House of Chains by Kathy Gardiner

Lady Lassitude is listless;
sits like a thistle
in that same chair,
legs bare.

The Memory by Rachel Burns

Across the river a horse whinnies, reminding her
of the brutish hero in Jane Eyre, of that holiday
on the moors as a girl, walking around the parsonage
the scrawled handwriting behind sealed glass.

Ambushed by Ceinwen E Cariad Haydon

The last few miles are always the hardest. I hate coming here but once the decision’s made I try to be positive. She’s old, after all. And, she is my mother.

Rue of Maiorum by Annie Blake

for Ehrlich

i wanted my life to live i noticed her green cat eyes her arms had been scratched by the sun thin like sucked meat of slither of bone swathes lifted onto the loft my life in no particular succession for i’m in atonement for my rendition

The Face of Agamemnon by Bethany W Pope

Wine can live five-hundred years, away from air,
to die upon your baffled tongue.

Juan Ponce de Leon by Bridget Clawson

I read to five clients, at the moment. One is an unusually tall, angular woman my own age, forty-two, who believes she is Juan Ponce de Leon.