Edward Lee

After the Fall Edward Lee

Meltdown

The soft apologetic grey of evening squeezes me out from where I’ve sat so long safe from prying minds but close to the shimmering edge. A gaunt and prowling night cat, I stalk these polished streets alone, meeting the face of my fear in each gleaming surface. I cringe from the masses of promised life that hunt in packs on every side; I rush back home where my mental bags are ready and waiting by the door. I’m still not sure I’m even really here and I think that someone’s moved my things around, but my shadow nods and waves politely as it always does. The same old vulture swoops low to tear me up by the roots and beats its bloody wings around my head while it pours its sickly sweet taste in my mouth. I sip each day from a gritty cup; outside they are many, in here I am one.

S.C. Flynn

look away now

Ah, Spring, why did you have to show me this? I was after one of those dipper-skimmed, purling streams, those white stars on blackthorn, and wood anemones’ gleams amongst the garlic’s juicy green; but you’re taking the piss. I needed that new-leaf shimmer on the hawthorn, the hum of chartreuse on beech, those choose me songs in woods ringing riot with everything the heart longs for; instead you offer, in this field of new-born wobbly, few-weeks’ prancing lambs, this stricken ewe calling over and over in loud, persistent chorus as I pass, insisting I don’t intrude on that patch of bright grass where the small black body, legs still curled to caper, lies fallen. Ah, Spring. Promise can look as promising as it damn well likes; no one’s immune from the skyfalls, the lightning strikes.

Lucy Crispin