Hear poet Barnaby Harsent read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Barnaby Harsent wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet Placing third in The Rosemary McLeish Poetry Prize 2024 , and with poems in 14 magazine and Propel Magazine , Barnaby Harsent has work forthcoming in the 2025 Black Bough Poetry Christmas/Winter anthology. His three poems for iamb form part of a sequence of short narratives he's currently working on. the poems Wormwood – speaking to spirits 00:00 / 00:37 The air is thin, the sky just beginning to bruise. She gathers wormwood to burn under the sycamore tree. The smoke curls low and slow like breath in winter, she closes her eyes to amplify any whisper. Light fades, crows settle like thoughts in bare boughs, a leaf in the ash still green – as if it has secrets left to share. Mandrake – hallucination 00:00 / 00:46 Lie still. Let the room grow distant. Let the walls forget you. Let the straw, heavy with the stench of piss, disappear from under you. Men’s faith in what you’re not has made you what you are. Fall upwards. Do not cry out. Do not return. Refuse to bring yourself back to bone. Move with weather, find a wind to hold you. And leave your root, that knotted thing, bleeding its shape into air. Valerian – rest 00:00 / 00:53 She doesn’t ask for comfort, just the calm of quiet seclusion, a slowing of the pulse. Still they turn their heads and spit, weigh her worth out loud. She lays plants out on a rack, the sun pulling moisture from the root. Still her nights are restless, sleep as thin as frost on slate. There’s a gate where the treeline thins. It opens and she walks until the path forgets her name. Still the milk sours, still the crops fail, still the children of the village cry at shadows. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Geraldine Clarkson read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Geraldine Clarkson wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Geraldine Clarkson lives and works in Warwickshire. Her various occupations have included teaching English to refugees and migrants, working in warehouses, care homes, libraries, churches, offices and a call centre, and living in a silent monastic order for some years in South America. She has published poetry pamphlets with Smith|Doorstop and Shearsman Books. Her debut collection, Monica's Overcoat of Flesh , was published by Nine Arches Press in 2020. the poems winding down 00:00 / 01:04 maybe a tree falls or a bear keels maybe all the creatures of song are brought low and the grasshopper drags itself along and the moon fails clearly a light has left the earth bleeding slowly while the waters stopped clapping their hands it’s the end of lilies and liver-freckled butterflies the last flew off this summer the wind is tired now has petit mal is going home shutting up shop just a few scarlet leaves spin in its sigh as it boards up the door Muzzy McIntyre 00:00 / 01:35 Muzzy McIntyre brushed her bangs and went pell-mell down the staircase. The banisters pulled her palms back with their waxy residue and the ball at the bottom looked grey-black with grease. This place has gone downhill, she thought, descending. But she went out onto the front step and the mahogany door was flaming—it was that time of day—and the brass lion knocker, brilliant, was shooting out gold spears. All around, the red brick of the houses was deepening. For the sake of these twelve minutes or so, perhaps, one could tolerate the blanched mornings and the puny electric nights; the dust; and critters; the drunken singing of the wind in the passage; the pious crooning of the neighbours. The waiting. Her other self, the slow Muzzy, ambled out to take the air. She looked up and down the street, laid the flat of her hand to her forehead, against the slanting light. Another fine day tomorrow, she drawled, headlocking a memory. Brood 00:00 / 01:59 After two unhappy marriages, my sister settled on a man who marked their mid-life union by retraining as a vermin operative, the neon strips in his kitchen having turned caramel with cockroaches. He mastered the mechanics and theory of quenching little lives that flickered briefly in strange environs. And noted, for instance, that when roaches infested a disused cooker, it was always the babies who emerged first when you ignited the gas. The gas was, that if you left it burning, little roarers kept on coming, and in increasing sizes, till the fat daddy-roaches finally left the ship. He studied weevils which flourished in flour. And silver fish that slivered at human approach. Rat-trapping was daunting at first, then a thrill. I heard that housewives would call him out to halt fledgling tits which had flown into summer kitchens, twitching behind fridges; pigeons plumped in chimneys; squirrels nesting in lofts, all high hiss and spit. He used to say, my sister’s husband, as he polished his leather belt on a Saturday, ready for church (the belt had a fine silver buckle which shone and jingled), that pests are only creatures who happen to have strayed into alien territory. It made me hope my sister pleased him, and fitted in; was protective of her brood. Publishing credits winding down: POEM (Summer 2017) Muzzy McIntyre: No. 25 (Shearsman Books) Brood: Infinite Rust

Hear poet Alan Buckley read poems for wave 16 of literary poetry journal iamb. Alan Buckley wave 16 winter 2023 back next the poet Alan Buckley is a poet, editor, and poetry tutor. He was brought up on Merseyside, and now lives in Oxford. He is the author of two pamphlets – Shiver (2009) and The Long Haul (2016) – and his first full collection, Touched , was published by Happen Stance in 2020. His work has been highly commended in the Forward and Bridport prizes. He was a founding editor of the award-winning pamphlet publisher ignitionpress, and has taught creative writing to young people with both Arvon and First Story. He is a regular contributor of essays and reviews to The Friday Poem. the poems My Country A man is judged by his work ~ Kurdish proverb ~ 00:00 / 01:53 His fingers work the lotion into my skin. His palms come to rest, pressing my cheeks, before he draws them back. I close my eyes but can’t not see the history between us – in the Boy’s Own stories my grandfather read this man would be swarthy (I would be ). He’d flash his teeth , grasping a curved dagger. I’d stand aloof, wielding a service revolver. We talk, as he brushes the lather up in a little bowl – second lockdown, Premier League (Man U: I offer my sympathies). I don’t ask why he came here. It’s my country, my country’s friends, my country’s enemies’ enemies, that spent a century drawing straight lines across his forefathers’ lands, that gunned and bombed and gassed, that drove him here to this shop on an English street corner, a cube of light resisting the dusk. O Mesopotamia: derricks rose up, drills bored down, and black gold gushed, with the force of blood released from a jugular vein by a razor’s quick slit. I feel the stainless blade caressing my throat, as he scrapes off the stubble with patient, professional love. Flame Use matches sparingly Instruction on front of matchbox 00:00 / 01:06 Not meanness or thrift but wisdom; respect for each small torch that’s kept in there. Lover, the same is true for words. I bring you no fireworks. A room is never so dark that it needs more than one slim burst of sulphur to show the mirror hung on its wall, the way to its door. And lovers know too how even a single flame might raise a scar that time can’t heal. So come, stand next to me; let’s flip this little box. Strike softly away from body. See how it urges us. The Error 00:00 / 01:11 They’re standing like figures on a cake, by a pre-war Hillman Minx. My father, stiff as the mannequin his suit was lifted from, has a pleasantly startled expression, as if he can’t quite believe he’s got to this threshold beyond which adult life begins. My mother’s hiding behind her lipstick smile, the blinding white of her dress. They think they’ve found a way out, and here’s the car that will take them away to a housing estate that’s still being built, to earth that’s yet to be dug over to make a vegetable patch, to a life untethered from its past. They’re wrong, of course; I’m witness to how their histories followed them out of this frame. But look – here’s where I’ll choose to say I come from, that small place of reassurance that something else is possible, the warm hollow made by their locked hands. Publishing credits My Country: The Friday Poem (February 2022) Flame: The Dark Horse (Issue 34) The Error: Touched (HappenStance Press)

Hear poet Michael McGill read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Michael McGill wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Michael McGill is a writer from Edinburgh whose work has recently appeared in The Interpreter’s House , Lunate , The Haiku Quarterly and elsewhere. Michael also has work in the Scottish Poetry Library’s Poems by and for Social Workers anthology. As well as performing for Big Word Performance Poetry in Edinburgh, Glasgow and London, Michael has appeared in several episodes of BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. His work has also been featured on the Micro podcast . the poems Puppy Dog Man 00:00 / 02:01 I thought I saw a puppy dog. I did! I did! I saw the Puppy Dog Man! Baroompta-doo-da. Walk tall, Puppy Dog, Puppy Dog, walk tall – Hey there, Puppy Dog Man – Puppy Dog Man never understand; never understand, little Puppy Dog Man, never understand – Let's talk man to man, acrobat to magician, Devil to Christian, honest man to politician on the street, drowning in a sea of integrity, of humanity; 'Such things as these don't please His Majesty!' Baroompta – do do do. Hello? Oliver Speaking speaking. I was talking to the dog, Maury. Please, you're annoying me. Baroompta-doo-da. Lie low, Puppy Dog, Puppy Dog, lie low – Hey there, Puppy Dog Man – Puppy Dog Man take me underground; take me underground, little Puppy Dog Man, take me underground – New street! New street! I wanna live in a new street. I wanna live in your face. I wanna live in the warm puppy dog folds of your skin. Yeah, I wanna live there, man. Woof! Woof! Baroompta-doo-da – walkin' hand in hand with Puppy Dog Man … Pyjamas in the Snow 00:00 / 02:07 Free postcards were scattered all over New York then, filed in metal displays on the walls of clubs and coffee shops, and I’d collect them and tuck them away in my journal, stumbling around like a 1996 Hansel and Gretel reject, and it was January and everywhere was lit like a still from a Blondie video, and sometimes I’d order a Hazelnut Latte and a Sour Cream Mini Bundt Cake, and I’d write home using one of these postcards, back when home-whilst-travelling was a strange place, an exotic village elsewhere, a solipsist’s mirage, a narcissist’s daydream, and then I’d go to the Post Office on East 34th Street and watch these postcards take flight, because I was living life in Technicolor then, but, oh, that boy back at the hostel was a strange one, and he slept in the bed opposite mine in the dorm, and he’d talk about how much he missed ‘The Bay’ and I’d look puzzled, and he asked me why I’d never been to Ireland, and he laughed when I replied, 'Because it’s so far away,' and he seemed homesick and lost, and very sad, so I showed him my postcards, and one was RuPaul’s face in close-up, and he said, 'She’s gorgeous!' – but he’d turn shifty most evenings when a note was stuck to the door because he was late paying for his bed, and the word REMINDER would sit at the top of the page in cold black font, and then he’d disappear for a time and come back later looking dishevelled and used, and then the note on the door would disappear, and one day it was time to pack and head to JFK, and he wasn’t there so I left the RuPaul postcard on his pillow, and I never said goodbye – and back then Jackie 60 nightclub had a hotline you’d call, yeah, it was listed in Time Out , and one night I stood in a phone booth in the lobby of the hostel, and a recorded voice said the theme that week was Scotland and the dress code was ‘tartan tartan tartan’ and, oh, how I wish I’d gone to Jackie 60 in my tartan pyjamas, walking through Manhattan in the snow, but I never did. Celluloid Clown 00:00 / 01:11 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. I recall him emerging; black biro, yellow Post-it. I recall the usual questions: 'To and or to ampersand ?' etc., etc. What is to become of him, I wonder? He doesn’t fit anywhere, it seems. Still, he remains my three-line darling; long-lost relative of that scrawled first draft. 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. Yes, I know he ended up like a circus clown from some campy old film. You know the type of character: always a criminal in hiding (for what are celluloid clowns really, but painted criminals?). 'Your poem isn’t a fit for us,' the email read. In his final scene, he is led to the jailhouse. He hands over his dog (a Boston Terrier) to a young girl and says, 'Take care of him, Cheryl, he’s a good ‘un.' Then he walks away – fade to black. Publishing credits Puppy Dog Man / Celluloid Clown: exclusive first publication by iamb Pyjamas in the Snow: Anser Journal

Hear poet Caroline Stancer read poems for wave 26 of literary poetry journal iamb. Caroline Stancer wave 26 summer 2026 back next the poet Nottingham-based poet and novelist Caroline Stancer is a counsellor and trainer for the NHS and other organisations. She has a Creative Writing MA from Nottingham Trent University, and has twice been longlisted for the UK's National Poetry Competition. Caroline was also longlisted and shortlisted for Nine Arches Press' Primers competition, and commended in the Verve Festival Poetry Competition. She co-runs the Dandelions Poetry events and podcast, and her poetry can be found in Like Flyering for the Revolution: The VERVE Anthology of Protest Poems as well as in Anthropocene . Caroline is a PhD candidate at Manchester Metropolitan University, and her debut pamphlet is Full Body Reclaim . the poems Daffodil 00:00 / 01:28 Hell yeah! My mouth is open to eat all the eddies in the air I am hungry and loud Yellow! Yellow! I shout along with the cacophony of life like when you do the breaststroke in the sea and sink into each scooping dip a world of water hits your chest when the next wave rises it covers your head and your face is all salt all salt everywhere. Do you think it’s easy being this gorgeous? Being stretched to the endless limits of yellow paper thin and barely here I am almost all water and yet look how generous I am with all I haven’t got Do you remember when you gave birth and you felt blown open wide enough to let the world in? I live like that wide as an estuary at high tide Look at me look at me I am a herald for the Earth’s orbit and for Yes! one impossible moment in an ordinary grass verge Bluebell 00:00 / 01:40 Our smooth blue throats hang down hungry for the earth in its woody decomposition we breathe it in and breathe it in that rich rotting history some of us are uplifted to drink the air and its million currents when we gulp together we swallow you down into coolest spring like when you wait at the top of the tunnel slide in the water park then swing yourself down into the channel of water whoosh and dimmed light and then all your breath is taken as you submerge there is nothing else there is nothing else only spring our blue soothes even the parts of you that cannot be soothed the tangled conflict the unbearable loss like an efficient nurse with ice cubes flannel and drugs who slides you down the dark flume of night our frilled edges like the careful curls at the edge of your grandmother’s face our buds bunched arguments ready to burst the white lumps of our planted hearts shoving forth fountains of green and moon in slow motion insupportable cascades Rose 00:00 / 02:03 You worry about dropping things so much has been spilled already but I am careless balanced on a stem my petals blowsy overblown I lose a few and lose a few my filmy pieces of bliss discarded a silk wrap for your fingertip a piece of dreaming sky you want to know what kind of enigma I am— I only know that I am one that is translucent and one that is yellow and one that is red I have dewy edges still wet when in shadow damp even after hours in sunlight and hinges where petals fold down from the white of my fleshy centre you ask what can that flesh be made of? … tiny ear bones all crushed and softened the heart of hearing or a flood of miniscule shells patterns erased by the sea the still centres of constant motion And how can petals emerge from this? … I let my colour bloom like blood You ask more questions— How does each petal know where it lives? How does every part of you know where it lives? I answer— … all the creatures of the Earth know where they live remember here is your hair and here is each limb sometimes outside of every miracle and sometimes held within Publishing credits All poems: Otherwise Engaged (Vol. 10, Winter 2022) Special thanks to Five Leaves Publications for publishing these poems as part of Full Body Reclaim

Hear poet Rachel O'Sullivan read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rachel O'Sullivan wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Rachel O'Sullivan is a 24-year-old queer writer based in Dublin, Ireland. Their work has featured in Full House Literary , The Winged Moon , Fatal Flaw and elsewhere. You'll find them lingering along the borders between strange objects, inexplicable feelings, circling thoughts and untraceable words. the poems Stood & standing. 00:00 / 01:44 I overstay my welcome, push the clock-out. Rent meant to be 40% of weekly cheque that would be a dream. Dyson blew a fuse. Air quality checks at opening & close. 6:12pm, carbon monoxide levels 8ppi below toxic. A long year. A fresh start. A new job. But, the bathroom door needs your body weight to click the lock. They worry & worry. Is your accommodation safe Rachel? There’s something in these lungs & it’s not air. My dreams from the last week: The city flooded. Every country on fire. My father robbed the shop. Late for work. Twice at peace, girlfriend wrapped around me. Punching & punching & punching. My girl drowning & drowning & drowning. Reach Phibsborough & video call the ones abroad. Box room smells of period blood & sour tears. Citrus oils & 1,000 perfumes. Watch them slip. I count them on my hands, the ones who leave & won’t come back. 4, 5, 6. My summers will be border hopping, but I will be the last one standing on this sinking ship. I will not leave. Every day I promise this. The country gets smaller. I get hungrier. The rooms get tighter. I am awake (an affirmation). the middle of the world – nicholas britell 00:00 / 01:50 –my job to drive the car, clumsy backseat transitions without a breath, downshift gear, first exit here, remember the shadowy corner, there’s dew on the trees this morning, daddy, don’t crash the car, remember , the dog is in the boot asleep with his paws in a heap his head on top holding in the still, let the air in, hear doggy’s sweet dreams, twitching feet, soft yips, don’t crash the car daddy, little sister is leaning on the window, she wants you to let the windows down, her stomach is sore, she wants to go home but she’ll be fine when we get there, she likes the beach, she wants to get there she just doesn’t want you to crash the car daddy, what would we tell, I know, the suspension on this car is shit and when you drive you sway like you don’t know what you’re dancing with but it’s only 10 on a Sunday and if you love us there’s no room for error when you’re driving this fast daddy and people come flying out from that drive, you’ve seen them, horses come down this road the riding school has kiddie lessons at this time we always see them it’s harvest season too they’re all coming for the markets and ice cream just like us they’re all like us what’s out the window there’s nothing to see out there we’re in here daddy the road is slippery in the shadows and there’s dew on the ` trees and little do we know what’s around the almost domestic 00:00 / 02:37 Dentist returns molar to palm alive and dripping crack right up the root infection clumped, he says I have never been still even in sleep have only learned rest as an adult, by holding myself so tightly cracked the bones look at it knowing well my incisors and canines visible with Swarovski crystals never get around to the back parts of myself meant to be half buried in the soil and rock of gums and jaw now in my hand and dead, flat broad tooth for a herbivore like me shrunken memory of the horse tooth spanned palm seven years ago my little pony had an infected molar witness to bodily extraction on the other end of the rope held it slack, the pony he stayed more still when he knew he could run move smoothed the other hand in small circles on his shoulder small touch that language I writhed more for my dentist his knees locked dozing, veterinarian pried out the massive roots clump of infection hanging off nerve the spinning draw to the hidden life inside the mouth cosmic black hole of exposed bones all the ways I could still learn to worship him. I wanted to be a vet to mend things liked the pull of stitches soak of poultice wrangle of ticks letting in birth staving off death absorbed with everything in the middle – eighteen years watching bones set straight again the slow crawl of patchworking skin starting over; immediate expanse of graveyard shifts, mistranslation of a life where I am indistinguishable from caged creatures my time on earth a vessel to hold theirs to be a complete sun for them to live under. Allow them to lead me through life a child learning balance from paw prints in settling dirt sounding out echoes of their hooves my service and sermon tending those that facilitated rewilding, unmastery of self, the dogs the ponies the rabbit the guinea pig the echoes and shadows of foxes badgers deer birds almost domesticated myself for them, for the witchcraft that might have propped them up alongside my long, winding trail around this soil and rock. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet David Butler read poems for wave 11 of literary poetry journal iamb. David Butler wave 11 autumn 2022 back next the poet David Butler's third poetry collection, Liffey Sequence , was published in 2021 – the same year as his second short story collection, Fugitive . His novel, City of Dis , was shortlisted for Irish Novel of the Year 2015. the poems Distancing 00:00 / 00:53 Now we are wintering – the whole hive stupefied to silence, each in their cell who isn’t soldiering, an inmate of a new Shalott – the cities, simulacra: drone-shot piazzas; enchanted palaces; empty trainset trains; vistas dreamed by de Chirico; traffic lights sequencing the memory of traffic – confined while, ineluctably, somewhere else, the toll, the toll, until we’re numbed by the scale of it; each week, the heat and bustle more distant, more unlikely; nothing to feed but waxing apprehension: what will eclose this long cocooning, and on what tentative wings? And then the sun broke through 00:00 / 00:46 A sea of jade and muscatel; the sky, gun-metal. Landward, the storm-portending birds, white-lit, Riding wild contours of wind, uplift To tilt at the raucous crows. This Is how it is to live, the ticker tells, Looping the floor of the newsfeed. Somewhere, an outrage; an airstrike; Somewhere, a politic withdrawal. This Is how it is to live: the wind blowing The charcoal of crows’ feathers; The rent in the clouds; oblique tines beating Sudden ochre out of a sullen ocean. These Are Not Days 00:00 / 00:46 These are not days, they are shadows flitting over the too-familiar ground, dry and rubble strewn, where our choices are buried. These are not days, these shades, tremulous, mere changes of light. Quiet as thieves, as witnesses, they slip past in silent legion. Count them up, and they come to years, but years empty of substance. They are the dry husks of our lives, the whisper inside the hourglass. Days are not the coinage of will, as once we imagined. One day they rise like locusts, to devour us. Publishing credits Distancing / These Are Not Days: Liffey Sequence (Doire Press) And then the sun broke through: All the Barbaric Glass (Doire Press)

Hear poet Kelly Davis read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kelly Davis wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Kelly Davis lives on the West Cumbrian coast and works as a freelance editor. Her poetry has been widely anthologised and published in magazines such as Mslexia , Magma and Shooter . She has twice been shortlisted for the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award and she appears in the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021 anthology (Black Spring Press). In 2021, she collaborated with Kerry Darbishire on their poetry pamphlet Glory Days (Hen Run). Her debut solo collection, The Lost Art of Ironing , was published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2024. the poems Calling them in 00:00 / 01:33 Come home for your tea! We called them in, as day fled and night ate our words. The sun had already set. Come home for your tea! Anxiety edged our voices and night ate our words. It was much too late. The sun had already set. Come home for your tea! Anxiety edged our voices, imagined fears grew larger and night ate our words. They grew up so suddenly. Dusk took us by surprise. It was much too late. Come home for your tea! They could no longer hear us. The sun had already set, with darkness at its heels, and night ate our words. We were wasting our breath. It seems a moment ago but it’s twenty years or more. Somehow they gave us the slip. Time wouldn’t wait. Did we suspect, even then? Anxiety edged our voices. Perhaps we had a premonition – imagined fears grew larger. We tried to call them home and night ate our words. Grandfather 00:00 / 01:16 My grandfather’s hands were thick-knuckled and strong. Bear’s paws that scooped me up when we swam in the sea at Durban beach. Sometimes they held carving knives, sliced succulent roast chicken or salt beef, stole the fatty trimmings, popped them in his mouth when he thought no one saw. As a boy in Lithuania, his hands must have been small and soft. Perhaps he played chess with his brothers, helped sort envelopes at the family post office. In 1941, in Durban, those hands opened a letter that said his parents, brothers, brother’s wives and children had all been shot. Somehow his hands continued brushing shaving cream on his chin, patting his daughter’s head, fastening his cuff links, wiping his eyes when he wept. Meeting in deep time 00:00 / 01:20 I’m on a journey inside my husband’s head. We normally exist in different worlds – me with my words, him with his rocks. But now I’m editing his book and travelling back 400 million years. I’m starting to understand how slowly tectonic plates meet and move apart; how layers of rock can shift; how they thrust, fold, edge into one another’s space; how vast glaciers freeze the warm earth and thaw into torrents, sculpting jagged peaks and scooping out deep valleys. I’m seeing orange pyroclastic flows obliterate ancient slopes; and swarms of rounded drumlins under the grass, like whales breaking the surface; realising that a million years is the tiniest sliver of time; that the two of us, and every thought we’ve ever had, are at once utterly unimportant and infinitely precious. Publishing credits Calling them in: Dusk: Stories and poems from Solstice Shorts Festival 2017 (Arachne Press) Grandfather: exclusive first publication by iamb Meeting in deep time: Magma (Issue 81) Author photo: © Clare Park

Hear poet Hannah Linden read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. Hannah Linden wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Hailing from a northern working-class background but living now in ramshackle social housing in Devon, Hannah Linden has had her poetry published in Acumen , Lighthouse , Magma , New Welsh Review , Tears in the Fence , Under the Radar and elsewhere. She won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition in 2021, and was highly commended in the Wales Poetry Award 2021. Hannah's debut pamphlet is The Beautiful Open Sky , and she's currently working towards her first full poetry collection. the poems What the Wind Said 00:00 / 01:48 There’s no doubt I was already buried. I was prone and silent so it’s no surprise people talked about me in the third person. I was the family problem—the musty smell from a corner, the already gone but lingering. I did everything underground. Even my thinking was hidden from me. Up would come an idea— a fruit that was perhaps poisonous. I didn’t know how to trust anything. I felt the rooms of me become caves half full of water, somewhere, somewhere. My body was a disconnect. I was blind and deaf. Threads of me stretched thin, deep below the family carpet. I wanted to be gone, threw spores to the wind— tiny pieces of conversation seeking release, some lichen-yearn escape from a spent flower burst. There was no romance in it, no fairytale quest. I was turning myself into nothing, drifting on thin air. I don’t know who whispered onto a breeze the direction to a crack in the pavement. It was a small thing, small kindness, like I was alive—like I should be alive. The Fight 00:00 / 01:33 She said HE had packed my things, boxes stacked under the stairs, ready for the off. I tasted nothing of the reconciliation supper, the too- light chatter of my brothers, my sister's over-long hug as we whispered goodbye. But I felt Mum's silence in the car, the negative pull until I was a black hole sucking everything into my void, except her. She sat on the edge of Nan's spare bed. You will never come home again. I am a half-circle. I am an apple falling from the tree. When she left, I slit open the boxes to search for my overall: my dead dad's shirt, the hold of his undying smell. My step-father had thrown away this rag of him—the remnant Dad gave me for when there’s dirty work to do. How he'd kept me clean. I roll up my sleeves, remember bare arms, tattoos he'd regretted— it's my skin being bloodied now. Light 00:00 / 01:35 When I first climbed out it was simply the absence of him. Then the absence of pain in the shoulders that I hadn’t known was connected to him, like shadows are. Then a ladder started to form, simple steps like noticing I enjoyed the sound of a ticking clock. Or being able to turn over in bed, turn on a lamp to read, or open the curtains to the moon. Ladders of light are not a form of magic. Sometimes they are silence in a room that is not always aware of the sounds in another. I wasn’t used to climbing, the muscles in my legs weary from lack of use. Resting on a ladder of light takes practice. I made some of the rungs into ledges. Rested with my children. Sometimes it’s best not to look back or try to calculate how far there is left to climb. In the hollows at the back of the rock face, pressed hard into the surface, the imprint of women’s fingers, more felt than visible, waiting to be found. Publishing credits What the Wind Said / Light: exclusive first publication by iamb The Fight: The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press) Author photo: © Jeanette Mullins

Hear poet Abigail Lim Kah Yan read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Abigail Lim Kah Yan wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Abigail Lim is a Malaysian engineer and spoken word poet who will point out to you, every plane she sees in the sky. She has a poem published in the 2021 Malaysian Millennial Voices anthology titled 'How to Paint the Rainbow When You're Colourblind'. She is also the winner of the 2022 Kuala Lumpur Youth Literary Arts Festival Poetry Slam. the poems Domestic Arrival 00:00 / 01:50 You told me I felt like home earlier on. But the way you bring my feet up to your lips to kiss them makes me feel like a church instead, an altar. Catholics are called to repent during Lent, and it feels like we're always apologizing in advance. When I cry, and I cry a lot, you do not tell me to stop. You reach out to hug me just as soon as my eyes turn glassy like yours, watching the rims of my glasses catch the first drops of tears. You told me to write sad poems about you, but you're the happiest part in all of them. Because you bring offerings too, of fancy chocolate, and the Killer Queen champagne and so many burgers. The remnants of smoke and ash in my bathroom like the incense wafting from thuribles. And teaching me Jeff Buckley's hallelujah on the electric guitar is the closest thing we both can agree on for a hymn. You told me I'm your matriarch, because in the words of Taylor Swift, fuck the patriarchy (in more ways than one). You told me I felt like home earlier on, and I told you, you make me feel like Eve, you, my Adam, I want to split open my chest cavity, dig around for the one rib that always felt misplaced in me, break it off, hands scarlet and ivory, offer it up to you, say, "I think this belongs to you, how long have you been without it". Kintsugi Inspired by Robert Frost 00:00 / 02:28 Nothing gold can stay and nothing good can stay I want you to stay so bad, I only wear silver jewelry, keep the gold rings and necklaces for special occasions. because nothing gold can stay and an orange sunset only casts its glows for so long on my Kelana Jaya condo we watch it fade together, from the swimming pool, floating, hands reaching out like otters at sea, afraid to drift too far away because nothing good can stay I am afraid to wonder if we'll ever trade our silver rings for golden ones di tanah yang sudah mengenal rasa darah kami, yet still demands its pound of flesh why do I need to renounce my faith for something you have ceased to believe in We are mere casualties of the 1984 Islamic Family Law I wonder if there are those before us Who did not yield to this pressure, a cult, beckoning Gold is typically a malleable metal darah mereka bukan lagi milik tanah ini and I want to break your IC in half, Make you a new one, take my last name, You're already more of a Lim than I am, Christened the Lim Jetty in Penang with spills of beer and cigarette ash teaching me to speak my ancestors' tongue 'Wah ni hui Chiang hua yi ah' all the aunties say Can we make gold stay? Because I'm an engineer, and you're pretty smart, Together we'll polish the little gold we have until they shine constantly, We're both clumsy, but we seem to have a pretty solid track record of keeping our silver rings safe If we can make good stay, I will follow you beyond a sunset's horizon, To a land where personal beliefs are kept personal (I don't need a church or a government to recognize our union) And if gold rings are too precious a commodity, I'd marry you with paper rings in a heartbeat. Icarus 00:00 / 01:47 I think some planes were meant to stay grounded - like the 737Max after the Ethiopian Air crash. I think I am what happens when a plane stalls, suddenly, there is not enough lift to keep me off the ground, and my internal pilots suck at recovering. I think this is as close as I get to Icarus, he too has felt the thrill of flying high, hair tickled by the wind, waxy wings white against a golden blue sky. I think I am as stubborn as Icarus, somehow believing I can touch the sun, but gravity will have us in its grasp at the last second. He too would've felt the air sucked from his lungs as he fell all the way down. I think we both do not have time to grieve unsuccessful dreams, we just die along with them. I think some dreams are meant to be forgotten the moment you wake up, but I remember all my sleep paralysis demons. And I think I do get a little sad each time I see a plane in the sky, knowing I am so far removed from ever touching it. But I hope my love still finds it adorable when I compulsively tell him, 'see plane' or 'got propeller, looks like ATR72', neck stretching out windows to get a better view. I think, on some days, he is the dream I get to wake up to. I think I am trying to be happy staying grounded, at the very least, you can't have a good flight without a safe landing. Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Catrice Greer read poems for wave 8 of literary poetry journal iamb. Catrice Greer wave 8 winter 2021 back next the poet Baltimore-based writer Catrice Greer is a 2021 nominee for The Pushcart Prize who spent November 2020 serving as a Poet-In-Residence for the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. Catrice has been published in several local publications and online journals, as well as in an international anthology. She's currently a Guest Editor for IceFloe Press, and Guest Poetry reviewer for Fevers of the Mind. the poems Cortical Cartography 00:00 / 01:54 I give thanks for you bravely doing this again traveling synapse by synapse trails of electric pulses jumping blackhole gaps that used to remember holding the dead space a new soma body birthing from bleating darkness show us the nucleus the middles of what we were made of Axons spread like kamikaze flying squirrel bodies with arms akimbo reaching dendrites touching Grateful for even this axon potential sometimes on sometimes off Praise for brave synaptic dives and jumps Grateful for re-birthed myelin insulating protecting making sure that we traffic on our way by the quickest route charged in this dark matter discovery-space This astronomy building anew, wrinkled city of light, crevices, crannies, gyri and sulci, ridges and valleys jellied, crinkled mass sectioned by lobes all speaking trillions simultaneous synaptic voices prayerfully all at once this chatter mines the neuronal network and we build a whole new world I Am Home 00:00 / 02:20 Lost you Early November When the leaves started falling And time faded backward Sitting here crocheting Stitching memories one loop at a time Your voice in my head swirling Humming a hymn, your favorite And I sing each note yearning, solemn As if you’d appear suddenly solo into a duet and we raise our voices as high as you ascended when it was time For you to be called home I rock quietly ashen stilted lone tree Swaying In a wood still lush knowing I sit with a pain I can barely speak the name awash with memories of you and the absent space we called your chair, dresser, your place at the table the place we used to go every Friday, your touch, your smile beaming a side-eye on an inside joke between us, The memory that had your name all over it that our family can’t tell anymore without crying, laughing, wishing you here And one day I will see your face again We will see you Feel you As your spirit is so close in the air here near me Near us vibrating in the humming I believe I can feel you We will never forget you A whisper softly tells me: 'I am home' The Gathering 00:00 / 03:14 Hear ye, hear ye We are gathered here today family, friends, enemies, enemies of my enemies We are here at the black hole mouth of this isolated cave in the grief painted infected unknown space to bury our dead among us Those dead things between us that hold us back Those things we no longer speak Those things that twine and whip round our vocal chords that prevent the i’m sorries i miss yous, i love yous the pieces that bumble forward like an emotionally blind man heady on drink bumbling home too late for whatever he was meant to be there for knocking over sentimentals, and traditions, passed down collectibles shattered in pieces launched jagged landmine shards speckling the ground Our DNA, our ancestors, mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers long gone our creators ask us to stand here together Ask ourselves if in this space we will abandon Our old skins Our old breath and choose to share anew Can we bury this dead thing between us all so we can stand wrapped in sinew, tendons, blood¹ coursing miracles spiraling through the breath lifting us in a swirl of meditative purpose Can we find a new space a sense of being We are here in this vortex to bury the living dead under loam, clay, rocks, into the broken soil Cover it. Mark it as resting here never to go forward We mark new paths with a sign here as we crawl out heel to heel ... 6ft apart linked in spirit life begins anew we celebrate together mourning yesterdays embracing our multicolored confettied I forgive yous, littered in the air, celebrating our tomorrows ¹ Ezekiel 37:8 — King James Version: 'And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them.' Publishing credits Cortical Cartography: Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Ancestral Voices 2020) I Am Home: Afro-American Newspaper (Baltimore Edition) The Gathering: first published under the title Elegy in the Silver Spring Town Center Newsletter (Vol. 8, Issue 9)

Hear poet Ysella Sims read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Ysella Sims wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet Poet, writer and producer Ysella Sims has had her work featured in The Guardian , Brittle Star and the The Blue Nib Literary Magazine , where she was a contributing editor. Ysella produces poetry and spoken-word events, as well as the immersive poetry podcast, Tell Me Something . She published her first poetry pamphlet, you are here , in 2021. the poems Echo 00:00 / 01:45 They watch the screen as the sonographer traces slow circles on her belly and the room dulls to a thick, cloistered hush. In another room, smaller, colder the world rends, roils beneath the blue plastic sofa while they wait for the midwife to tell them, it doesn’t look good. In the weeks between, they lean against the cool bark of the witching tree on the heath whisper pleas into its tessellations stick stray feathers into the sand to arrange their wishes, just so. And when it is time, she lies still oh-so-still on the table holds her breath behaves. Outside, a morning of crows bare-branched, murdering the brumal air with clatter and chaws; a carnival flash of parakeets at the Richmond window. Sun breaking through dank in the gorse-crowned field to colour the sky sugared pink starling egg blue the sweet heft of a pear-sized ghost in her arms. I am turning into all the mothers 00:00 / 00:45 I am turning into all the mothers my younger self condemned; the ones that baulked at journeys, heights, the world beyond the door the diazepam-rattlers cake-offerers, stomach-ragers sobbers the confidence-tricksters told-you-so-ers nitpickers frowners the news-tutters jar-scrapers eavesdroppers sighers – all those felled by their children’s fingers un- – picking the strings. Folk Festival, 1982 00:00 / 01:21 All she remembers is that there was a coach brimful with men and women punchdrunk with Friday night and possibility, the air sun-ripe and sweet kids stacked amongst kit bags fiddles and sticks and as dusk fell a field of yellow and green where they pitched their tents and Big Sue, apple-cheeked and bangled, squeezed her brother into her bosom’s curve in the tent’s zipped orange glow a car park, pulsing with music and bells light spilling from the pub like it was somebody’s front room the electric scent of men their danced-in shirts the velveted whirl of women’s black-chokered throats childrens’ voices in the glow-wormed hedges and a scratchy-faced stranger pinning her, like a butterfly, to the August ground – her brother, reaching in to release her like she was one of his own. Publishing credits Echo: The Blue Nib I am turning into all the mothers / Folk Festival, 1982: exclusive first publication by iamb