men who become bulls, women who are furies, underwater people, wolves and those of us who are born in the wrong skin, and after a struggle become who they were always meant to be. The internal transformations are also present, the transformation that comes with motherhood, disease, old age and death. As human beings we are always travelling, moving from one state to the next, never the same. I want The Amphibian to be a safe place for the voices that are most threatened as we move forward. David Milley, whose work features in these pages (p101) spoke of The Amphibian as: 'Journals like yours make a critical contribution to holding the line against an anti-progressive agenda.The Amphibian is a vessel carrying our testimony to the future. " I have thought long about these words, and they have lit a torch inside me and I feel gratitude and the responsibility of this as we face an increasingly uncertain future. Stay safe everyone. Anna Feather Child 4 (detail) DAPHNE AS A TREE Don’t ever stop, he said (Peneus, my father, river god). Don’t dally, dawdle around boulders. If you lollygag, you dwindle, bog down, get brackish. Let nobody grab you. Go and go. Yet even as he raced he stayed right beside me murmuring in the loose water tongue, lapping me with certainty that fast as he was he never would run out on me or shift his course away. So now I am caught—spiked into solidity, the horizon tipped, flung sideways, vertical, the liquid seconds slurred to a fibrous drowse in which it takes a century to form my name—if {{page}} Kristin Zimet Kristin Zimet Grace Hailstone Expanse monotype here the mother ground takes me for hers, I won’t say sorry. Rivulets swim my roots; springs fountain up my trunk. Lifted from stomata into air they pour back home, becoming part of him of whom I was and am a wave. Juice spills into fruit; it swells in seed so that I come to coalesce staying put with running. I let my branches lean over the bank. We talk and talk. Robbie Coburn Communion for Horses {{page}} I drank each day, as if the bottle was a chalice filled with blood. all wounds become holy in time. you can find meaning in any harm  inflicted on the body    when it’s given a name. once, after holding a steel bucket out  for the horses and watching them drink, I placed it on the earth and knelt to consume what was left. I did this for years, but I would still always be thirsty, soon drinking before the horses and then consuming everything in the bucket alone. I no longer cared for them — only for the desire to continue  to drink this way. until the horses were gone  and I began to drown like a child submerged in water. Metamorphosis of the Soul {{page}} Christina Bothwell Baby Mermaid permanent collection of the Corning Museum of Contemporary Glass in New York. When You Are Sleeping Cast glass and ceramic Departure - Christina Bothwell to depict a soul leaving the body at death. "This piece was commissioned by a woman who lost her identical twin sister. Several months after her sister died, she had the experience that her sister was lying on the bed behind her, embracing her. She felt completely solid, and she could smell her sister’s cologne. While this happened at night in her darkened room, when she opened her eyes, the room was bright with blinding light." Dreaming in Color Cast glass and ceramic Christina Bothwell Tethered to my Heart cast glass and ceramic "I made this after my dog Rosie died... I remember wishing I could transport her to heaven myself to make sure she arrived safely" Escorting Rosie to the Heavenly Realm Christina Bothwell Baby Mermaid Cast glass and prosthetic eye Christina Bothwell Octopus Girl Cast glass, ceramic and oil paints dream study 3 : expansion it’s raining corpses that melt head first into porous, gray-green concrete and you’re sitting on the curb with your arms wrapped around your knees when suddenly your feet widen into the broad sweep of a forked fish-tale and your body cinches together under silvery scales and fins as you slip down the cascading drain into the undulating current below to be thrust into the gushing river’s mouth— stretched into the torpedoed cartilage of a shark whose gills snap open on the side of what used to be your neck sinewing your way through the water’s blood-scented silken bath but now grow into the one-hundred foot length of a blue whale whose sonorous song vibrates around the world like a low whistling pipe and with one smooth stroke of your fluke launch your muscled body into the air when— your pectoral fins lengthen into the elegant arched wings of a seagull as you tuck your webbed feet under your soft-feathered tail and feel your lips pull into a hooked yellow beak and with each flap you lift your throbbing belly higher and higher into the sun-painted air growing into the eight-foot wingspan of a golden eagle spread across the sky— as you extend into the membranous expanse of a pterodactyl covered with a coat of fibrous hair your fourth wing-finger elongated like a segmented hanger draping an enormous cloak as you rise to the beveled edge of a gilded dreamscape frame when you tip your triangulated head down to see the tiny figure— of a girl on the curb with long black hair and straight-cut bangs with her looped arms around her yellow-brown knees sitting quite alone in the rain— Natasha Deonarain {{page}} Iain Rowan Kala’s sitting on the window sill in my Auntie Jean’s kitchen, 1978 She’s got a few missing teeth, grins with red-stained gums and rose-brown skin dimpled like cotton-stuffed nylon faces I made at school and amidst the clink of ceramic dishes, watches the two women gossip and make tea with condensed milk. She’s draped in a servant’s sari tucked into the rolls of her waist, wraps seeds of the psychostimulant areca palm into its leaves with knuckled fingers and pops the packet into the pocket of her mouth, then slips me a handful on demand, age 12, and I chew it happily, fall in love with its aromatic peppery-clove taste. My mother says that Kala’s been part of the family for a long time and can’t remember how she first arrived, always present with my spinster aunt. A long time ago—says my mother—we were walking down a street in Durban and a photographer wanted to take our picture. Kala insisted that she wouldn’t appear. Part of me wanted to believe and after my mother died, I found an old photograph of her at twenty-five, creamy skin and amber-gold hair, smiling as she stood in front of shop windows, a glowing orb three feet off the ground floating by her side. Notes: “Few traditions in South Asia have the antiquity and universal acceptance of betel quid and areca nut chewing. Its popularity dates back to ancient times in the South-Asian community with a foundation based on four factors, i.e. social acceptability, religious beliefs, perceived health benefits and addiction….Although established as a known carcinogen, the incidence is high, especially in the Indian subcontinent…” Singh A, Dikshit R, Chaturvedi P. Betel Nut Use: The South Asian Story. Subst Use Misuse. 2020;55(9):1545-1551. His slick hair is an oil spill sparkling in my lamp’s light. Agitated, he paces the room, picks things up to put them down, grunting. His wet nostrils reduce then widen, exhausting. His tourmaline eyes skate into every corner but me. I’m glad these walls are holding him, I certainly can’t. His anxiety steams out of his pores. I can smell it burning up his insides. Shit. I watch him closely, predicting his next move best I can. If I say anything even a little bit suggestive, he swings around defensive - his tail knocking the clock off the mantlepiece. Spitting out an apology, cursing his size. Toreo (for the wounded bull in my living room) Leyla Josephine {{page}} Leyla Josephine I know what they say about him - the china shops, his temper, the drinking. I know that they are right, and I should be afraid. But instead, I wear red lipstick and invite him over. What fun, watching him try not to hurt me. He shuts the curtains, unscrews the lightbulbs, complains of a headache. Digs into the floor with his hoofs, tempting it to give way under the weight of him. His cut oozes cherry gelatine, stains the walls, my cream carpet. I have the urge to stick my tongue to it - clean him up, like a good woman should. He pounds himself into weariness and takes to the sofa. It dips where he sits his heaving body. He folds his legs under his hard stomach, lowers his head to the cushion, but doesn’t dare close his eyes. Only then am I brave enough to touch his face. He twitches as if to shudder flies off his back. The heat off him is astonishing. I shrink myself, coorie to his muscle, pretend I am weak, but I am wicked. trans boys and girls men and women the grainy fuzz of darkness and the plunge as you work your way down stairs by touch billow and twist, too much for the mind, of snow, of leaves, of cherry blossoms falling pelted by bullets of rain the surface of a pond whipped to frenzy by a frantic gust but light dispels the dark, and the rain likes to settle finally in the still of puddles under moonlight, and the calm air of a summer afternoon, waiting to stir we like our little lies, the diminishments that make the world make sense, the this or that, and the photograph freeze of the grasping mind, the mindless panic of the us holding still when faced with difference. but never us and never the same, the beloved, and joy, ever child, splashes through puddles and love loves inconstancy, the swirl and surge of the same in the many, and the always new of every change that reveals the form of this to that, the blurring boundaries, the underneath energy of chaos, the way that every eternal thing we love is always in transition. {{page}} David Banach David Banach something in me melted looking at the ice crystal rays radiating all akimbo in the tilted yellow wheelbarrow on which nothing depended among the scruff and scraps of detritus at obtuse angles soaked in dirty water frost has left signs pointing in all the random directions showing the way home and I raise my head and see once again the shimmer of the still green fronds of pines in sunlight and the glow along the lower lines of clouds and feel once again the meaning of things including me from a past immemorial before I was there was this call this always urging poking at the place that would be me and I know I cannot answer and I know that cannot does not matter. awakening Metamorphosis as a mask, a fusion of the self into nature through wood and feathers Andreas Senoner Mask 54x16x14 cm walnut, feathers {{page}} Absence 50x14x14 cm walnut. feathers Shapeshifter 80x39x10 cm walnut,feathers Andreas Senoner {{page}} Origins 45x21x16 cm walnut, feathers Valerie Wong {{page}} tea drunk at a hojicha tasting i start waxing dangerously philosophical. something magical about how clay softens water. rounds it out, makes it sweeter. glass bears witness; it simply reflects what is. clay transforms, tempers. together with tea, it transports. aroma becoming one with flavour, nose tasting before tongue. i find myself marveling at tea’s humanity: the way leaves need space to bloom into their best selves. and how these selves vary, from lush, velvety matcha to silky hojicha. some teas beg to be scalded; others thirst for water just south of boiling. and so we meet them as they are, demanding only that they give their best. to be this generous with ourselves. here i am in my thirtieth year sporting horse oil and salt-crusted eyes still choosing the wrong men eating myself sick hunting for purpose like a poacher longing to unzip my own skin there are things boiling inside me even as life’s hairpin turns roil my stomach with nausea on my way to meet my future self i burn through pride like ether blooming underground like an orchid - as if you are not the very definition of success {{page}} truth be told, all we did was swap out old shit for new shit. long hours for longer hours. timesheet tyranny for amorphous quicksand. “up or out” for stubbornly blocked ladders. an army of juniors for sole ownership of dumpster fires…do i sound bitter? you’ll have to forgive me — this is what carbon-level burnout looks like. so much hasn’t changed: the indignity of bathroom small talk. meetings that could’ve been emails. mediocre white men trumpeting their achievements. all of which makes us wonder: were these squid game musical chairs worth it? until it dawns on us, days lengthening, that this is the wrong question to be asking. the answers that count don’t reside at work, never have. what matters is the people we invite into our lives. dogs streaking across parks. devouring cookbooks on rainy days, as british people throw pottery on TV. malty perfume wafting from a friend’s oven. maple milk bread blooming in rest, before transcending into stillness. - the great resignation Valerie Wong She had received one voicemail a night for the past two weeks. Spirits often sought out her mother, but since the coma, they'd begun phoning Delphina. Her mother's people, even the dead ones, liked giving advice. They had opinions about everything from exorcisms to oven cleaner, and when a real psychic wasn't available to listen, they enjoyed the convenience of wireless phones. She grabbed her notebook and wrote details from the voicemail, which described a complicated ritual of physical protection. Her estranged ex-boyfriend's behavior was dangerous and escalating. Delphina wanted help, and she was ready to perform any ritual, but the ancestors rambled, digressed, and took ages to get to the point. A text notification lit the screen, and Delphina paused the voicemail to read. > The dead act like we have nothing but time! ;) The text was not from her ancestors. The interruption came from Auntie Cleo, who was a real psychic, and—as a bonus—currently alive. She lived on the other side of the Charles River. Delphina smiled at Auntie Cleo's joke, and her smile made Styx thump his tail. > And make sure you write it all down! :) Delphina reached for her phone in the dark, fumbling through the tangle of her wings. Since her mother's illness, she kept the ringer on, just in case the night nurse called with news. Just as she grabbed the phone, the ringing stopped, and the voicemail icon turned red. The caller ID showed a series of ancient Aegean numerals, and she sighed, relieved, knowing it was not the nurse, but only the nightly call from the dead. Not the hospital, and not her ex-boyfriend, Dave, but just her ancestors leaving a voice mail. She sat up, smoothing the blankets and her amber-colored wings, then checked on Styx, the small, winged dog curled at the foot of her bed. He was quiet and warm, perhaps overly warm, and his honey-colored wings covered him like a blanket. Returning to the phone, Delphina clicked the voice mail icon. Audio crackled like a dusty vinyl record. Without saying hello, a woman spoke in a heavily accented whisper. Delphina didn't expect her mother's voice. Her mother remained deep in a coma. The accent was like her grandmother's, Greek with a trace of something more ancient. Other voices in the background spoke a mix of languages—rising and falling, overlaying one another. Delphina had never met the caller, but the voices and the background were now familiar. Marianne Xenos {{page}} Furies Unlimited With a click, the television turned on, then her desktop computer, and then the open laptop near her bed. Each showed a picture of Delphina smoothing the dog's wings. The image showed them almost drained of magic and brought a flutter of panic. And, worse, the immobility of dread. She kissed the dog's head and took a deep breath. an ordinary fairy punk, but that was a ruse. Dave ate fairies for lunch. And dinner. He was a demon—and she wasn't being metaphorical. > Serve a restraining order! Bah! We should serve his heart on a bed of orzo :) Auntie Cleo could easily read minds, but she loved texting. It made her feel modern. Delphina thought it was also modern to put people in jail without eating their hearts. > We eat his magical heart, sweetie, not his nasty flesh. Demon essence is delectable with garlic and olive oil ;) Delphina shuddered and went back to the voicemail, occasionally replaying some sections which were difficult to hear. The speaker continued quiet and steady but was often interrupted by a chorus of voices in the background. She pictured her ancestor standing at a phone booth outside an Athenian taverna, while a crowd of her sisters offered tips on the proper way to stew a demon. The nightly voicemails sometimes frustrated Delphina as she took notes. The speaker meandered, offering pieces of a puzzle but never the whole picture. Auntie Cleo explained that the dead often became confused. They had the bones of knowledge, but often the connections had deteriorated. Yesterday's message involved a binding pattern using silver wire, and another detailed a recipe with olive oil, garlic, and the fungus found on the underside of oak logs. Tonight's message was more urgent. Summon the abuser to the stage, the speaker said, and invite the Furies who would bind him. There was a number to call, and a price to pay. The price was steep—very steep—but included all supplies. > Trust the Furies to bring their own silver wire and garlic! :) Standing, Delphina took her phone to the window, pushing the curtains aside, staring at her reflection in the dark of the glass. Television, laptop, computer, and phone all flared with a new image—Delphina at the window, hunched and frail, with a dying dog in the background. Feeling feverish and confused, Delphina put down the notebook and wrapped herself in her wings. She felt like an amateur archeologist, piecing together fragments of a ritual with no context. And in the meantime, Dave became stronger. A whimper came from the foot of the bed, and Delphina reached to touch the dog curled at her feet. Styx seemed even warmer now. And her own wings were flushed and itching. She knew they suffered from the same illness, namely Dave. Despite the locks and spells that guarded her apartment, Dave drained their lifeforce. Her magic was his food, and she finally realized he wouldn't stop until he took it all. When she had first met him, Delphina thought he was a vulnerable soul, and the bad boy charm just fashion and attitude. But the charm was a glamour, a lure. As if on cue, her phone flared with a text from Dave. Although blocked, he sent messages to all her devices—apologies, threats, confessions, and photographs. This was the twenty-ninth communication of the week, according to her log. The text on her phone showed a photo of Delphina through the bedroom window, her amber wings drooping over her thin form. Dark rings circled her eyes. A small yellow dog lay at her feet, weak and listless. The image shocked her—how frail they looked— and then she checked the time stamp on the photograph. One minute ago. She glanced at the window and saw a crack of night sky through an opening in the curtains. Delphina took a deep breath, and bent to smooth her dog's fading wings, considering. Marianne Xenos {{page}} Auntie Cleo, being a psychic, should know that she was already writing it down, and so Delphina smiled again. Every day, she logged the phone calls, with separate columns for the living and the dead, and kept detailed notes on the nightly voicemails. Delphina kept an additional log for her ex-boyfriend Dave's communications. That log contained evidence for the restraining order. Unfortunately, the police had to find Dave before they could serve the order, and he was difficult to locate. He looked like "Hello, Furies Unlimited. How may we serve you?" "This is Delphina Neraida..." "Yes, Miss Cleo contacted us. Is the target on site?" "Target? You mean Dave? He's in the back yard with a camera. But be careful--" "We're on it." The screen flashed with a text from Auntie Cleo. > Trust me, darling, none of this is easy. The hard work is just beginning :( Delphina wondered if Auntie meant the work of healing or the work of being a magical winged operative for three ancient Furies. Maybe both. She lifted Styx from the bed and carried him to the window. The small dog perched in the crook of her arm, his honey-colored wings overlaying her amber ones, and a sound rumbled in his throat, something between a growl and a purr. "Well, partner, as long as you approve." Delphina pressed her thumb on the signature line. The doorbell rang, and a new text message arrived. > Welcome to the Furies. The demon's heart is at the door. Extra garlic on the side. Marianne Xenos {{page}} Silver light flashed, illuminating the yard and dazzling Delphina's eyes. Styx put up his head and barked. Something outside howled, and Styx barked again, standing on the bed with twitching wings and an upright tail. The screens on all the monitors flickered, now displaying Dave wrapped in silver wire, confined in metallic mesh, and surrounded by three gray-haired women in camo. Delphina turned from the screen and looked through the window. The backyard flickered with torchlight, radiant silver, and the surprising tableau of Dave and the Furies. "Wow, okay. But wait...what is the 'very steep' payment? My mother's medical care drained all my savings, and I'm not offering you anybody's soul—especially not mine or my dog's!" Delphina clicked on an attachment. > Furies Unlimited: Offer of Employment. "We have been looking for a winged operative." Delphina looked at Styx. His eyes were brighter, and his wings beginning to fluff out. "Can my dog be an operative too? I'll only agree if my dog can work with me." "It's already in the contract." "Wait," Delphina said again. Everything felt too easy. Getting involved with Dave had also felt easy and look at how that turned out. She also held her phone, a gift from Auntie Cleo, and a direct line to her ancestors. Rather than Dave's illusions, she would choose to trust her aunties. Delphina put a hand on her thin belly and thought maybe demon heart would be healing. Especially with extra garlic. "Auntie Cleo," she said out loud. "Could you connect me to the Furies? And, um, I might need them to hurry." > Of course, darling. They have an express service :) The phone rang immediately. "Fucking Dave," she muttered under her breath. His magic fattened by stealing her own. Both his stalking and skills escalated, but the window glass reflected the truth. Delphina unfiltered by Dave's glamour. Yes, she looked thin and feverish, but her amber wings glowed with life—a gift from her father. Her eyes were sharp and intelligent, and her jaw set and stubborn. A gift from her mother. She rolled her shoulders and unfurled her wings to their full expanse. The voice on the phone chuckled, and Delphina watched the three women in the back yard. One visibly laughed out loud before she went back to tightening Dave's bonds. After a pause the voice said, "Check your messages. You'll find a contract." J.S.Watts Live neon darts through coral gardens, jade, pink and fresh. Small purple fish ebb and flow companionably in an enticing dance of water-waving lacework fans. A larger fish in shiny scales of black and silver mail guards the sherbet crusted gateway to deeper depths where water becomes air and mermaids grow legs. Washed, restored, you step into a place where peeled, firm-fleshed, non-judgemental lovers wait in private underwater gardens of delight. Deeper Diving Flat and reflective as a mirror, revealing nothing below. At first you know only its tenderness when asleep. Approach straight from wakeful, it replays you to yourself – white filaments staining once glossy black hair, lines deep carved in trembling skin by traitor smiles - acid tears. Plunge slowly away from awake’s migraine lights towards the dark’s glistening carapace of regrets - it parts moistly to let the dreamer through, a stranger in an oddly familiar land. {{page}} Your ache to return below mundane’s inflexibility is now constant a yearning for warmly welcome flows and all absorbing wonders. You find yourself sleeping more and more, each siren recall to the yielding underside longer, deeper. Down there craved sparkling prizes compound into sunlit reefs brightly coloured shoals of hope bloom like rainbow spring blackthorn above a softly warmed bed of endless matt black sand where dreamers sleep forever undisturbed, wrapped in possibility. Each gasping break back through the chipped-paint frontier into the flesh-pricking chill of reality disappoints more, like champagne turning to piss before the first sad swallow, making the journey to delicate coral gardens, the warm embrace of anticipation, the exciting and irresistible pull of accommodating love all the way down to the limitless dark of the perfect obsidian bottom, the only desirable direction. Unexpected and brutal, the return to surface efflorescence, disorientated, blinking, panting and alone, crashes you back to corroded purposeless, battered, alienated by failure’s broken-china truths craving the next addictively smooth, soothing descent into sub-surface harmonies singing acceptance, belonging, until the next up-wrenching. More choking returns. Life becoming a cracked, bruising chore. Study for Expanse monotype Grace Hailstone Leaf: rock: touch screen: I see the same thing meaning— woof of earnest language, meat-feast thawing. Sweet resonance: gone from wash lines where teabags swam— now petals diagnose time. Easy tension stretches greenly so do not worry. Cast your chains but forge them loose. Your orange is my apple. Paul Dylan {{page}} Your orange is my apple yet I let you wrap me, blood from a mirror, thunder-dull ennui. The grass tumbles side to side by itself and the wind. Rolling stone, I lie on the sofa about to look out the window. Tails lift to meet me, make me king, baby. (P-O-E-T-R-Y); or Butterflies If so be, so be so, like god is a memory. I keep forgetting my red sky at night. The contents of my self rise as butterflies from a fly trap. The butterflies are dying out. The back of my hand contains all I don’t know what’s falling out of context. Jo Cora Grace Hailstone I followed you to the ends of the earth. I followed behind like a hungry stray dog. The ends of the earth are beyond the poles. There are great ice sheets that drop off into the middle of nothing, masked by a blizzard, the danger only apparent when it is too late. The wind howls, and so do the ghosts of all the dogs who lost their master to the edge, following them to the ends of the earth, as I did you. It was a harsh landscape, but the fear of living without you was much harsher. Wind and snow were our enemy, but we fought them together. I let you walk ahead because you liked the open space to think. I heard you singing sometimes, and I hurried a little faster to hear your songs. You brought church to the ice and rock, and we needed that, to believe in a power beyond us. We heard the songs of narwhals too, a mysterious chorus under the cold blue moon. Foxes watched us walk on the tundra, their polar fur catching our imagination as we named our spirit animals. They were curious about us, and their curiosity was stronger than fear. I knew you felt the same way, and it terrified me. The foxes were just like us, seekers of the truth, invaders of the last frontier. In the distance there were bears, we heard their calls and watched their shapes in the flurry of snow. At least, we thought they were bears, they seemed like sentries on the horizon, warning {{page}} The Last Frontier Starry Sky monotype us to turn back to the safety of the towns. Except the towns were not safe. That was why so many of us left. It was cold in the wilderness, but our tent was always warm. I made coffee on our little stove because I knew you liked the smell of home. I saw you watching me, your eyes vacant, always thinking about what lay ahead, and never seeing what was in front of you. I wondered if we would survive. At night we told stories and I embroidered poems onto your shirts. My body was warmer than buttered toast, but you kept your respectful distance, the words we couldn’t say to each other, stacked between us. One night, as we lay listening to the sounds of the bears you asked me “So what is this?” and you gestured with your hand to the space between us. “This is the space between boundaries,” I said, “like pure untrodden snow.” “Another frontier,” you said, and closed the gap between us until I could feel your breath on my eyes as you slept. In the morning the blizzards were all around us. “We’re at the edge, I can feel it,” you said, and your eyes recognised the fear in mine. “I can’t go any further, I’m sorry.” “I know, but I have to... I must see it. I’ve come this far.” You left the next day, with my poems stitched across your heart and your ribs. I can’t remember what we spoke of on those last hours, but I recall the fear. You walked into madness. The winds were fierce and tried to push you back to me, but you battled forward into a snowstorm, and I watched until I couldn’t see you anymore. Sub-headings “I couldn’t see my hands at times,” you said. “I counted steps. I started to look at the snow as if it was fear, I talked to it, I said ‘I’m afraid of you, but I want to see what’s behind you’.” “And what happened? You were gone for days, I thought you were going to come straight back!” “My torch gave up, I got lost, I shouted but I couldn’t hear anything.” “Did you find the edge?” “…No, not exactly,” you said, looking into your coffee. “That thing you said, the space between the boundaries, I was there. I mean, I realised I was there to see the edge, but all I saw was more snow. More nothingness.” “There’s nothing there?” “I realised I could go on forever searching for something that might not exist, just looking for answers, but I thought, unless I die out here, I still have to come back.” You put your coffee down and shuffled towards me. “And I thought about you, waiting for me, and I realised that having something to come back to was what I’d been looking for since, probably forever.” I looked at colour coming back into your cheeks. The steam of hot coffee had melted the ice on your beard and water was dripping onto the pillow. I remember thinking that when the one person you want more than any other says the one thing you want to hear, it is easier to think about the washing, in case they don’t say it. While I was thinking about the pillow you brushed away a tear from my face. Jo Cora I willed you back to me. I prayed, I cried. I wanted to follow you still, to the ends of existence, but as much as I loved you, I loved me more. After three nights, which might have been three years, I heard a noise, and fearing it to be a bear, or worse a demon, I curled up into a ball and stayed still. The bear came closer, and I felt the tent door collapse with its weight, I willed my heart to stop pounding, but then your orange gloves fumbled through the zip and you hurled yourself inside, icicles on your lashes and your face blue with the cold, or fear, I wasn’t sure which. And oh, how I held you tight! I warmed your face with my palms and saw the relief in your eyes. “I thought you were dead. How did you find me?” You took a long time to thaw, your blood was colder than the snow, which melts easily in my hands. Finally you sat up and looked at me. “What was it like?” I asked. “Did you find it?” “I walked into the blizzard. I kept looking back but...” “I stood by the tent for ages,” I said. “I called your name, but…” You pulled off your boots, pulling a blanket around your feet. “I followed the smell of coffee,” you said, and I wondered how, since I had been too afraid to make it for days. “I’ll make some now,” I said, relief catching on my voice. “So I turned away from the frontier, but I couldn’t find you. I thought, I’m going to die out here, and you will too, because I knew you’d never leave without me, but then I smelt coffee...” And you kissed me then, and I pressed my body into your arms, exploring every space between us. I never revealed what I knew about the coffee. Maybe something guided you home that day, or maybe senses are more enhanced at the edge, but on the coldest nights I still sit a while outside our cabin, a warm drink in my hands, and I think about that journey to the ends of the earth. Rushing Forward (transformed by river and sea) I was inspired by the classic David Hockney painting Splash and the reminder of the feeling it gave me when viewing it. A split second painting of water, adrenaline, a rush of energy, frozen in time like a millisecond photographic shot. I wanted to do the same with this small body of work. I wanted to recreate the feeling of energy I have when water touches my skin and also the physicality of the rivers movements, the way it looks how currents can seem so strong they can appear more solid than liquid I allow the natural water to shape the image I have drawn or photographed on paper I have made myself. The flow of the river or the tide sculpts a 2d image into a form that expresses a moment. Mel Perkins {{page}} Jo Cora Rosemary Jefford She-Wolves Taking Tea {{page}} On lace capped table, below the moon there’s china – in blue obliqueness and wolf white – a slim brown biscuit in the saucer – a certain angle of the chair turned half slant so eyes don’t meet so often – or of their own volition – Hers turned to light outside as a bare fronted hoodwink in winter or drinking deep from her wineskin – for afternoons as these, watching the shape of the lace fray that edges every word and still oppresses. She listens to the moon – white disked like a tilted saucer in the black-blue sky, the twang of this unlived life before her as a heft of gut string slapping on bone - or of metamorphic rock, as a locked cathedral. She flies on laced wings to blood moon’s thousand tunes. Andre Peltier inside the family home his mother is crying. her husband holds her waist. we thought this day would never come. why didn’t you invite us to the wedding? brexit, i reply. / {{page}} Kayleigh Cassidy i am lichen a week later, rock waves us goodbye. no kissing, rock says with a chuckle. no kissing, i nod. / my best friend is called rock. on a hot summers day, his husband asks if i’ll pretend to be his wife. they sit on one side of the coffee table, holding hands. the mango wood is dressed with feta parcels and tea. i sit opposite, my tote bag in the empty chair beside me. we feel that if they think i have a wife, it will shut them up. get them off my case, he says, pouring tea. mint and honey fill my nose. i lift my tea cup and sip. the roof of my mouth burns. my tongue touches the skin, inflamed and baggy. it hurts, but i don’t say anything. / after a couple of hours, i let rock into my flat. do you love my husband? he asks. snot and tears stream down my face: weathering, corroding. the pain catches in my throat. i gag, hiccup. returning from the voyage, i land somewhere new. you, i mumble. his hands cover mine. but his eyes? i’m not ready. gazing directly at the sun burns. icarus and all that. Kayleigh Cassidy later in the taxi, i look at the belated wedding gifts. have i lived to the fullest? words fuel voyages: to another planet, another face. terrain like mars, atmosphere like venus. are you sure you're gay? i say, kissing him. lichen grows on plastic, he whispers, wiping his face. / psylocibin today i am one hundred percent feel good, i’ll touch and be touched. sun slanting through clouds. last nights sky was red raw. grapefruit pink. lush. but yesterday wasn’t my day, i was under something, a cloud. lost. hiding is a form of dying but also– rest. i’m bigger than i ever thought i would be. got a host and i’m growing through bone. get those bugs to jump off tree tops. get those bugs to bite into their own evacuation. get those bugs to die so i can live and voyage onto paper. hiding is a form of rest but also– fear. hiding is a form of fear but also– pleasure. BOO! hide is return, is to be missed, is to be unready for your becoming. My Animal (detail) My Animal Inside the animal stirs stretching limb and pulling flesh amongst the twisted guts and unchewed food. The creature grows in skin and bone from skull to toes it pulls me in. With the slow pulse of red flows it pumps itself to every limb. I wrestle logic against its grip argue fact to stop its fix. but every time it comes and goes I want more to be in its throes. {{page}} Lucy Glendinning {{page}} Lucy Glendinning Fledgling Feather child 3 Lucy Glendinning Fledgling (detail) {{page}} {{page}} While they sleep We watch them with swollen hearts. transfixed by purity of the just arrived. We wish them lives full of flight So we tie them to the nearest disguise, and resolve ourselves to hold them tight. While they sleep we whisper in their ears believe like me, and you’ll know no fears Don’t knock or unbalance what is here Tradition will keep everything clear. When they wake we wash them clean, We love them more and ask their dream. With choking hopes our words are heard and they will be a child of our god without too much more than this silent prod. Feather child 6 Feather child 1 Lucy Glendinning White Hart {{page}} I am not I am not a bird held in this place, my feathers are only drawn. I am not a bird held in this place, yet my cage seems fully formed. I am not a bird I cannot fly I do not easily die I am not good to eat I have quite normal feet. I am not a bird held in this place, so why can’t I open the door. Pink and fluffy little darling A Feather Child Lucy Glendinning Will we be able to resist it? The endless opportunity to better our future selves, to improve the human race, to slake our appetites for more. Will we be able to resist it? Once we have cured the sick, to improve the well, what fun we’ll have making useful modifications improvements for special vocations. Will we be able to resist it? A decoration applied with a gene, not a needle. To breathe under water wouldn't that be useful, or to fly who couldn’t aspire. To be special a frequent desire once we are no longer child. Will we be able to resist it? Is evolution ours now? Will it be like most, money buys the prize? You will need to be someone like a Sackler to be able to fly. Or to glow in the dark a Bezos or a Musk. Is it changing now, are we in daylight or is this dusk? Jenny Purdy Refugee Homecoming I’m learning how to rest before my body demands it savouring the pause instead of rushing to fill empty spaces A work in progress Anna Potter {{page}} Perhaps I’ve been planted I was scattered before I took root on the other side of burnout, where the cave mouth opens. I won’t bow my head from the brightness this time I’ll soak it deep in my bones and cradle the droplets of light – I won’t be wrung dry. The Night of the Angel Charlie Sanderson Upon waking the silence was all dressed up in presence. At my back, as I sharply turn over on the new mattress, there’s a man, half naked, half feather stone masked stood beside the bed. Watching me, I thought, he’s watching me, isn’t he? I screamed of course. Of course I did. No one expects to wake in the corpse of night to masked ballerinas by the foot of the bed. Ghost, angel, man, woman, alive or dead? I wasn’t sure. Something ancient. Not God, what would he want me for? But it was divine. Spirit. Guardian. Angel. Seraphim? I remembered the round flat spotted jasper left accidentally in the bathroom, go and get it something said, I heaved myself away from the hot messy duvet nest, staggered to the windowsill next door and clasped the stone. Moonlit cool, crystal rock, on my lifeline. The spirit had hidden himself away by the time I returned, cut through with my fear and the electric bulb. My son was waking. {{page}} Handing my lifeline, this time, to the cool front door window glass, stronger now, not this time, I say, feet rooted into cheap rental laminate, ants and earth worm beneath our toes. They could see, feel and hear me. This time. That night, the night of the angel as I like to call it, my son slept at the foot of my bed, on top of the duvet, like a little human kitten. Upside down us, like the bedroom on the ceiling in the museum. Humans are born physically helpless; spiritually fierce, society, tradition, expectation easing us into a helplessness of sensibility. Since then, I came to realise that the spirit was not watching me, he was watching the wolf, he was watching over me. A wild, dangerous old hag of a thing hunched on the other side of the bed and begging for my fear, with which, he could feed his own. Ancient he was, with terror, it was all he knew, fixed in the quarried foundations of these walls for what had felt like eternity. Mummy, they are here again, just so you know. My son would say. I performed a ritual then, in candlelight, in midwinter, holding the space against the back wall where the dog began to dig downstairs, where the cold came in at us unexpected, from the place the wolf and the children told us they were trapped. You are safe I told the young woman first as her figure floated beside me, peripheral and fleeting, I had thought that there were more, but thinking and feeling and seeing are not the same thing. She lingered by the door where I could only feel her slightness, her lightness now she was finally free, you can leave now, I told her, can I? She wasn’t sure. I realised neither was I. There was something holding us both in a trap and it occurred to me that the time had come to seek our own permission to be free. Yes, I said, formed my words like a balm of silk on hot skin, like a prayer in my head gifted to her on a raven’s wing. Go in the way of light and love. Go, be free, be free, be free little dove. Some following night came more, in the far corners of my bedroom, masked like the first one but they weren’t the same, named: mischief, fear, trouble, tricks, snake. This had been going on for some time. Night hags, shadows, lights that were not lit. Terror, only I was not asleep, I had been awake for all of it. Gathered spirits, tricksters, children even. I asked them to leave and then on a bout of some, rather surprising, inner strength I stopped asking and held my space. In love, in light, in grace. Drew boundaries across the bedroom floors, in air, in kisses, invisible to the naked eye. I am not ready. I whisper firmly to them. They crept away tutting, dragging their feathered heels through the cupboard doors. And in time they left, the dog lingering a little longer, to scent for himself the boy I have grown from a seed to a kitten to a watcher of light. And so, you see, I’ve thrown logic aside, allowing a child to teach me who we really are, to stand in truths, to know fear as an ally. One day when he is grown, I will need to remind my son of the spirits he can no longer feel. Within a week I was sleeping. We all were. At last, free to fall into rest, if but for a short time. Night men came, scraping the road, to hurt me again, the dog’s throat rumbling tunes of menace at the wall of trees and sky beyond the front gate. I turned on the light outside, I could not see them, but I knew they were there. Are you afraid or just awake I asked him, I am awake mummy, you are afraid, he replied, his eye’s darting as he watches spirits ceiling dance, and I beg logic back from the edge of unreasonable hysteria. Two years wise, my boy, his short life hasn’t taught him the institution of fear, yet. He isn’t crazy, or mad, or insane, he is simply seeing what is in front of him, the line between his mind and space much the same. Grace Hailstone The angel stood with me, beside me, within me. No, thank you. From the palms of our feet to the souls of our hands, into the night between bracken and branch. No, thank you. In the light made by man, in the one star hung like hope on a rope, watching the squirrel twitch tails and the acorns shake. No, thank you. I have a child to raise. An arched circle drew its line around us. Wings opened a breathless ribcage. And we nestled safe, safest yet, protected. Me, the dog, the watcher, the wolf, all the spirits and my son. Soon, we would be ready. And all the angels would come. {{page}} Expanse II monotype {{page}} An Imago Considers her Transformations but so surely is the unruly bestowal let loose from love that I become intrinsically disordered. a switch, that can’t see the signals between my cells, unzips the self from its silk and honey cocoon. inflorescence. oh! our macroscopic eyes in these early nymphal stages. hidden flesh jointed and bulging over a corset exoskeleton its beginnings, its form and its transitions. the whole process wedded to an impossible beauty. if it is a reverence, are we a different thing when love changes us? reality new arrayed. peeling off work clothes (those tired layers) until inside is outside. the old uncertain is moulted and with a strange and flickering sensation — stigma, style, stamen, the dripping nectary, I become someone else — to ballgown with the zipper stuck on flowers. Angela Gardner {{page}} Until its Light, in that Vessel, Falls Away A sky indefinite and indigo as the sun at its pinnacle or as thunder, drones. Something in the way of light…the season, after Summer, before it is Summer again : an in-between where tomorrow’s clouds are forming. Low: in twists and turns, circling, a body in motion follows flying, passing, revelatory, detecting an opening, breath inside the flesh. A life held in observance or adoration until the light, in that vessel, falls away. To lift is to lighten its ritual hold of air to earth. Crouched in the mechanics of grief it is a strangeness; lacking sound or colour a world of unmarked paths. For everything depends upon the other, even if by that very instrument, parts of the whole tear other parts to bloodied fragments - as a prey animal is heaved from its body in shrieking terror. Mel Perkins Wild Bound (transformed by river and sea) Angela Gardner Becoming the Earth —after Rolf Jacobsen {{page}} Alexander Etheridge I want to leave myself behind, so I clear my head, and open my soul to the willows and blue creekflow beside me. I want to be everything here in sight that isn’t me. I want the calm of the quietly webbed tree roots, and I want the slow word of the mountain range. I’m grateful for every unfettered moment, every silence, even my terror and loss, anger and bitterness, as they respell me as earth itself, with its forest wildgrass and chambers of dawnlight that bring me the hushed tongue of Heaven’s realm. Tricia Lloyd Waller {{page}} It has been said by those who have earned the right to be acknowledged as Elders that this particular child is burdened with brainsickness. And yes, she is indeed a little odd, an anomaly here amongst these People with their high expectations of conformity. Sitting alone in the farthest corner of the schoolroom; staring with unseeing eyes at the dark olive ceramic tiled wall. An Act of Poetic Grace The Master has tried every which way to engage this (small for her age) child into his compulsory curriculum – bone wearyingly boring though it might be! But still she sits alone. Reynisdrangar Face Grace Hailstone next to the battered brick wall. Little head thrown back staring up longingly at the clouded sky and this is her every weekday. Choosing to dwell within her own diorama of dappled grey doves, cheerful chaffinches and melodic blackbirds. She would that she might become a true bird-girl and not just in her imagination. Amalgamate humanity with avian and fly away. Escape for eternity where the snow geese migrate. The potent, enticing aroma of freshly baked light-as-air sponge cake wafts in through the cracks of the ageing, grubby, green plaster walls enticing the little scholars towards the recently polished parquet floored dining hall. where the rosy, apple-cheeked cooks await their ravenous diners, shiny silver ladies poised and ready for action. Of faces that loom large – too near – too much! Of indecipherable emotion and unwelcome touch Of movements and gestures, traditions and culture that she has no interest or understanding of. This world of offensive odours, fast moving images and people. She is allergic to humankind! Fly high away from this world of concrete and brick. This place of volcanic vagaries of words that have no meaning for her; words that slip and slide inside her head like melted honey. Tricia Lloyd Waller She sits at the end of the Formica topped table pushing her portion of shepherd’s pie around the institutional green chipped plate and never raising the bright fork to her mealy mouth. She doesn’t even bother to collect her sponge cake and lukewarm custard with the skin forming on top. Just wanders slowly into the bitterly cold playground. To stand alone {{page}} She plods toward the dining hall, dull brown eyes downcast, skinny shoulders slumped; not wishing to arrive for she is never hungry. Alone again But one rain drenched Sunday morn she creeps quietly from her truckle bed into the dense woods deftly climbs the great oak stretches from tiny toes to tender finger tips and slowly softly her delicate diaphanous fledgling wings begin to tremble, unfurl and At long last she is truly flying: tentatively at first then..... ascending to glide and tumble to hover and soar. Liberation at last amongst the gentle winds. Every movement an act of poetic grace. Flying with her own kind; accepted for who and what she is now and will be in the future. To have faith is to have wings. And with one last triple somersault Grace is gone. Journeying with the snow geese – perhaps? Tricia Lloyd Waller In the news today, a foolish man died, killed by the homemade blue smoke bomb he'd made to say what he thought would be the fate of the fetus filling his wife's womb. It still seems important, I guess, to some, to decide if every child will be boy or a girl. As if there aren't enough of both to spare, like those are the only choices in the world. Today, Jae turns thirty. Jae unfurls gender, speaks at last their own true name out loud. Free now, Jae dons new garb, looks up, breathes, turns to face the world made new, proud. A shadowed orb spins slowly, suddenly alight. Clouds sunder. A newborn star burns bright. Ignition David Milley {{page}} You'd never know to see us here, but we are lovely things. We hang by threads, sleep in uncaring cold, frozen, until that day sun warms us. We crack the shell. We cling, dry our crumpled wings, stretch them in the light, and then we soar, glorious and common, innumerable and rare, every perfect hue of bronze and black, gold, white, and tan. Mariposa David Milley Unhouse Who lives here? Not I. This house tilts into wind. Who lives here? The mouse, who’s woven my gray hair and old newspapers into a nest tucked in the kitchen drawer. Who lives here? Old brown leaves, grumbling back and forth across the kitchen floor, like a broom and its woman. For forty years they’ve been having the same conversation. Who lives here? The deer. I fell asleep beside the open door and woke to find her on the threshold wearing the sunset for a Sunday hat. I have come to take you home, she said. I am home, I said. I am open. {{page}} Gabriella Ekman this poem is for my brother whom no one knows not the salt-eyed sky he roams across unwashed, unhoused, giving rain with the broken cups of his broken hands. it is all our fault, but when does a wound begin? With the first father dragging the first lambskin son up the first, burning desert hill? With the first sister watching the first brother set sail defeat the beast, be a man, grow a pair, crying is for girls, and did nothing? we thought when he left hay-haunted and golden in moonlight, humming that hollow-boned song and stretching his sharkfin wings until they slapped at the bright, wet wind he would return. you do not believe me. but I was young once too, and waited at the bend in the river for my mother’s son, my father’s love, rising just above the arc of the water. He who left for the Labyrinth Motherhood swallowed me like a whale I swam inside to rest. It was warm in there and wet, too dark to write by but not to eat cake. And oh I ate and I ate. Vestigial tail rocked loose I floated deep past weather. Let our mammal lives complete like this: tucked in, round into the origins of things. Little tadpole heart little crackling flour pouch wake up salt are the stars the whales left behind in our pockets, once long ago, when their ancestors first swam out from land Let us follow. Gabriella Ekman Whale Cake Blair Martin Cahill The Marquis embroidery on textile, framed 2024 In the late 1600s, a notorious figure known simply as "The Marquis" held sway over the high seas and noble courts alike. Born to both the nobility and the ocean’s depths. His life was a scandalous blend of decadence and debauchery, filled with high-stakes gambling, raucous champagne-fueled gatherings, and bawdy limericks that had a way of leaving his audiences both shocked and charmed. This eccentric Marquis was a regular at every dimly lit tavern and opulent salon, always spinning tales of exploits about his beloved ship, the HMS Piscaria. Manned by fish-like sailors of fierce loyalty and stranger origins, the Piscaria roamed the seas in pursuit of treasure and revelry. Together, this strange, seaworthy crew painted the coasts in hues of salt and scandal, leaving legends of their daring escapades whispered in every port. The Marquis HMS Piscaria {{page}} The Captain embroidery on vintage textile, framed 2024 Blair Martin Cahill The Captain, half fish and half human, commands the HMS Piscaria with the quiet intensity of one born from both land and sea. His upper half resembles a seasoned sailor, marked by scars from decades at sea, but beneath his salt-weathered coat, scales shimmer in hues of deep blue and silver, glistening like the ocean itself. With webbed fingers that move as deftly as any sailor’s hands and eyes that see with both the cunning of a man and the instincts of a fish, The Captain navigates treacherous waters, sensing every shift in tide and change in current. His crew, loyal and also of the sea’s own lineage, follow his orders with a respect deep as the ocean trenches. Under his command, the Piscaria sails boldly through storms and battles, a spectral ship that seems to blend with the waves, always just beyond the grasp of land-bound eyes. The Captain Boatswain’s Mate Billy 61 X 61 X 7 cm,36 X 36 cm 2024 Embroidery Boatswain's Mate Billy Blair Martin Cahill Throughout history, fish have symbolized the fluidity of change, transforming in ways that inspire awe and wonder. Just as water molds the path of a river, fish embody transformation, adapting to shifting currents and evolving over millennia. This metamorphosis mirrors the journey from the depths of the ocean to the expanse of human imagination, where fish transform into sailors navigating uncharted waters. In folklore and myth, fish often morph into beings that conquer the seas, embodying the essence of adaptation and resilience. These tales remind us that evolution is not just a biological process but a narrative of overcoming challenges and embracing new roles, reflecting our own journeys of change and growth. This aquatic mariner, clad in a traditional 1600s sailor uniform, began as sketches and collages by Blair Martin Cahill. After researching the lives of crewmen, the character of Billy, the Boatswain’s Mate emerged. Blending the history of maritime exploration with fantastical elements to bring his world to life. To achieve the desired texture, 40 different thread colors were used, carefully layering them to bring depth and richness to the design. The layering process was intricate, with each hue adding a subtle nuance that enhanced the overall visual impact. Blair’s goal was to create a piece that felt both antique and whimsical, capturing the timelessness of maritime history while infusing it with a playful, imaginative spirit. The result was a harmonious blend of old-world charm and fantastical storytelling, embodied in every stitch. Andreas Senoner {{page}} Regrowth 47x20x18 cm walnut Salem Ephebopus Murinus (skeleton tarantula) C.H.Lieberman In the ordeal their body became soft like tissue paper, limbs slack, one leg twisted behind their back. Their anguished exoskeleton hugs them from behind like a lover, paralysed in the arms of the other. How terrible to get stuck, and to never know why. How brave to try. C.H. Lieberman Medicated Here I am clutching at the air, letting bacteria into the little tears in my skin. August, we didn’t make plans to see each other again, but I watched you crawl across the calendar like a spider in its web. It’s hot enough to cook flesh and everyone else prefers to stay inside. I pretend I am the only one left alive, watering the garden — for what? Instead of hurting myself, I eat; instead of hurting myself, I sleep; I clean out the chicken house. The Moult (ii) Your whole body weeps an open wound when I kiss you I choke on your teeth taste the flesh beneath your skin you cannot bite with empty gums or scratch your fingers blunt and bloody and somehow I still walk away bruised. {{page}} Stirring Head to Tail Never eat anything bigger than your head is fine advice if you want to stay the same. Better to break wide open like Zeus birthing Athena. He probably didn’t like the idea, would have preferred to lay down with a cold compress. I’m glad he went with the axe freed all my sister Athenas, ululating yiyiyi they lunge at the horizon. Others morph like tadpoles swapping tails for legs as if they were trying on clothes at a thrift shop. It doesn’t matter if you’re all-of-a-piece yet only that you’re stirring your own unlikely concoction, the stuff of mermaids, centaurs people who show up at a party with big ungainly ideas like mushrooming bundt cakes and a set of plastic forks. Cassandra Delaney The skin-peeling pain the sudden realization that all the materials of our lives are combustible, even on our best day we were gathering fuel for this fire The discarded candy bar wrapper at your feet specific as a punctuation mark, ignites a little firebird flutters upwards it was waiting for you to see it burn and burn with it The embers, the aftermath reveal a frame both stronger and lighter than imagined this aerodynamic skeleton all that’s left, all that’s needed Only once we become capable of flight do we allow ourselves to remember this is the province of our species We are made to burn. Instructions From A Phoenix Cassandra Delaney Nobody likes to burn but burning is what we do when the detritus of our lives covers us like peat the pressure converts to heat and we burn Disjointed conversations, an aside more meaningful than the original train of thought, sparks like a stray cigarette ash in a field of droughted grass, catches and begins to burn When there is no escape, fire exits blocked by towers of old clothes, failed report cards, lab results divorce decrees, the inherited family heirlooms... When we are trapped in the stairwell between one truth and another with nothing left to do, but drop in our tracks and burn Heat, smoke and spirit rise converting long held beliefs to carbon nobody likes this part no one would strike the match themselves nobody wants to burn {{page}} WAKING “Dreams fade with morning light, Never a morn for thee, Dreamer of dreams, goodnight.” - Roberto Bolaño Ann van Wijgerden Breaching surface a mermaid reborn to walk the earth. Dripping from scalp from ocean pressed ebony tresses– seawater celestial blues prismed through trans- terrestrial matrix of sentient light. Higher she rises faster falls these dream sapphires of iridescence into oblivion of the forgotten. in flower ROAD RAGE Berber Maria Rip Ann van Wijgerden frozen in flight headlights full beam bearing down on rabbit-me helpless in rage impotency but how could a child protect a mother from lashing tongue of another the truck long passed I scoop you up press cheek to quivering fur in ear’s velveteen whisper whisper their anguish is over our torment too now run rabbit run I’ll run with you the road is empty horizon bright with dawn I turn to fly rabbit-me gone Chitra Gopalakrishnan I awaken to a familiar three a.m. forlornness. I inhale its presence on my pillow. Its sullen, stubborn, forceful animate-ness. As usual, in this twilight hour, in the inky stillness, this nebulous being, with no recognisable odour or shape, makes it presence felt as it gathers its incorporeal adjuncts and accessories. I am filled with forebodings but my predictions are always right for after all I have known this thing, call it what you will, in the last six years when I touched the midstream of my life, my fifties. I loathe to label this ‘thing’ that has a grip on me as this or that because it is not one thing but a crowd of things that clamour in mutiny with twists and turns of meaning. Yet I know if I don’t identify this emotion, or emotions, they would be shrugged off as spurious, illusory. So I tag it as dementia. On other days, I say it is anxiety to myself, on yet others I call it disconnectedness or depression or isolation. Today, once again, I feel this presence come into being, as it always does, as a wobble within my brain like soft, gentle, frothy soap bubbles. I wait for the build-up, for the feral rummaging that will gather force, brim over its linings to burst into the emotion-related swathes of my cerebrum. It happens just as I envision. I feel it as ache in my head and as disarray where my emotions, known and unknown, dart, collide and create a hullaballoo; my brain tells me one thing, my instinctual wisdom another. The panic of losing my mind is real. This instability then makes itself palpable within my body. I discern its beat in my blood, first its tentative tap-taps, then its bolder, belligerent toots and then its flagrant surge in my blood flow that set off alarm bells as my arteries, veins and capillaries run fire {{page}} Lucy Glendinning Necromancy Faith My conversance with this disconnectedness, with its multitudes of quirks, affords me very little hang time. Every time it happens, I am hurriedly, involuntarily, carried away from my firmly contoured outside world into a gauzy, unknown, unmapped and suspenseful interior universe. It happens this time as well. The void I enter rapidly disintegrates my idea of who I am, pulls everything apart and leaves me powerless. And in the same measure it balloons my fear of finding the pit’s hard bottom head first. In my forced seclusion, I endure desperation one more time as it burrows into my mind, body and soul. I shudder with its sticky horror, its visceral, bone-deep aftershocks. Despite its nothingness, its indefiniteness, its devious slipping away, I know this force’s oscillating fullness, its audacious everything-ness. It is not as if I don’t try to fight back every time this shadow assails and dislodges me with its caprice. I do. But my attempts backfire and leave me like a tattered butterfly fighting the wind. Much against my will, I must admit it has taught me what it is to be alive. Intensely alive. Of course, this aliveness is contrary to the aliveness I want. To what I have had. It lacks the felicity of living. Instead, it feels like the work of a twisted necromancer who places in my being all things displeasing, earthly and unearthly, dead and alive. Today, this tricksy necromancy, an apt label for my experience, the strongest match for all the emotions it embeds, does something unexpected. It brings me face to face with the unassembled, unassimilated parts of my life’s jigsaw. Affluence yet a failed marriage, two wonderful children yet estranged, a job that is a shiny career card-holder yet lacks passion and a body that functions but is without its elan vital. I gape with incredulity, nervousness and anger at this tableau that comes to me in a shock of remembrance. Why do they map my peculiar experiences over my life chart? Why do they play one against the other? Just as these thoughts occur, these visions, who take quick, light steps and come to a halt in dramatic proximity, speak. And, if you can’t suspend your disbelief, I understand. You can simply go with their silence being voluble or dismiss it as my mental meltdown. Chitra Gopalakrishnan {{page}} “Fixing your life needs qualities. Intention, skill, empathy and kindness,” they say. “You took your freedom too soon, severed ties with human connections, forgot to listen to the whispers of your heart and disengaged from affection and love.” My nemesis that manifests against the full span of my life shows me who I truly am, the damage I have caused myself and to others. It is harsh. As much as it is momentous. It has the power to destroy me completely. My redemption lies in not allowing it to. In this moment, as I am afforded this epiphany I feel a sudden strength, a freedom as I now know that karma and genetics notwithstanding, I can reverse my destiny with a maniacal, buffalo-strengthed courage. With finding intrepidity within myself that allows me to fully face, accept and reverse my blameworthiness. This insightful moment shows me I can either cave into the pressure and reconcile to the new normal that is my life or carve a new path that involves a different way of being. This would mean accessing my emotions, investing in the good and stemming the bad by not allowing its downsides to impair me or erode my emotional centre. A teardrop descends. In gratitude for the knowledge that if I try I can divert my destiny and find a way past its cul-de-sacs. For the recognition that in choosing how to act, I can come upon wholeness and who knows even, joie de vivre, that feisty thing that allowed me once to exult in life’s longings. Maybe, I can regain love, too, and my family as well. I prepare to turn myself into a necromancer, an elevated one, to rewire myself and reanimate my dead emotions to chart a reverse journey of redemption. unmothering Jenny Vuglar {{page}} I don’t know what it’s been like for you but even thought I know it’s not their fault I hate the blue white of hospitals, the alcohol sterilants I wiped my hands on daily, the plastic throwaway aprons reeled off trolleys, the curtains pulled around beds. I have no place there and when two days after her death I placed my feet on stirrups, parted my legs and watched the inside of my womb magnified on a swivel T.V., it did seem some absurd parody of birth. Looking past polyps, around the milky film of my menopausal womb into something dark and endless. The nurse pulled off the throw away gloves with that suck and rip that tides make hissing through pebbles. But natural images are out of place here. This is where nature undoes itself, grows the wrong thing in the wrong place or just simply fails to hold on. Our bodies, once wheeled in, stagger from one crisis to another – such hopeless imprecision – so that even at the moment of her death my eyes flickered to the screens to double check and yes, even though her last breath had stopped, the heart was beating, so slowly the monitor itself staggered and then stopped and only then did I feel it right to remove the oxygen mask, to touch the still whiteness she had become Jenny Vuglar goodbye There he was: waxy, still, the face sculptural, hollowed into silence. The mouth was wrong, stretched into an unknown smile but if I held my hand over his mouth it was him: the hollows between his eyes and the side of his head, the eyes sunk in, closed, the lashes pale and sparse. The cheeks were too round, as though they have been filled in with something, packed out with cotton wool perhaps; but the great dome of his head, bruised, scarred from skin cancer removals and bumps, that was him and his ears huge against the sunken face. The neck wrinkled, sagging a little, and his chest high as though taking a last breath and holding it. I held his hand and it was movable, not stiff but cold and slightly swollen looking compared to the hollowed out face. Too big, as though his limbs were all too big. The quilted white satin, made him a cliché but the warm brown jumper brought him down to earth. It felt comfortable touching his chest, the jumper warm, rough on my fingers. But kissing his forehead was kissing a tomb effigy, distant, cold. I shuffled a ten dollar note in his pocket, a half-smoked packet of cigarettes. The furnace would be fierce, but he was ready, cash in hand, a cigarette for his lips. Ready to leave, having left already. Andreas Senoner at some level i knew while you rummaged through your hedgehog-shaped bag in a room where the ceiling was ready to collapse. in the dream i am begging you to stay, tugging your sleeve — the green moss cardi sealed with mothballs, airless, asphyxiated. this the price like those nights i’d said something tactless or insensitive. how flabbergasted i was at the flammable effect, your go away get closer vibe … a gas build up. all it took was a phrase, something oafish — a match struck in moments i’d assumed you were mended, poulticed or patched, at our most relaxed — then suddenly a changeling — everything good corrupt, ‘an untouchable’ or ‘columbine’, me firefighting, believing i could save you, reeling you back from sabotage. Moulting 42x17x14 cm walnut, feathers Changeling {{page}} Patrick Wright Bear People In their ancient history, the men of the bear people collected the sea potatoes merely as treasure; for the pleasure of the rarities and the search itself. The first generations of bear people to see people use boats, watched from the shore, a few wading into the sea to roar their confused and frustrated desire. But their yearlings soon pushed logs onto the water, lying down and paddling. Naturally the bears continued to search for potatoes near the shore, but as they became more adept with the boats, the potatoes closest to the shore began to disappear. Soon, there were no bear people who remembered the fun of the hunt for these unexpected morsels. # The bear man dove with his father. For weeks at a time, they would be out on the water harvesting sea potatoes. Every year required they go further, dive deeper. So rare were the sea potatoes now that the bear man’s children would not inherit the boat that had been in his family for two generations before him. His children stayed home with their mother and went to school and played with their friends. The bear man’s house was the most fun house, and the children often had many friends over, and it was always loud with laughter. When he was home, the bear man would watch the children and their friends play. His father was an old man when he died. He simply did not resurface. This was not uncommon amongst the men of the bear people. The man brought his father up and laid him in the boat. On shore, he had his father’s body cremated and the ashes placed in an urn he had carved from arbutus into the shape of a paw clutching a sea potato. # Robyn Braun {{page}} # When the man came home, he did not smash the children’s Lego. He gave the wad of fifties to his wife to deposit into the bank. He stood beside her in the kitchen and told her how deep he dove the day he found the money. He told her about the storm he’d motored through on his way back to shore. And that reminded him of other storms, other dives, that time the rope on the boat tore open the palm of his father’s hand. Soon, all the bear people stopped going out in the boats. At home, the man was a bit of a braggart, but nicer, more laid back. His wife was happy to listen to his ego and let her boys run wild. Robyn Braun The man brought the urn with his father’s ashes home and put it up on the mantle. The children were in the kitchen with their mother and their friends, building a spaceship out of Lego. He went into the kitchen and stood beside the table, between his wife and one of his sons, raised his arm, and smashed the spaceship with a roar. All the children and the mother jumped back from the table and looked up at him. “Now clean that up!” He swiped a huge arm across the table, scattering hard, colourful plastic everywhere. A week later, when the man left on the boat again, his children’s friends crept back over to play. When he returned and smashed the Lego, he made the friends stay and watch his sons clean the mess he made them responsible for. After that, the friends did not return. # Truly the sea was depleted of potatoes. Weeks-long excursions barely covered the bottom of a bucket with small, misshapen potatoes that no one would call treasure. And indeed, fewer and fewer people wanted the sea potatoes. On what would be his last dive, the bear man reached into a hole he found in a mountainous ridge. He felt along the back of the rock, where the sea potatoes were normally attached, and suddenly felt the meaty bulk of a good size potato. He had not felt a potato this size since his youth. He detached it gently using his claws and held tightly as he pulled it out through the hole. But he had not found a potato at all. In his hand he held a wad of fifties. The pile of folded bills was the size of a large potato. The bear man looked between the hole and the stack of cash in his hand a few times. And then he swam to the surface and found his boat. Thomas Jackson Lucy Glendinning {{page}} back from the fold less the gift of prophecy to show for the touch of otherworld no gift to impress no prescience to steady my recovery peaks, rocky by nature i root in only one foot other dispensed lest i let it rot off me into a pool of brown fluid i mourn briefly before taking the invitation of lightness to unbind my hands from tight shackles unnecessarily attached to deprive myself of life slowly when i step the earth sighs, comforted by return of my warm altered firm stand one less extremity upright for a reason so long, left foot Your Waiting Feet As night descended, and creatures began to prowl, the mother wished for a guitar. They didn’t own one, and she couldn’t play, but a sad folk song would be just the thing to bring them close together. The darkness stared back at mother and daughter. Let’s sing, she suggested. Cringe, her child replied. To save face, she broke into song. The only one she could remember was a hymn from primary school. And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times, she bellowed, to ward off whatever was out there. The campfire’s trembling circle of light was not enough. They retreated under canvas. Nestled in sleeping bags, they listened to the fire’s fizz and patter. An owl hooted. “Cheesy,” said Saffron, rolling over to face her. “Is it me, or is it cold?” “I’m going to put my sweater back on, and maybe my hat.” “Don’t take it personally, but I wish dad was here.” “We don’t need him.” “I’d just feel safer.” “What are you afraid of, sweetheart?” “Animals. The dark. Freezing to death.” As her child began to cry messy, breathless sobs, she reached out for a hug but her arms were caught inside the sleeping bag. Freeing herself, her enormous child bawled into the crook of her arm. With cold hands she stroked her hair. The baby’s peaches and cream aroma was long gone, replaced by scalp oil, nail polish and vanilla perfume with notes of leaf mulch and charcoal. “I want my bed.” “Would it help if I told you a story?” Saffron nodded. “Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.” Her arm quickly went numb, but she wouldn't ruin the moment by moving. Lovebombing Lucy Glendinning {{page}} Trynn Kennedy Folding Girl Saff? she called, and this time there was no response. She slowed, dragging herself forward into silence. Overhead the sky was lapis. As she placed one foot in front of the other, it decayed to granite grey, and she could see the trees. Not wanting to look, she drew closer. Rounding the tree, she was met by Saffron’s upturned gaze. Like a cloak she wrapped herself around her child. “What the hell…?” she yelled as they merged with the motorway and sped back towards the suburbs. Why would she want to escape? She clenched her jaw around the mystery. Once safely home, her daughter would explain. Trynn Kennedy {{page}} Dawn arrived in drab. Rubbing her eyes, she made out a shape brighter than leaf litter. A lilac bed sock. She ran to it. It was still. Was there a foot inside?" “Oh my love, my darling, I was so afraid! You’re alive. Oh god.” Her daughter’s arms were limp, her eyes and face blank. “Let’s get out of here.” She dragged the girl to her feet and they walked until they came across an arrow-shaped sign bearing the legend ‘car park.’ The key was in the tent, so they were faced with two options: find the car park, or walk to the motorway and hitch back to the city. When they found the car park Saffron would not step into the open but hung about the treeline. Theirs was the only car, dew-slick and rich with pine needles and bird droppings. When they found the tent, Saffron would not approach. She stood holding the squashed fly biscuits while her mother packed the important things. Feeling eyes on her back, she grabbed Saffron's hand and ran-walk with both backpacks. The amber lights as she unlocked the car were beacons of safety. “Jump in, quick,” she said, scanning for movement as they climbed inside their metal shell. The engine purred into motion. As they buckled up she jabbed all the buttons to lock the doors from inside. Slamming the car into reverse, they pulled away in a scuttle of gravel. Be calm, go slow, she told herself as they thunked down the dirt track towards the lane that would carry them back to the motorway. If ever there was a time not to burst a tyre in a pothole…Saffron stared dumbly out of the window. She flicked her eyes into the rear view mirror, expecting to catch something running behind the car. Slowing at the junction, she considered that this might just be a story to tell inside the family, certainly nothing worthy of the papers. The lane was empty. As she pressed the pedal to the metal, Saffron tried to yank open the passenger door,only to find it locked. “Once there was a young girl whose mother gave her a basket of freshly-baked biscuits to bring to her grandma who lived in a stone cottage in the woods. Look out for wolves, she said, buttoning her red cloak and drawing up the hood. She was looking forward to seeing her granny and sharing the biscuits with a nice cup of tea, so she skipped off down the path. Birds sang to her and little creatures waved as she went by. She came upon a crossroads. I don’t remember this, she murmured, standing still. Oh well, onwards. She set off again, but not skipping this time." “As the sun dipped, she noticed a figure up ahead leaning against a tree. It was a wolf in a frock coat. The nap was worn off the velvet at his elbows. Where are you going to, little girl? he asked. To see my grandma, she replied. A strand of drool spooled from his lips. These woods aren’t safe. Let me walk with you for protection. She shrugged, and they continued down the path until they reached the cottage. Well, this is me, she said. Thanks for looking out for me. The wolf smiled, showcasing many pointed teeth. At your service, he said as he loped away. You take care now. She knocked for her granny who took the basket and enfolded her in a hug. They caught up in the little kitchen where a fire was blazing. Grandma gave her a sourdough loaf for her mother, and she was home before sundown, and they all lived happily ever after.” Saffron lay heavy in her arms. The mother manoeuvred out from under her, making a warm wall between her girl and the outdoors, meaning to climb back inside her own bag once she was sound asleep. Dozing, she dreamed she was back in their old house, lying on the carpet beside her son’s bed, waiting for him to fall asleep. She awoke to the sensation of a hand grasping her left ankle. Saffron? she squeaked, wondering why her girl was at the bottom of the tent. “Wake up,” she hissed, kicking, blood surging. The owner of the hand released her ankle. She drew her knees towards her chest. Her knee struck Saffron’s shoulder. Then a rasping rush of zips and synthetic fibres. Abruptly, the body beside her was gone. Remembering her phone in the pocket of her cagoule, her fingers fumbled its outline. A low, suppressed sound was leaking from inside her. Am I wailing? Keening? The phone lit up. Saffron? she called out. Mother? came a scream from the forest. She pulled on her boots and urged out into the dark. Saffron! she cried again, tripping on tree roots. Mother! she heard, locking onto the voice’s direction and flinging herself towards it. She staggered onward in her bubble of torchlight. Her daughter nodded. Then she saw the water all over the floor. At first she felt a flare of annoyance, but then she noticed that the bath had sagged, and the water was opaque, the consistency of cream. The bath had dissolved. Their two cats supped away noisily. What are we going to do? they wondered. Saffron opened her arms, and her mother instinctively leaned in for a hug, only realising a moment too late what she had done. “She seems okay, physically.” “The police?” “What could they do?” “Get her to tell us what happened?” “If she won’t tell you and me, here, I doubt her tongue will loosen for the authorities.” “We can’t do nothing, can we?” Jake burst in. “What’s up, buttercup?” she said. “Something seriously weird is happening.” He chewed his lower lip. “Well, what?” said Leo. “The game controller. It’s changed.” “Is it broken? I can have a look at it for you.” “No. Go and see for yourself. I’m gonna watch cartoons in my room.” They carried their drinks down the narrow stairs to the basement lit by blue light from the screen. Saffron sat as though focussed on the game, but when the mother sat down beside her, she saw that the game controller looked soft now, and sagged in her grip. Saffron deposited it in her palm. It was unmistakably meat, of a dense sirloin consistency. Stomach lurching, she dropped it with a moist thud. Saffron’s lap was stained with blood. Mother and daughter looked into one-another’s eyes, reflecting blue glow. Leo backed away and ran upstairs. The family left Saffron alone after that. She kept to her room. When she took a bath, her mother used the opportunity to tidy up a little. Disheartened by the mugs and dirty socks, she sat on the bed considering what to attack first. It sagged softly under her weight, as though melted. She snatched back the covers to find the bed frame was no longer knotted pine. She ran her fingertips over the dark green stippled surface. She pressed it, and it gave, familiar yet out-of-place. She sniffed the bed frame, opened her jaws and took a bite. Yes, it was. As she suspected. Cucumber. She leapt up and hammered on the bathroom door. “Saff, did you touch your bed frame?” The door opened. Saffron stood there in her robe and towel turban. “Is that what’s happening?” Trynn Kennedy Months passed before Saffron spoke. She would not tell them what happened that night in the woods. Whenever she caught her in a relaxed state of mind, and gently tried to re-open the subject, her daughter resorted to metaphors. She stopped speaking in class, so they took her to an educational psychologist in addition to the therapist who was supposed to be healing her insecure attachment. The professionals’ attention turned, like slow-growing fungus, toward she with whom the buck stopped: the mother. How were things at home? She was quizzed on her own childhood. Leo checked out of the process early on, buoyed by a belief that nothing he had ever done, or failed to do, could be responsible for whatever was eating Saffron. He flung the glowing brand into her lap where it sizzled. There was a secret she dared not mention in the professionals’ presence, and neither did Leo. It had started the day she and Saffron returned home, pale and exhausted from their encounter in the woods. Leo and Jack were playing video games together, the ultra-violent ones she objected to when sound effects of crunching bones and heads being torn off drifted upstairs from the basement. Jack was first to notice. She suggested he play a gentle platform game with his younger sister. Maybe she would talk when she felt safe and her guard was down. After a few gripes he agreed, and the two of them sunk into the fat sofa before the flickering screen. Up in the kitchen, Leo poured her a glass of wine. He heard her out, his face a mask of incomprehension. After she told her story he was silent, then took a slug of beer. “Who do you call about something like this? Should we take her to hospital?” strew grassed banks in well-worn plume, much to the chagrin of Saxony ducklings that glide away from my inaesthetic display, in their banana-yellow suits, like specks of egg yolk on the throbbing current. I was apprised once, by a well-intentioned Whooper swan that change was on the watery horizon, that concealed inside my DNA, sodden in viscera a beguiling, snow-white Anserinae lurked; god’s own waterfowl, an alabaster cloud with beak and large webbed feet. Suzi Mezei The Oppositional Duckling After Hans Christian Andersen My eyes are beads and beady hard as flint, no one’s ever said they’re pure as ebony, or fathoms deep and the scant coat I wear is dun stubbled sparse, coloured somewhat like the bog that holds the river reeds or the winter sky at storm’s break; it’s no one’s cup of tea but I love it for its singular shabby-sheik, its familiar whiff of avian scavengery, all stonewort, milfoil and cubes of bread, tossed by tiny human hands. When I preen, I let mucked feathers fall where they may, {{page}} a swan's tale Berber Maria Rip Each night since, I clench from my maxilla to my gizzards to contain that snowy popinjay within, for I am cygnet, soot and ashes, Cygnus-constellation-bright, an Odette without the tragedy, a so-so swimmer in a down bathing suit, a whistler of Tchaikovsky and several other unsavoury chants. I shun transformation, hiss busk my wings, peck aquatic morsels jammed in nascent quills. What’s wrong with ugly? I insist. But change prickles underneath the skin. Suzi Mezei {{page}} My mother cradles her homeland in a spice box. Inside her plain steel tin, nestled in neat compartments, lies a tiny universe. I often see her close her eyes when she opens the box, inhaling a new memory as the warm, nutty aroma of cumin and nutmeg fills our kitchen — a deceptive sense of comfort. Over the years, I’ve come to understand that her spices are more than just ingredients; they are ancient remedies for various ailments. A sore throat and flu? Cloves in warm water with a spoonful of turmeric. Restless nights? Warm milk with a hint of lavender. Small cuts and abrasions? Turmeric for all wounds. A black eye, another gift from my father? Arnica ointment and ginger for inflammation. “We should see a doctor this time,” I suggest. I’m reminded that this house has no room for Western medicine. If nature can’t heal it, then it’s simply not meant to be. I doubt turmeric can mend an abusive marriage anyway. “Why don’t you leave him?” I ask. The answer is always the same: “There’s nowhere to go. Plus, marriage is a sacred vow, not to be severed with divorce”, she says while recklessly sprinkling an ungodly amount of cinnamon into my father’s curry, masking the sickly sweetness with an extra pinch of chilli, just as she does every night. It hastens his cirrhotic liver, killing him slowly, holistically. Turmeric For All Wounds. Reeya Thampi The woman I work with is high again. She doesn’t want to leave. Her hostel room, it smells like toilet. More children are found under rubble. Not killed. Murdered. So I curse life and God takes back my wrists, chambers of my heart, my breath. I write myself into the smallest poem with enormous wings. A squirrel lands on the decking with a loud thud. Peeking through the window, rays of light trapped in the bay tree. {{page}} Mariam Saidan I Watch Myself Disappear I wear my eyes and put my hands on then I make tea and look at my plants for a while always worried about the roots underneath. I put more layers on and leave home. Sense of humour is never the same in another language but you can always learn new things and find new use, you could say cheers and think be-salamati. You could see any towering tree and think of vali-Asr street. You could never be enough even if you became your all. You could sit in silence and hear it throb. Home is a voice in me saying don't come back. Mariam Saidan Be-salamati After Warsan Shire & Forough Farrokhzad In the quietness of my skin, I hold the promise of wings I am the cocoon. Not the butterfly—the one you expect to see. You will not find wings in me. No delicate frames or colors that dance across the sky. I am made of the quiet. Of waiting. A silent witness to transformation, invisible until my work is done. From the outside, I am nothing. A mere shell, suspended in the air, shrouded in mystery. Inside, I am alive with motion, with sacrifice, with a longing I cannot articulate. There is no instant gratification in my world. Only the slow burn of becoming something else, something more. Growth is not easy. It begins with discomfort, a pressing, a stretching of boundaries until my very form feels stretched too thin. Inside me, the caterpillar writhes, shedding skin and self, only to be reborn. And though I am not it, I feel its pain. For I, too, am being reshaped—remade into something unrecognizable. You may think me weak, unable to endure. But I, too, know that it is through this sacrifice that I will give birth to something new. Not for me, but for the world that will emerge when I open my walls. The butterfly will fly; it will stretch its wings across a horizon unseen. But this is my work, my lonely vigil. You see, I am no stranger to struggle. In a world where corruption reigns, where the honest are bound by invisible chains, where biases sink roots deeper than justice itself, I am the outcast. I am that which bears witness to the harshness of life, the cruel distortions that twist the very foundation of trust. I am that voice muffled in the periphery—the one that doesn’t fit into the lines of ambition painted in gold. And yet, despite the injustice, despite the unfairness, I persist. I know the truth: growth is not always visible. It is not always rewarded with the riches of the world, or the applause of the masses. It does not always speak in the language of power or wealth. Sometimes, growth speaks quietly, to the heart that chooses to trust in itself, despite the weight of the world pressing in. Moseka Ole Ntiyia {{page}} I have no wings yet, but I trust in the process. I trust in the cocoon. Even when everything outside feels fragile, like the shattered promises of a broken system, I know this: I am still growing. I am still becoming. There is purpose in the struggle, in the pain. Each moment of sacrifice is another thread in the fabric of what I will be. I cannot explain it, not to you. But I trust. Through the murk of corruption, the noise of injustice, I trust. I trust in the metamorphosis that does not bend to the world’s demands. I trust in the quiet unfolding of something better that I am becoming. I will not be defined by the limits of this world. I will emerge, not as the world expects me to be, but as I am meant to be. I trust. Submissions will open in July for the autumn/winter issue www.theamphibianlit.com Moseka Ole Ntiyia {{page}} The theme for the next issue is: Refuge Jenny Purdy is a freelance writer and emerging poet. She lives in a lovely rural community east of Toronto with her husband, two kids, and their cat. A self-proclaimed neurospicy word witch, Jenny can be found reading books, tarot cards or birth charts when she’s not writing. Charlie Sanderson is a storyteller and voice artist, based in Derbyshire, this year she has won the flash fiction 'writers rebel' prize, published a few pieces in Steel Jackdaw and performed as part of the New Art Exchange words of wonderland exhibition. In 2025 she will be performing a two woman show, with Who the F*** is Alice. Charlie writes about identity, motherhood, womanhood, survival, loss and joy. Contributors Writers and Poets Kayleigh Cassidy studied Creative Writing at Birkbeck and works as a Forest School Teacher in London. Kayleigh’s writing explores her neurodiversity and is a platform for her queer expression and workingclassness. She recently won a London Writers Award for her travel memoir: Tortoise. Her work has been published in TOKEN, 3:AM, Rollick, Myslexia, Blood Bath Hate, Spread the Word, MIR Online, Visual Verse, Streetcake, Underground Overground and Erotoplasty. She was short listed for the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize and long listed for the MIR Folktale Award, Primadonna Prize and Bridport Prize. When she isn’t teaching, Kayleigh loves visiting ancient woodland and searching for old trees and mushrooms. David Banach is a queer philosopher and poet in New Hampshire, where he tends chickens, keeps bees, and watches the sky. He likes to think about Dostoevsky, Levinas, and Simone Weil and is fascinated by the way form emerges in nature and the way the human heart responds to it. You can read some of his most recent poetry in Prairie Home Magazine, SoFloPoJo, Etymology, and Mulberry Literary. He is editor of Touchstone, the journal of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. 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 Robbie Coburn is an Australian poet based in Melbourne. His most recent collection of poems is Ghost Poetry (Upswell, 2024), and my verse novel The Foal in the Wire is forthcoming from Hachette in 2025. His website is robbiecoburn.com Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured inThe Potomac Review,Museum of Americana,Ink Sac,Welter Journal,The Cafe Review,The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal,Roi Faineant Press,and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for theKingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of God Said Fire, and,Snowfire and Home. Marianne Xenos is a writer and artist living in western Massachusetts- Stories have been a central part of my visual art for decades, but recently I shifted my focus to the stories themselves. In 2022, my first published story appeared inThe Future Fire. Since then, fifteen more have been published in magazines and anthologies, including The Fantastic Other, Orion's Belt,and the game anthology, Winding Paths. In 2022, I was a first-place winner of the Writers of the Future contest, and this year placed as a finalist in the Speculative Literature Foundation's Working Class Writers contest. Angela Gardner’s verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette, Shearsman, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year, 2022 and a UK National Poetry Dayrecommendation. Parts of Speech, UQP, 2007 won theThomas Shapcott Prize,Some Sketchy Notes on Matter, Recent Work Press, 2020 shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award and Slippage (manuscript) was shortlisted for the Helen Anne Bell Bequest 2023. Her poems have been included multiple times in annual Best Australian Poetry anthologies. Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a writer based in New Delhi, uses her ardour for writing to break firewalls between nonfiction and fiction, narratology and psychoanalysis, marginalia and manuscript, and tree-ism and capitalism. Jenny Vuglar - has been published in various magazines and anthologies - most recently Dark Mountain and Echtrai. I have a pamphlette published by Hearing Eye Press: This Blue Mantle. David Milley's recent work appears in RFD Magazine, Friends Journal, queerbook, and Capsule Stories. David lives in New Jersey with his husband and partner of forty-eight years, Warren Davy. These days, Warren tends his garden and keeps honeybees. David walks and writes. Thomas Jackson is a queer poet from Raleigh, North Carolina living with Bipolar Disorder. He is a published TEDx Speaker, landscape designer, self-published author, amputee, and suicide prevention leader. Natasha N. Deonarain is the author of two chapbooks, 50 études for piano (Assure Press Publishing) and urban disorders (Finishing Line Press). She’s the winner of the 2020 Three Sisters Award by NELLE magazine and Best of the Net Nominee by Rogue Agent Journal. She was born in South Africa, grew up in Canada and now lives in Arizona.  C.H. Lieberman (he/him) is an openly transgender writer and performer from South London. His play “Bunny Man” won the award for Best Writing at Bitesize Festival in July 2024, and he is currently touring London and the South Coast with his solo show “J.O.I.”. His poetry appeared in Issue no.7 of “& Change”. Gabriella Ekman was born in Sweden, raised in Tanzania and Japan, and spent most of my adult life in the US. I write in English but speak to my daughter in Swedish. Motherhood is a whole new way of experiencing both otherness and wholeness, something I explore in "Whale Cake."   Moseka Ole Ntiyia is a Kenyan writer and poet with an unshakable passion for storytelling and a heart driven by purpose. He dives into themes of humanness, justice, and Africanicity—embracing the realities of life in a developing world filled with endless challenges. Leyla Josephine is a poet, film and theatre maker from Glasgow. Leyla’s first short film Groom was Scottish BAFTA and Critics Circle Award Nominated.Her poetry bookIn Public/In Private was released with Burning Eye Books, with poemDear John Berger winning Best Single Poem Performed Forward Prize 2024. She was named as one of Screen International Rising Stars 2022. Her theatre showDaddy Drag was the winner of 2019 Autopsy Award celebrating artists making ground-breaking work in Scotland, her showHopeless was shortlisted for Saboteur’s Best Spoken Word show 2017. She developed a play with National Theatre of Scotland through The John Mathers Rising Star Award and her play Ms Campbell’s Class 4th Period was published with Bloomsbury Press in 2023 and performed globally as part of Wonderfools Positive Stories for Negative Times. Ann van Wijgerden is British by birth and lives in the Netherlands and the Philippines. She’s had nonfiction, poetry and fiction accepted in numerous magazines, including Orion,Orbis,The Sunlight Press,Yellow Arrow Journal, The Wild Umbrella,as well astheQueen’s Quarterly, and is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee. Ann co-founded and works for an NGO called Young Focus www.youngfocus.org, which provides education for children living in Manila’s slum area of ‘Smokey Mountain’. Tricia Lloyd Waller has always loved story since she first learnt to speak. She has recently had work accepted by Ukiyo Lit, magazine, Paws Poetry and The World of Myth. She was the 2022 winner of the Pen to Print poetry competition, Kristin Zimet is the author of Take in My Arms the Dark (a book of poetry) and the co-author ofA Tender Time (a nonfiction book on aging with grace). For many years she was the editor ofThe Sow's Ear Poetry Review. Her poems are in journals and anthologies around the world and have been performed in venues from museum to arboretum to concert hall. Also a surreal photographer, she finds her poems sometimes metamorphosing into visual art and vice versa. Cassandra Halleh Delaney is originally from upstate New York and now happily resides in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has a master’s degree in counseling from New Mexico State University. Her poems have appeared in*82 Review,Barely South,Green Ink, and Renewed: New Orleans Public Library Anthology. Rosemary Jefford is inspired by her strong connection to the natural world and her family. She is a pianist, piano teacher and composer as well as a poet. She has been published online by Green Ink Press and her compositions have been performed in France, Poland, US and in the UK. She lives with her husband and dog in rural Oxfordshire. Cassandra Halleh Delaney is originally from upstate New York and now happily resides in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has a master’s degree in counseling from New Mexico State University. Her poems have appeared in*82 Review,Barely South,Green Ink, andRenewed: New Orleans Public Library Anthology. Jo Cora is an emerging fiction writer based in Cheshire, UK. With a background in psychology, she draws from her experiences of human connection throughout her work. She is currently completing her first short story collection and audiobook while also embarking on her debut novel. Jo's work has been published by Comma Press and The Starlight Emporium. She has also been a finalist in the Ovacome Short Story Award, the Olga Sinclair Short Story Award, and theWomen on Writing Award. Suzi Mezei Born in Sri Lanka, Suzi Mezei lives in Naarm on lands traditionally owned by the Boonwurrung People. Her work is published in Australia and overseas in journals and anthologies in print and online, it has been performed on stage and in podcast. She is currently working on a poetry collection. Paul Dylan is a poet from Cork City. His poems have appeared in Lumpen,Unapologetic Magazine, and elsewhere. Dylan was awarded a mentorship bursary by the Munster Literature Centre in 2023, and chosen to take part in a masterclass for emerging poets as part of Cork City Libraries' One City One Book programme in 2024.   Patrick Wright’s poems have appeared in Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, The North, Gutter, and The London Magazine. His debut collection, Full Sight of Her, was published in 2020 by Eyewear and nominated for the John Pollard Prize. His pamphlet,Nullaby(2017), was also published by Eyewear. His second collection,Exit Strategy(2025), was published by Broken Sleep Books. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the Open University and is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE. Andreas Senoner Instagram @andreassenoner www.andreassenoner.com Lucy Glendinning Instagram @lucyglendinningsculpture www.lucyglendinning.com Christina Bothwell Instagram @christina.bothwell www.christinabothwell.com Artists Blair Martin Cahill Instagram @blairmcahill www.blaircahill.com Grace Hailstone Instagram @graciehailstone www.gracehailstone.com Mel Perkins Instagram @mel.perkins.creative Berber Maria Rip Instagram @berbermariarip www.berbermariarip.nl For the Culturally Amphibious