The Man Who Swims at Night

Elena Croitoru (England)

something of every ordinary conversation. It took him a while to realise that a mockingbird means a radio a red house is the kind of house you enter for the last time, a mirror dance means someone is watching, but the word ‘awake’ appears too many times to mean anything & sometimes he wishes everyone would stop talking. & when he opens lovers’ envelopes, he looks for dots that are out of place & pauses that don’t belong.

At home, the tooth-white porcelain Stalin watches him as he lies stomach-down on an ottoman & begins to swim. He practices for hours & halfway through, he cuts imaginary wires & then, he’s somewhere else.

for the Bayraktar drone on the night of the Turkish invasion

Matthew Broomfield (England)

Seven Feet of English

Jonathan Edis (England)

Solomon

Jonathan Edwards (Wales)

East Coast Story

Paul Stephenson (England)

All clear

Christopher M James (France)