Issue 05 Poetry

They That Died in the Water, The Maidens Washed Their Bodies at the Shore

By JORDANA ROSENBERG

from The Pocket Encyclopedia of Revolutionary Violence, for the Years 1066-2092, vol 1, entry 1
The weir-trap is set. Iron stakes pounded into the bed of the saltmarsh arc from the blacksoil into the shallow reeds, straw crosshatching the stakes, 
a water-net for the sprats and silver pike, eels, and the marshcray hunched among the reedbone husks in the mud.

They That Died in the Water, The Maidens Washed Their Bodies at the Shore
Read more...

Of Yellow Cellophane and Funerals

By IAN MACLELLAN

Memories are an act of creation. We piece them together from disparate fragments and imaginings until it feels like that’s how we always remembered it.

I’m a young boy, seven or eight, and I’m holding the red cord attached to the corner of the coffin as the men lower it into the grave. Around me an overbearing huddle of black and grey woolen coats, men with leather gloves and sombre Sunday-best hats: women go to the Kirk, but not the cemetery. I am trying to reconcile the pale wooden coffin with my grandmother, who, I am told, is inside it.

Of Yellow Cellophane and Funerals
Read more...