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Hear poet Julieanne Larick read poems for wave 18 of literary poetry journal iamb. Julieanne Larick wave 18 summer 2024 back next the poet Julieanne Larick is a poet and editor from Northeast Ohio. She edits poetry for GASHER Press, prose for jmww Journal, and manages social media for The Dodge. Her poems have appeared in Passengers Journal, Eunoia Review, and Kissing Dynamite. She is currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript on her family mythos and the environment, and loves Charles Simic. the poems Oranges 00:00 / 01:01 Our family comes from pilgrims, my mother tells me at dinner. They were pilgrims weeping into the river, in flight they wept in memory frothing with rain and drinking up the oranges baka received for Christmas, squelching with sour juice and sun. My mom asks if baka would want to read this about her family. Baka grew up too quickly; she watched as pilgrims left iron shoes in the swirling disturbances of the Danube, her father, the wine-dipping man, sinking like the orange in water, an O on his lips. Yes, she would want to read about those years on the Danube, those rainfalls and sun showers, the stinging grief on our eyelids, net of slain fruit in our palms. Previously published as Pomorandža A Common Phrase I Hate 00:00 / 01:13 If a tree falls in the forest, it didn’t really happen if our bodies aren’t crushed by the force. If the deer dies silently by the lake, if no one lingers behind while I tie my shoe, if no one finds our bodies together, sewn up by the earth’s moss, green fingers drawing us further away from the people who knew us. Did we ever live or die, did we ever love? If I scorch my fingertips and no one notices the burn, it didn’t really happen since the world keeps spinning outside the scars of my hands. Around and around and around until all the people I know wrinkle from a million little pleasures. I told a stranger I loved her outfit in a Tesco while I was buying six cans of gin fizzes. She wore a pink button down and said it was her boyfriend’s. She smiled; the first time a stranger smiled at me since I turned 19. If we both loved each other but never said a word, did it really happen? Previously published as Elegy to Lying Home 00:00 / 01:20 I take I-71 home from college, unpack all the stuff I collected over the year. Return my favourite sweater to Nebraska and migrate the bird necklace to the last man who loved me. I leave parties at 7 and spit out drinks, return cigarettes. I unwrite lots of essays about Donne and Wordsworth, uncheck books from the growing reading list. My dad takes back his apologies. I absorb salt in my eyes, rub dirt on my skin, abandon old friends before loving them again. Unlearn their names. I turn 18, then 17, then 16, then 15, I ruin a birthday party for my sister then go back to the hospital where they drain my body of fluids and I watch my heart beat faster and slower and I spit the water and all the pills back to where they came from. I erase the note saying why I wanted to die, that I sense my hometown turn its back on me. Leaves cough up orange and blacken in bloom, back to their own loving mothers. Previously published as Warm Creature Publishing credits Oranges: Perhappened Magazine (Issue No. 9) A Common Phrase I Hate: Passengers Magazine (Vol 4, Issue No. 2) Home: Passengers Magazine (Vol. 4, Issue No. 2)

Hear poet Candradasa read poems for wave 7 of literary poetry journal iamb. Candradasa wave 7 autumn 2021 back next the poet Born in Canada and raised in Scotland, Candradasa is an ordained Buddhist who now lives in New Hampshire, USA. His poetry has been published (sometimes under his given name, Michael Venditozzi) in Agenda, Acumen, Black Bough Poetry, Chapman , Finished Creatures and elsewhere. He was nominated for The Pushcart Prize in 2020. the poems Banagher Dam 00:00 / 02:38 That time we walked up to Banagher Dam competing all the way: the shocked, stern, physical silence, and the miraculous heat, and our thumping hearts when we got to the top. I fell asleep on the grass. When I woke you convinced me about eating apples including the core, though already a little wary of me; so it felt like I was being taught, not the old mutual sharing of ways. (A few years later, a man in Wales tells me birds won’t eat an apple’s pips as they contain some tiny trace of cyanide. He’d stopped himself on hearing this and, glad of the excuse, I found it made a lot of sense to me.) But back at the dam it’s getting late. We’re starting down, lighter between us as we come near the moss-wood, fern-breaks, soft-crumble sides falling away to the burn beneath; we cross a bridge – and run: Whooping, barking, down on all-fours, shuttling between trees like men formed in a certain kind of light growing supple as deer, while overhead a tawny sky, and underfoot the fawny ground. Scampering the wounding way of a young forest’s hollows: trip- humps and leaf-fills and rotting trunk-cuts; ducking in and out of vision like the lost patrol in a film of a far-off jungle war. A wreathing passage then, the yield of branches; smooth our stooping, sharp our awareness of the other, even when invisible. We’d stop, dead but for the beat in the ears – then strain, catch sound, and whoop again And run again, and harry and chase and laugh respectful; maintaining reserve – then suddenly veering over new paths won together through the wood: crisscrossing in front, behind each other, never getting in the way. Till eventually we emerge – glorious and nakedly undefiant – to collapse sweating, roaring with blood, silent again in a heap of grasses piled dry beside the stile close to where we’d left the car. Allan Donn ‘Ailein Duinn ὸ hì shiubhlainn leat’ Ailein Duinn 00:00 / 01:36 My Allan Donn, where do you lie in foam white as an alb? Your pillow now a mermaid’s purse, your bed of kale and gorse unseen beneath the sea, Oh, Allan, who can comfort me? The seals kept faith with every soul that fell from Hurkar rocks; their mothers watched them from the doors but no one made the shore, and all of us were torn, Oh, Allan, may we be reborn? So talk with them, my Allan dear, as we would in the dawn, our little boat with anchored dreams of other ways and times warm by the harbour side, Oh, Allan, have we lost the tide? Then pity us, sea kings and queens, the orphans of your race; whose fathers wash ashore like shells, and all the stories tell of hearts lost in the sound, Oh, Allan, sorrow’s in our hands, My Allan, when will we be found? Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) 00:00 / 00:48 Those stones. Stones like huge mountain breads all dried out, still with the memory of oil. The heaviest overlaid in rings, spiral darknesses, sun-proofed save for the keyhole glow shown once a year: a god lasering in. The blessed work of generations roped together, hauled up and on: setting unequal day and night, their solstice harvest of grain and art. The wonder of river minds that floated quartz the length of the Boyne and turned whole hillsides to heavens where all our kings will be crowned. Publishing credits Banagher Dam: exclusive first publication by iamb Allan Donn: Chapman (Vol. 106) Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange): Deep Time, Vol. 2 (Black Bough Poetry)

Hear poet Nicola Heaney read poems for wave 5 of literary poetry journal iamb. Nicola Heaney wave 5 spring 2021 back next the poet Nicola Heaney is from Derry, and has poems in a number of journals across the UK and Ireland – including The North , The Cormorant , Crannóg , Skylight47 and Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal . Her poetry has also been shortlisted twice for the Bridport Prize (in 2019 and 2020). Nicola recently published Ulster Fairytales & Legends with The O'Brien Press, and is now working on her first collection. the poems Aviatrix 00:00 / 01:52 I Amelia Earhart popped in for tea on a hot afternoon in 1932. Destined for Paris, she landed instead on Gallagher’s field in Ireland’s North West. As out of place as her Lockheed plane amongst the grazing sheep and cattle, she stood in her trousers and leather coat, calm as a Sunday stroll in the country. 'Have you come far?' a farmhand asked. She grinned, wide eyes the colour of sky. 'America.' II Years later, on another island, in a different ocean miles across the world, she was found by another Gallagher, an Irishman conquering the Empire’s last colony on a rocky outcrop. He identified her by her bones, a bottle of Benedictine and a tube of hand lotion – a broken rouge compact, a woman’s shoe and the remnants of a pot of freckle ointment all pointed to her. But the scientists disagreed. 'It’s a man', they said. She stayed missing, despite Gallagher’s protests. 'It can’t be her – the bones are too long … Plus, this person survived for weeks, distilling drinking water in flames, living off turtles, fish and birds. It can’t be her.' The authorities closed the case, lost her bones. Gallagher died on the island. She’s still missing. III In an estate on the city fringes, a museum marks where she landed, its entrance bricked up against trespassers, windows long gone to teenage vandals. In the carpark, half-naked children play among caravans, weeds and burnt-out cars, running around with arms outstretched, trying to build enough speed to fly. Beachcombing 00:00 / 01:17 I Burrowed in black blistered seaweed that splits the beach in two a whelk shell lies empty. I don’t know why I notice it, rough bran mottled with cream, nothing like the shining white ones we used to collect. You taught me how to select the best. I’d bring them to you and you’d turn them over with long hands so similar to mine, red fingernails tapping for blemishes. At home, you’d coat them in nail polish until they shimmered like nebula, placed on the kitchen windowsill where I’d gaze up at them, forbidden from touching. II I pick the shell up, trace the ridges, turn it to expose iridescent white and pink within, like the innards of a fresh cut. Placing it to my ear, I listen to the churn of waves calling it back out into grey seas. I could take it with me, place it on the windowsill next to the sprig of shrivelled heather picked on a Donegal hill, add it to the cairn I’m building in my English kitchen – instead, I replace it gently between tidemarks in wet sand. False Monument 00:00 / 00:56 In Plaza Mayor, a bronze horse stamps on air, his belly filled with sparrow corpses. For centuries, they sought the promise of shade within, hopped onto his tongue, went deeper, fluttered down his throat, found themselves trapped, unable to fly back up into light. Hundreds died in his belly, suffocated by fiery darkness. Cardboard shelters fill the porticoes around the square, the city’s homeless hiding from the searing heat. At café tables, people sip coffee under shade of frescoed buildings, eyes hidden by sunglasses reflecting sky. During the war, someone threw a bomb into the horse’s mouth which opened its guts and belched out the corpses entombed inside sending them skywards, back into air. Publishing credits Aviatrix: Riggwelter (Issue 25) Beachcombing: Crannóg (Issue 52) False Monument: The Cormorant (Issue 4)

Hear poet Fred Schmalz read poems for wave 21 of literary poetry journal iamb. Fred Schmalz wave 21 spring 2025 back next the poet Artist and poet Fred Schmalz is the author of collection Action in the Orchards , which explores intimacy and loss via encounters with contemporary art. His writing has appeared in Puerto del Sol , Zocalo Public Square , Places Journal , Diagram , Poetry and Oversound . Collaborating with Susy Bielak, the two mine social histories, texts and archives to create installations and actions that reflect the gravity and strangeness of contemporary cities. The duo's recent work has been presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Grand Central Art Center. the poems Spring Triptych 00:00 / 02:27 on the concrete jetty a piping plover twice darts across the path first off the breakwater then alighting from a perch on the seawall curl where fishermen idle a group of kids flits and dunks they compare arm scars histories of love and neglect industry for the day’s first hours shared loose affiliation with the eddies’ swirl all of it behind them now cut loose from a flotilla they drift past the wreck away with them a wallet a phone a bag of clothes sinks as they lift with the tide gulls dive into the cove covered in algae staring into the surf stones tumble toward the mouth of the inlet * miles of hatched mosquito cloud columns fold and surge over the fields so thick they crowd the light wave on the hill’s crest pelt passing bodies the injured crawl through my hair to witness to warn teeth and mouth water poured into vessels the narrows of breath cover me in carcasses and with them flower petals flute down from the northern border * I hadn’t seen the woman who sings the sun up on the berm by the beach since before the park closed for months years ago though one morning in winter as I approached was disillusioned by another figure this morning she paces just north of her old haunt along the trail tiny frame and one leg hitch my heart rush at seeing her and nobody around to tell the lengths our bodies age around us muscles tender sag the lax of years mirrors a deep wildness beyond her a seagull beats a sunfish on a rock Basic Training, 1991 00:00 / 01:37 every morgue in Chicago anticipates influxes today a backhoe opens the meadow I climb down into the trench lay prone there a moment its fetid walls its worms recoil while the dead’s names go out in response I eat a vitamin a thyroid pill oatmeal my last orange my odds of dying drop in the night I can’t say what good crawling into a hole serves though I recall twenty-nine years earlier waiting for my brother in a recess at Fort Knox an absolute silence overcame me the trench anechoic save its peat leaching new light formed flat pale branches in relief against the sky beneath the tree I saw through the deaths to the persistence of the living lately I’m less sure than ever my brother rises and waits for me we may reach détente eventually this century will claim us both forever overnight men in blue coveralls begin laying to rest the dead never out of work I will be there after all what have I got to sleep for New Year's Eve 00:00 / 00:58 leaning over a balcony railing to shake the circular rug of breadcrumbs and seeds gathered and shed I've been thinking again of how a year closes and another sets out from home in the lightest perceptible rain nightfall comes slowly the foxes that play in the roadway trot off between houses soon the shops will shutter your daughters take spoons to devour the cakes we brought propped on round white plates they remind me of the palm-sized paving stones we pocketed last night on our walk home they are everywhere around us working loose in the freeze the thaw the freeze Publishing credits Spring triptych: Oversound (Issue Nine) Basic training, 1991: The Canary (Issue 7) New Year’s Eve: Oversound (Issue Six)

Hear poet Jenny Mitchell read poems for wave 12 of literary poetry journal iamb. Jenny Mitchell wave 12 winter 2022 back next the poet Jenny Mitchell is the winner of the Poetry Book Awards 2021, and joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize 2019. She also won the inaugural Ironbridge Prize, the Bedford Prize and the Gloucester Poetry Society Open Competition. Her best-selling debut collection, Her Lost Language , was one of 44 Poetry Books for 2019 as chosen by Poetry Wales. Jenny's second collection, Map of a Plantation , was an Irish Independent ‘Literary Find’, and is on the syllabus at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her latest collection is Resurrection of a Black Man . the poems Bending Down to Worship 00:00 / 02:42 Church Mary said her God was in the ground, not Satan but all the things that grew, and flowers were the gems upon His crown. She made a garden all around her house – a broken shack she called a palace where she reigned. You couldn’t step beyond her door unless you brought her a bouquet or something green and pulsing full of life. She filled each glass and bowl she found with blooms she called her jewels though they were better as they gave a lovely scent. She tended to her tiny Eden till the flowers reached above her head – the colours bold against dark skin, so filled with shining light. Her headwraps were like floral wreaths, and every dress was made of faded flowers, the age-old boots like clumps of mud. The days when she was forced to work out in the fields, she feared the sun might scorch her garden. She ran out of the cane the moment that the whistle blew and went to fetch pure water from the stream. Her flowers had to live as they were all the freedom that she knew. On nights when she was grieving, she went outside to kneel amongst the plants, bend her head and talk to God. He answered back by showing her another rock or stone she had to move, revealing yet more ground on which to grow more buds. One Sunday, when the white priest tried to make her go to church, she offered him her shining patch of land with one sweep of her arm. She said I never saw your Jesus, but when I die I’ll end up in the ground to feed the things I love to grow, and that is all the heaven I will need. He damned her as a Godless slave. But when he left, she heard the voice of God again. He spoke to her of flowers as she bent to ornament His crown. Black Men Carry Flowers 00:00 / 01:23 red blossoms on their palms. hibiscus blooms from fingertips. waterlilies circle wrists in contrast to their shade heavy-laden with this crop, they move with grace. vines cling to arms. ferns worn as green insignia. warriors of peace they grow on any street. if you look up. see men are grand estates. a wealth of plants. once torn from land. they burgeon in the wild reach out in dappled light. wide shoulder blades replete with yellow orchids. chests are dappled lawns rolling to a bank of leaves delicate but strong morning glories shape their legs. bougainvillea bends the knees. ripples as it clings to thighs tumbling to the shins. agile on the ground jasmine moves the feet. every step a heady scent rising through a man-made-plant. flourishing. their words fall out as petals. The Seamstress For my grandmother 00:00 / 01:33 I’ll be the dress she never owned – immaculate for special days, the only burden heavy frills and English lace along the hem. I’ll never trail in dirt or suffer dust from cane fields. My heart will burst to make a bodice, stitched with bold Jamaican flowers: yellow orchids, red hibiscus. There will be a giant fern appliqued on her back: my ribcage opened to its full extent. I’ll raise my chin to make the high, firm collar – a throat so elegant, with space to hold my voice. I’ll ask her what she really wants – plain cuffs or golden buttons. Underneath the dress, I’ll make myself silk underwear, a soft and pretty petticoat. Its one equivalent will be her newly coddled skin. My feet will make such dainty shoes, and she will go like Cinderella to the ball. But if she doesn’t want the prince this time she’ll dance away without a care. The English lace will shimmer as she moves. Publishing credits Bending Down to Worship: Map of a Plantation Black Men Carry Flowers: Resurrection of a Black Man The Seamstress: Her Lost Language (all collections from Indigo Dreams Publishing) Author photo: ©Billy Grant

Hear poet Dave Garbutt read poems for wave 14 of literary poetry journal iamb. Dave Garbutt wave 14 summer 2023 back next the poet Dave Garbutt is retired, lives in Switzerland and has been a keen birder since he was 12. He was born in North London, less than a mile from Keats’ House, and began his writing career while still at school. Recent publications to include Dave's poems range from Deronda Review and The Brown Envelope Book to BOLD! (an anthology on masculinity) and Sound and Vision . His poem Thirteen White Birds was shown at Leigh Spinners Mill in April 2023 as part of the Paper Birds exhibition. Dave's poem ripped was long-listed in The Rialto's Nature and Place 2021 competition. the poems Walk, Stand and Sit by the Hornbeam 00:00 / 01:30 Come with me into the moment the world relaxes We talk, chatting, gesticulating, not drowning. Here, the hornbeam catkins are out— wait. Stand. Sit. Still. Breathe. Watch. —Count six hundred heartbeats— A Great Tit calls, moves past, twig to twig it stops to sing— a bit early, but sunshine makes it right. Now more birds move, quiz twigs, parse branches, a Tree-creeper sings, a Dunnock from the hedge releases its ‘short unassuming warble’ my first for this woody place. Four Magpies swoop past. A Nuthatch hammers a hazelnut A Hawfinch sits and watches drops to the ground ... here is the world when humans are still— this world, without us, is the one we live in best. Water Vole 00:00 / 00:54 The first time I saw a water vole it didn’t see me, and I watched it for half an hour. I had time. I was running away from the last quarrel of my marriage, from the last quarrel of my life, into my last sunset. And this tiny whisker-twitcher, tiny grass chopper, reed wrecker, ate, looked, sniffed, groomed itself, sniffed, rested watched for sky-scares, watched for water-shrieks and for a few seconds slept. Then it slipped off its rest place, and swam, leaving me with a life still to come, and a future yet to happen. Magnol.i.am 00:00 / 01:20 Although I am but one cell budding into a line I am just as much a petal although I am spread, to wind & sun I am just as much a petal although I am creased, folded back by frost I am just as much a petal although there are bruises marking my satin white I am just as much a petal although I rest now, released, on the ground I am just as much a petal although a footprint crosses my silvery tongue I am just as much a petal although time pushes the bruises to cover me I am just as much a petal although I am dissolving to moss and leaf I am just as much a petal and tell me human with eyes and ears and hands and pen how about you? are you a petal now? or still a human? Since when are you both? Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Brigitta Hänggi

Hear poet Liz Houchin read poems for wave 9 of literary poetry journal iamb. Liz Houchin wave 9 spring 2022 back next the poet Liz Houchin lives in Dublin and holds an MA in Creative Writing from its University College. Her first chapbook, Anatomy of a Honey girl , was published in 2021, and she was recently awarded a bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland to support the completion of her debut collection. Liz's work has appeared in Banshee, Journal.ie, RTE, Visual Verse and several anthologies. Her poems have also been shortlisted in the Fish Poetry Prize, Bridport Prize for Poetry, and the Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition. the poems Beauty and the Beech 00:00 / 01:22 I knew what they were saying behind handfuls of confetti under hatfuls of flowers ‘there she goes marrying a tree’ silly girl and her silent knight taciturn and towering over callow pea-green saplings ‘in a sludge brown suit in June!’ who dared speak as one vow cartwheeled down the aisle one murmured on the breeze ‘I’d say he’s some barrel of laughs’ the band played and I twirled gazing at my spotting point as they raised a mocking glass ‘let’s toast beauty and the beech!’ but the day gave way to crickets and stars my dress lay puddled on the forest floor and my ear pressed to his rippled trunk heard sparklers and peonies and pearls. It’s snowing in Omaha 00:00 / 00:31 He said, when I asked for a table inside and I tightened like a good sweater in a hot wash It’s only a sweater, he said, as I unwound it from a pair of tracksuit bottoms and pulled it in every direction away from its heart cast off 00:00 / 01:33 When we cast on, years ago, knitting our love sweater we followed our own pattern, starting with a slipknot new needles click-clacking as we found our rhythm uneven at first, our threads pulled a little tight in places —but too fine a gauge to worry about strangulation— we counted stitches in twos, like heartbeats, watching lines of plain settle smooth into our unthinking centre a u t o m a t e d l o v e l i v e s m a c h i n e d m o n o t o n y p e r f e c t p a r a l l e l p a i r But there it was: a peephole, there, in line seventeen. Who was counting after all this time? Me, I never stopped. I wonder if you had already noticed the dropped stitch, untethered, a loose loop ready to unravel us all the way and perhaps you let it drop to allow some other’s light illuminate your exit while I fumbled with a crochet hook to ladder us back up again, to make us look like new. Publishing credits Beauty and the Beech / cast off: Anatomy of a Honey girl (Southword Editions) It's snowing in Omaha: exclusive first publication by iamb

Hear poet Polly Atkin read poems for wave 3 of literary poetry journal iamb. Polly Atkin wave 3 summer 2020 back next the poet Polly Akin lives in Cumbria. Her first poetry collection, Basic Nest Architecture , was followed by her third pamphlet, With Invisible Rain, which draws on Dorothy Wordsworth’s late journals to express pain. Polly's first pamphlet, bone song , was shortlisted for the 2009 Michael Marks Pamphlet Award, while her second, Shadow Dispatches , won the 2012 Mslexia Pamphlet Prize. Her second poetry collection, Much With Body, will be published by Seren in October 2021. Polly is also working on a non-fiction book that reflects on place, belonging and chronic illness. the poems Motacilla flava flavissima 00:00 / 01:39 When you came to us in the grey yard it was out of the darkest season the first bright day brightest of bright challenging to identify at the time the trees black streaks with sticky buds like rain drops against the grey-green fell you flew out of the lightless mouth of winter with the sun in you most yellow of yellows the sun in you the sun trailing after the spinning rock of your body blazing yellow spreading yellow with every dab of your tail the train of a comet the augur you were you must have flown into the darkness and found the sun by the thin arc of yellow escaping from the well where she had been buried I thought you must have carried the sun in your beak like a seed that you jolted and swallowed her yellowest of all yellows most yellow most bright you coughed her out from your perch on the splintering fence and filled your mouth with nest stuff instead you stayed with us chose us you built your yellow world in the cracks in our grey one lit up with yellow yellow glowed from the fissures in the slate they call you a migrant breeder when you turn to red a passage visitor you knit your home in the passage between houses the passage between one and another your yellow between your yellow lighting the way Still 00:00 / 02:11 For a while I was still. They made me still in a room with a castle view they taught my arms to lie still. It hurt to jerk pinned down. Still they live. My electric elbow. My stutter wrist. Knees skip on the spot. Feet stick reflect the kick. Running in sleep eyes rolling. Viscous movement. Stammering rest. My left leg crossing my right is terrified trapped its breathing heart the hand of a metronome set too fast. I watch it swinging counting out frantic time to the patterned code of the carpet. I cannot feel it. I cannot control it. This is the blood’s attempt at communication. This is the body’s refusal. It throws its hands up. Listen to the hidden. I am not paying the right attention. You say stop frowning. I do not know I am frowning. My forehead aches with trying. With shaping the mouth for a motion like speaking. Radiant somebody says confusing alarm with wellbeing. No one can interpret the language of my blood’s blind panic. The figures add up to nothing. The pressure keeps building clicking up a shifting scale. For a while I was still. They made me still. In a room where I could not move for wanting. Now I am matter and current flux radiant energy dripping ticking. Leeches 00:00 / 01:38 Leeches have three hundred teeth. Leeches leave a bite mark like a peace sign. Leeches excrete anaesthetic when they pierce your skin, like Emla cream. Leeches are precious. A medicinal leech is hard to find. We are listening to the radio on the drive to the hospital. Natural Histories. A half hour of leeches. A leech is doctor. A leech is a fiend who sucks you dry. A leech is a bad friend. A good leech will save lives. Leeches are curious. Leeches migrate around a body. Victorians tied strings to their leeches and let them roam, mine the body’s unseen continents, drain what they couldn’t control. I consider the grace of leeches. The diaspora of leeches. The harvesting of leeches to extinction. An old man reads a young man’s poem, in which a leechgatherer on a lonely moor becomes a beautiful cure: the last leech in England and I think of him now – as I lay on my bed, a needle in each elbow crook, the cold saline dripping in, the hot blood dripping out – skulking in a pool on the weary moor, a small striped ghost very beautiful, very precious, very good. Publishing credits Motacilla flava flavissima: Watch the Birdie: For the Sixty-seven Endangered Species of Birds in the United Kingdom (Beautiful Dragons Press) Still: With Invisible Rain (New Walk Editions) Leeches: Gush: Menstrual Manifestos for Our Times (Frontenac House) Author photo: © Adam MacMaster

Hear poet Michael Burton read poems for wave 23 of literary poetry journal iamb. Michael Burton wave 23 autumn 2025 back next the poet Michael Burton is a poet based in Todmorden in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire. His poems have appeared in, among other places, The Interpreter’s House , The Honest Ulsterman , Ink, Sweat & Tears and London Grip , He's also read his work on BBC Radio Manchester, Chapel FM and various podcasts. Michael co-hosts monthly spoken word open mic event Gobsh!te at the iconic Golden Lion in Todmorden, and writes and performs as NotAnotherPoet. He's also one half of the band New Age of Decay , whose debut album can be found on various online streaming platforms. the poems Thanks to My Lower-intermediate Mandarin Chinese 00:00 / 02:15 I know that the girl sat across from me on the tram is unhappy with the boy next to her. I know that something has happened sometime before, after (or possibly during) their dinner but can’t quite make out the parts in between. I know the boy thinks what’s upset the girl is not serious. He does not say sorry or that he’ll make it up to her somehow (though, in truth, I may not have understood it if he did). I know there is something said about her mother. She was there with them earlier today or, if not, will be with them soon. The girl or her mother (or both of them?) have or had to wait a long time. There’s a coat, hat and pair of gloves also somehow involved in this and a phone call which somebody needs to make. The boy, arms now crossed, is insistent. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes what? I can’t be sure. The boy is or has been busy recently. The job. Her mother. The coat. The hat. The gloves. The phone call. The boy asks the girl how long something will be needed and how many times must something be said and then four characters, emotionally toned, one of those situational set phrases you can only learn when mastering the language. The boy then tells the girl he loves her. He reaches for her hand. She looks down. The boy kisses her firmly on the forehead and as the carriage doors open I picture the girl’s mother waiting. No coat. No hat. No gloves. Checking her phone and waiting outside in the cold. A Childhood Friend’s Critique of My Lifestyle Choices After Raymond Antrobus 00:00 / 00:54 you all changed / all strange tastes / new age / highbrow / holier than thou / you all head down / shy-faced round town / all flat cap / all man bag you all dressed up / all plaid / all sandals / soft lad / smelling all tea tree / Versace / you quit the smokes? / gone all woke? / all lame- arse jokes / all posh speak / all prim / all proper geek / you all scrawny / weak / arty chic / all desk job / all snob / away too long pal one of them now / all big city flat / think you’re all that but where’re your mates now? / what’s brought you back? On the Third Thursday of Every Month 00:00 / 01:43 Me and every man to ever have fallen in love with her meet to discuss how we are coping with her absence. For some it has been years. Many, now happily married, talk only of flashes in their wingmirrors or windows. For others their visions are a much more regular occurrence. Some of the group claim they only know they are truly alone once all the lights in their houses are out. One man confesses he carries her hair clip in his pocket, squeezing it tight as he walks. Another describes a recurring dream where she and him in full embrace fall from a cliff face to a city of red and amber lights. There is even a man she has never met who attends, dressed each time in the same misfitting raincoat, his fists pressed against his scalp as he speaks of her standing in the crowd, of running through town, up long narrow streets, only to lose sight of her right at the last. And then there is me and the curve of men beside me in the circle who sit and listen, sit and listen, red faced, dazed in a frown, as so often she said was the problem. So often, she said, the worst of all our problems. Publishing credits Thanks to My Lower-intermediate Mandarin Chinese: Cerasus Magazine (Issue 9) A Childhood Friend’s Critique of My Lifestyle Choices: exclusive first publication by iamb On the Third Thursday of Every Month: The Interpreter’s House (No. 78)

Hear poet Mark Fiddes read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Mark Fiddes wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Mark has published two books with Templar Poetry: The Chelsea Flower Show Massacre and The Rainbow Factory . In 2019, he won the Oxford Brookes University International Poetry Competition, came second in the Robert Graves Prize, and third in the National Poetry Competition. He's recently been published by Poetry Review, Magma, The New European, The Irish Times, The London Magazine and Poem Magazine. He lives in Brexile in the Middle East. the poems After Delius On the occasion of not leaving the European Community, March 29th 2019 00:00 / 01:37 For an hour or two over breakfast the lethal Etonians were hushed on the day we meant to leave. Common or garden birds threshed a chorus from thin British hedges. A bog-standard UK sun rose up sixty non-decimal minutes before Europe to shake off a bleary March. Pigeons paraded along the gables in regimental medal regalia. New blossom reported for duty bunting all the pissed-up alleys. Not a chemist ran short of insulin and the growling tide of lorries failed to make a delta out of Kent. Hate was too hungover to fry up the Full English with trimmings in saucy tabloids and talk radio. On the day we meant to leave, a bird of unsettled status flew in to Devon from an African hot spot laden with unregistered eggs searching the lanes for spare nests and any true love crying “cuckoo.” El Pacto de Olvido 00:00 / 01:30 We walk the canal under plane trees, words in one pocket, silence in the other past palettes stacked for la cooperativa, the air thick with dust and late harvest. We talk of work, cards we’ve been dealt, the missing people, our grown children, whose absences now lengthen beside us. I explain how this hour a lifetime ago, Nationalists executed the men too unfit to march to the “work camps” in France, leaving the bodies somewhere over there to rot, dropped like sacks in familiar dirt. They thought nothing could be quieter than a country of unmarked graves. Once in step, we speak of nothing more. Someone’s taking pot shots at the rabbits. Swallows speed type through pylon wires. An irrigation ditch fills, a tractor stutters. Black damsons clack against dry mouths. Homewards we scrape, shale underfoot. The price of peace is always a bitter fruit. The Kodachrome Book of the Dead 00:00 / 01:55 Frozen in their Kodaks, our old folk wear slippers to protect the carpet from their feet. Colours leech. A tap drips. Dinner lingers in another room. A yucca erupts on the lawn. The lounge is an orgy of fakery: leatherette armchairs, plaster dogs, silk orchids, mock encyclopedias and more fringe than necessary on lamps, hairdos, lips, pelmets plus random tassels wherever there is dangling and come-hither velvet. If a grandparent smiles it is like a wolf had stopped by for tea and a slice of Battenberg. Parents vogue in folky knitwear surrounded by cigarettes and the Sixties. Is this how they will see us, our early years tucked into albums balanced on the knee like babies? Will pages crackle as laminates separate and we stare back red-eyed as hounds from blind pubs? Whereas our last few decades will click past in seconds on a screen, backlit, cropped and cherry-bright. There they can find us, between swipes, catching our breath, wiping the joy from our sleeves. Publishing credits After Delius: The New European El Pacto de Olvido: runner-up in the Robert Graves Poetry Prize 2019 The Kodachrome Book of the Dead: winner of the Oxford Brookes University International Poetry Competition 2019

Hear poet Briony Collins read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Briony Collins wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet Briony Collins is a writer, artist, and performer based in North Wales. Her career began when she won the 2016 Exeter Novel Prize. Since then, she has published numerous poems and stories, produced plays, and received the 2018 Under-25s Literature Wales Bursary. Briony enjoys illustrating her own work and performing on stage. She is represented by DHH Literary Agency. the poems taid taught me 00:00 / 00:41 how to open corked wine bottles: twisting a fusilli knife deep and prying the bone from a long, green spine until the tetric body pops. whenever i drink i remember this, meaning we will always be merry past when he’s gone and we can pretend that the darkness won’t come for us even though it is coming all the time. Newborn 00:00 / 00:11 Petals of your fingers around mine; Hibiscus closing around moonlight. Liberty Based on William Sidney Mount’s painting The Power of Music (1847) 00:00 / 00:41 Violin strings mark mayflower fingers while mine blister. We smile together and smoke our pipes down to embers. Toes tap the same southern rhythm: them, in the stables, me, outside with the horses, whistling intimations of liberty. Publishing credits taid taught me: exclusive first publication by iamb Newborn: Black Bough Poetry Broadsides: ‘gold lit hour’ (Issue 1) Liberty: Agenda Magazine (Vol. 52, Nos. 3-4)

Hear poet Anila Arshad-Mehmood read poems for wave 13 of literary poetry journal iamb. Anila Arshad-Mehmood wave 13 spring 2023 back next the poet Anila Arshad-Mehmood (she/her) volunteers as a governor at a school and a trustee at a mental health charity. She has a professional background in mental health and wellbeing working with young people, and currently delivers safeguarding and mental health training to colleagues. Her writing focuses on her experiences of immigrant family life in an anti-cohesive lifestyle. Anila's interests range from reading, drinking coffee and petting cats to travelling as widely as possible to learn about other cultures and cuisines. An enthusiastic member of several book clubs, Anila considers poetry an abiding personal passion. the poems The World is Made This Way 00:00 / 01:09 When I scrunch my nose up Tight into my brain I feel something It's like a bad smell crawled into my mind to hold on to Why do we do the things we do To make others feel bad for their good You can be good Own your best Your strength is power And if you are better than the rest why is it Bad to feel good to feel bad to feel Something about me is triggered by you Not something is bad about you I'm letting you know I'm feeling something because of how you Present to me but it's me who feels the feeling Not you who is bad to be good in me forcing feelings on Owning my feeling My strength My best Better, smart, assured Because not everything is me and the world is different and we all have our Better and best self and skill and behaviour And this one can be mine It isn't yours But it's not bad to say Because the world is made this way Labyrinth 00:00 / 02:31 There's a ball of twine glowing at my feet I could pick it up, See if it leads me to the centre of the labyrinth. Or I could stay here, Try my way back to the door which I closed behind me. I didn't lock it but I didn't leave breadcrumbs, I was certain the way back wasn't needed, interesting or useful anymore. Going back or forwards, Forward or backwards. When you communicate differently what do you see A different reaction or an explanation that emotions exist Hide Exist inside your mind, nose, mind. I'm a woman with emotions, More than hate, rage, fear, rage, anger, rage, sadness, rage Curious, open, sadness, happiness, excitement, engaged, hopeful Open the door and check with the key Which key opens the door This behaviour means Empath: noun noun: empath; plural noun: empaths 1. (chiefly in science fiction) a person with the paranormal ability to perceive the mental or emotional state of another individual. Emotional perception, try on the jacket of his dear friend and coat yourself in their sadness, happiness, sadness, step away so it leaves you behind. Emotional perception so your eyes glaze with the tinted glasses on his dear friend see sadness, happiness, sadness. Emotional perception, try on a medicated maze of bars blocking the feelings of every dear friend so only you can feel numb and nothing – not their dear saddappiness. Empathic Guide. Twine in a maze of bloody chains and no need for breadcrumbs, step into the light and wander around without the twine. No map, no guide, no rooms, doors, windows, what comes next, explore, who says twine is the way to explore anymore? Still 00:00 / 00:49 the women who came before me Rose but how can I wonder how can I access my sass draw on words and steal back breath to rise above this smog engulfing me I am drowning in black squares zoom sequences and distant W A L K S dreaming of the time when I step back from the bitter twisted lies written in hashtags I’ll remember I didn’t run from discomfort even when it ran from me like women who came before me I want to fill with air and rise Publishing credits All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb Author photo: © Johanna Elizabeth Photography

Hear poet Luke Palmer read poems for wave 15 of literary poetry journal iamb. Luke Palmer wave 15 autumn 2023 back next the poet Poet, author and teacher Luke Palmer has written two poetry pamphlets: Spring in the Hospital – winner of the 2018 Prole Pamphlet Prize – and In all my books my father dies . His novels for young adults have been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal, and shortlisted for the Branford Boase award. In 2022, he won the Winchester Poetry Prize . Luke's debut poetry collection Homunculus is due out from Broken Sleep Books in early 2024. the poems Homunculus, Potty Training 00:00 / 01:13 My father in his soiled apron kneels to the rug I’ve soiled sops it with caustic water his cracked knuckles singing so much soil and smut while outside the earth stirs the small machines rising the shock of my own water brings springs to my eyes and father comforts me says all water is blessed is longing to fall back to the centre and the world’s in endless gyre around a hollow middle where God sits and he rises up through everything muddied by what he touches but still inside everything that seed spirit inherent and I am a planet too my divine core rising to puddle on the kitchen floor miraculous he says and smiles his raw hands working the rug beneath his knees and my miraculous marks Horse Mother If [a human sperm] be fed wisely with the Arcanum of human blood, and be nourished for up to forty weeks, and be kept in the even heat of the horse's womb, a living human child grows therefrom. Paracelsus – De Natura Rerum (1537) 00:00 / 01:20 O great and latinate mother there I was haunched in your middle mired inside the bloody knot of you fattened on plasma plump little barrel the small bow and tight stitch of my shimmering translucent brain I wanted to stay squared in your uterus womb-warmed and duvet’d galloped in your sternum stuffed and packed wanted to be kept left to loll in your thick limbic hedgerow cooped in that belly never to be dealt but no plans had been made the world opened so big my mother O so big and so so cold Doomscrolling 00:00 / 01:02 Yes today has been the bluntest cross legged at the kitchen window the same view pressing on it the sills are deep with flies ticking consonants of small forms that slowed against the glass then shrunk their cursive rasp at my fingernails only the fridge hums now meanwhile the sky is faultless with swifts I watch vital parts of myself detach lumber to the river where they cease I squeeze greenfly from the bud of every rose in all my prosperous beds until my fingers change colour Publishing credits Homunculus, Potty Training / Horse Mother: exclusive first publication by iamb Doomscrolling: Anthropocene

Hear poet Karen Pierce Gonzalez read poems for wave 24 of literary poetry journal iamb. Karen Pierce Gonzalez wave 24 winter 2025 back next the poet Award-winning poet, writer and intuitive artist Karen Pierce Gonzalez is the author of several chapbooks and poetic librettos. These include Coyote in the Basket of My Ribs , Moon kissed Earth wrought Vision drunk , Down River with Li Po , Mountains of Ocean: 10 Waves and RavenSong . Sun and Moon Wired Together is forthcoming from Midsummer Dream House. Karen is also a performance poet, and several of her one-act plays have been staged at San Francisco Bay Area fringe festivals. She publishes the Ekphrastic Folk Art flipbook, co-hosts North Bay Poetics, and hosted The Broken Spine Arts' #NotJustPretty . the poems Fortunee’s Mandolin 00:00 / 01:47 My maternal grandmother’s mandolin lies in a bed of wet brown-green seaweed at my feet. Most of the strings broken; hardwood varnish licked off by salt water. Its melodies meant only for the man she had to leave behind. Did the bowl-back instrument slip from her hands as the ship entered the New York harbor? Did it ride the crest of outgoing tides carrying it forward five decades—cold, damp, and swollen — to me? Her cross-country train ride, Ellis Island to San Francisco, ended on the eve of High Holy Days. The arranged wedding to a stranger had to happen quickly. Borrowed dress, hem hand-stitched with prayers for happiness. I think of that when my fingers, thin like hers, lightly trace the mandolin’s slim neck. a sea breeze whistles eddies of memory swirl briny notes play long In a Bird Cage 00:00 / 01:13 Strong coffee, my paternal grandmother Ruby’s favorite. Boiling liquid poured slowly into her favorite cup, thick and hand-painted like her. Then condensed milk, easy to store in very small spaces, stirred in. With broad strokes, she spoon-mixes the two until hot and cold meld. Battered hands rubbing the mug’s decorative buds, she whistles to her canary wake up . When it warbles back, Ruby sits on their shared plaid perch and sips while it sings. winter blooms stay closed morning sunlight too late petals won’t blossom Last Mother-Daughter talk 00:00 / 00:57 The telephone cables between us stretch from San Francisco to Seattle. Long-distance tollgates intercept phrases, disconnect sighs from gasps. Our taut voices travel through conductors semi-muffled, sometimes slipping out through cracks in sun-blistered rubber coatings. The entirety of what you say after Daughter drops. Was it I’m sorry? forget-me-nots bloom wild grasses lay down their blades westerly clouds drift away Publishing credits Fortunee’s Mandolin / Last Mother-Daughter Talk: exclusive first publication by iamb In a Bird Cage: GAS: Poetry, Art and Music (Feb 16th 2023)

Hear poet Kitty Donnelly read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Kitty Donnelly wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet Kitty Donnelly's first collection, The Impact of Limited Time , was joint-winner of Indigo Dreams Publishing's Collection Competition. Her second book, In Dangerous Hours , was published by the same house. Kitty won a Creative Future Award in 2019, and was nominated for a Jerwood Compton Fellowship in 2021. Her background is Irish, she lives in Yorkshire, and when she's not writing, Kitty works as an NHS Psychiatric Nurse. She cares for several rescued cats and dogs, and has just completed her first novel. the poems High 00:00 / 00:50 An arctic tern will fly 10,000 miles to flourish in two summers worth of light; so I was high after he died, chasing sun on the wing, though directionless. I swallowed three green capsules every night, peristalsis pulsing them through my scorched oesophagus. I took what I could get to alter consciousness, testing my fragmented sense of time against the wall clock’s competence till dawn was salmon red & gutted on the banks of the horizon. I was not or even near myself. Kingfisher 00:00 / 01:18 It was a sign: pure lapis on the post plunged into canal sediment. It surveyed its territory, paused & darted under Lock 9, a featherweight jewel flicked on the wind. Returning fishless, its head revolved towards the glass where I stood, museum-frigid: my first live kingfisher. I should have tailed its poem through the frosted dawn’s distemper. It was tempting me to follow it by pen, to know it vivid & separate from ossified kin: that feathered gift of indurated velvet with scratched black beads for eyes, whose twiggy box I switched for football cards, unable to stand the cloy of mould, too old to poke my finger in the rag-hole. Now it had risen: fallen constellations etched across each wing, it was urging me to drown my work bag, unlace my boots, and flit with it through the waterlogged morning. Test Results 00:00 / 00:38 You’re writing for your life, there’s no mistaking it. Your fingers move in window-light, ears closed to all but music. Coffee's heat evaporates, a shaft of sun bisects the page, the Biro quivers in your fingers. Everything you strived to say is translating itself. Previous verse: untrained lightening. Illness has earthed you, conducting your tongue. Publishing credits High: Ink Sweat & Tears Kingfisher / Test Results: exclusive first publication by iamb

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 Bill Sutton read poems for wave 10 of literary poetry journal iamb. Bill Sutton wave 10 summer 2022 back next the poet London-based Cumbrian poet Bill Sutton (he/him) creates visceral, abstract reflections of nature in his work. His poetry has appeared in Anthropocene and new zine Overgrowth . In 2015, Bill and his brother formed music project Slabtoe, which has released several albums and EPs. Bill's recently lent his poetry/song-writing abilities to the BFI-funded short film The Leerie , and his debut screenplay Corpse Road will be produced later in 2022. the poems Helton 00:00 / 00:22 to see stars, the hulk of barn, the rise behind and silent. to see rain, smoke wrapped, the valleys slope and dreaming. to all orbits, a ripple, and the quiet fields sleeping. Lend The River Rain 00:00 / 00:32 The lights on the hillside are a constellation, scattered. A half-remembered conversation; a friend lost, a family gathered under a winter sky, whose clouds are torn and tattered. 'It’s just a shadow cast from a different day, but none of that now matters … ' I lend the river rain. It lends it back again. Black Barn Rise 00:00 / 00:23 shadows in the mist, an echo where a wood once was. moon cold mist, settled on the river's twist. above and behind, black barn rise, there, where an echo of a wood once was. Publishing credits Helton / Lend The River Rain: exclusive first publication by iamb Black Barn Rise: Overgrowth (Issue No. 1)

Hear poet John McCullough read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. John McCullough wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet John McCullough lives in Hove on the south coast of England. His first collection, The Frost Fairs , won the Polari First Book Prize in 2012 and was a Book of the Year in The Independent as well as a summer read in The Observer. His latest collection, Reckless Paper Birds , published by Penned in the Margins and shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2019, focuses on vulnerability and the human body. It won John the coveted Hawthornden Prize in 2020. the poems Queer-Cole 00:00 / 02:15 You tumbled into my palm in a trickle of sterling bad coin foul queen though I didn’t notice. I pocketed you conveyed you like your Sedan chair respectfully slotted you into vending machines that coughed you out. You winked at me from a change tray and abruptly I spotted everything about you was wrong your weight your ill-defined milled edge your obverse skewed. Not copper zinc nickel but lead sprayed with gold paint. Too shiny. Queer-cole they used to say meaning counterfeit or base money what ends up improperly beside your person tilting the system forcing each wall mutilating the weather. Fucking queer a voice in the Watford crowd snarled as my lips brushed Ryan’s cheek. There I was my mouth mimicking legit my hoodie cap trackies like a man’s but on close inspection awry my voice too light edges blurred. Flickery. I carry this awareness in my blood how simply I’m revealed as undermining the currency warping the ceiling. Now coin I keep you squirrelled in my wallet’s secret section. You are my talisman return me to what I am no pink pound but queer-cole rebel head wonky origin dangerous minting. Stationery 00:00 / 02:14 September is going all out to ease us in. The clouded sky is a whiteboard for helpful diagrams, the first cool air as welcome as your hand inside my jeans. Autumn zips round with its orange highlighter and you provide nifty shocks and marshmallows, leaving pornographic Post-its that ask me to rendezvous, please, for hot chocolate. I am the type of man who likes unnecessary displays of manners, who appreciates thank you cards, warning signs, a forest of regretful notices for building works. I admire rows of ginkgos that lose all their foliage in one drop to form a Yellow Brick Road. I am a desperate Lion today, stalking Scarecrow. I chew biros, glimpse at my watch too often. I was so afraid of being late to see you once, I arrived six days early. Love is horrific like that. First it’s a rabbit, then a duck, then it’s a ravenous, one-eyed sock puppet; but the rest is yoghurt adverts. And you fasten my thoughts with the most beautiful paperclips, even the filthy ones, like the time I saw a grove of ripening chilli plants become a rainbow of penis trees. Do you wish to continue, says the voice of a self-service checkout. Yes, yes I do. Between the shops, the sea snuggles under its blue leaves. The clock tower waits patiently for Christmas, a familiar figure below waggling his arms to lure me over. Succeeding. Your skilful face punches a giant hole in the day and I jump through it. Tender Vessels 00:00 / 02:23 I keep trying to slip away through the crowd but history won’t take its mouth off my body. What was exacted on someone else’s softness, his cuttable flesh, is always about to happen here. The vague kinship which exists between tender men glowing with thirst starts in awareness of this, how we’re unstitched by tongue prints, resurrections. Standing in a street party one Pride, I saw a figure stomp through, fists raised, and strike three boys. They dropped to the ground, clutching their heads. I witnessed everything, squeezed a stranger’s shoulder then fifteen minutes on, my body was distracted utterly by the smell of oranges. The unspeakable scrapes a fingernail across my neck, but I can only concentrate so long before I wind up decanting myself into the nearest fizzing light: Instagram, house music. It’s like those inventors who tried to devise a spray-on cast for broken bones, created Silly String. But there are remedies worse than squirting metres of sticky mayhem across a jubilant face, outcomes bleaker than attempting despite the scissors to inhabit this twenty-first-century skin. I live in a dream of plummeting from the earth’s tallest building without ever having felt more beautiful because I’m not the only one falling. I’m in a crowd, a loose democracy of descent, velocity with its hands all over our bodies, but not enough to stop us gossiping and blowing kisses as we speed through the air together, reckless paper birds. They will find us with our beaks wide open. Publishing credits All poems: Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins) – shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award 2019

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 Rishi Dastidar read poems for wave 1 of literary poetry journal iamb. Rishi Dastidar wave 1 winter 2020 back next the poet A poem from Rishi Dastidar’s debut Ticker-tape was included in The Forward Book of Poetry 2018 . A pamphlet, the break of a wave , was published by Offord Road Books in 2019, and in the same year, Rishi edited The Craft: A Guide to Making Poetry Happen in the 21st Century for Nine Arches Press. His second collection, Saffron Jack , will be published in the UK in March 2020, also by Nine Arches Press. the poems A leopard parses his concern 00:00 / 01:57 1. I am concerned about Claudia Cardinale. 2. By ‘concerned’ I mean ‘in lust with’. 3. By ‘in lust with’ I mean ‘I sigh for’. 4. By ‘I sigh for’ I mean ‘my eyes are hungry for her when she appears on screen’. 5. By ‘hungry’ I mean ‘revel in her’. 6. By ‘revel’ I mean ‘enjoy’. 7. By ‘enjoy’ I mean ‘endure’. 8. By ‘endure’ I mean ‘wait in the hope that she might, like a god, pick me out to be noticed, even though I have done nothing noticeable’. 9. By ‘pick me out’ I mean ‘not actually come near me lest my reserves of charm desert me at a highly inopportune moment’. 10. By ‘not actually come near me’ I mean ‘actually come near me, preferably in a darkened Neapolitan hotel room’. 11. By ‘darkened’ I mean ‘the presence of Lampedusa will be evident; he will be sitting in a green damask armchair, his walking stick tapping out the beat of a fugue’. 12. By ‘fugue’ I mean ‘a Morse code translation of his most famous quote’. 13. By ‘quote’ I mean ‘the only appropriate approach to living’. 14. By ‘living’ I mean ‘love’. In my pocket 00:00 / 00:26 In my pocket is the moment I woke up with you stroking my left bicep, gentle alarm clock; a well-practiced image of intimacy from a red-eye’s soon-again stranger. But it isn’t; time and touch leave nothing apart from a memory. Neptune’s concrete crash helmet 00:00 / 01:26 I rest my head for a moment on the cool concrete wall of the art gallery and in its undulations I can feel the past trying to break out of its unexpected vertical tomb. I could rub the back of my head into one of the grooves, wear it away, erode it imperceptibly over a day’s eon until I could place my head right back into the crevasse, a temporary sarcophagus, an extra heavy duty crash helmet. This of course might be an over-reaction to the images I’ve just seen: a world melting, gangsters wearing dresses and razor’d scars of silver stars, lakes of petrol waiting for paper boats to be sailed upon them, as if Neptune had said yes to a sponsorship deal from [insert oil company name here] but only lately realised that the proposed replacement for a rapidly-drying Aral Sea might not have been everything promised in the brochure. Caveat emptor, as we all should have said in 1764 when Hargreaves spun Jenny, but how could any of us know that coal + steam would equal not just movement but the end? I might stay in here, it keeps my head cool. Publishing credits A leopard parses his concern: The Compass In my pocket: the break of a wave (Offord Road Books) Neptune’s concrete crash helmet: Magma (Issue 72 )