She asks if it’s raining outside while she takes my blood pressure. I ask if I should take my shoes off before I stand on the scales. Sharp scratch, she says before she slides in the needle. Four vials of blood, all with sticky labels. I take the foil plate into the cubicle, slip on… Continue Reading ‘She asks if it’s raining outside’, by Jane Hartshorn
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Worst days pain ricochets like shooting stars with pinball crushes. Oh the love! Releases fiery goo when ramming rib, tooth, bone. Skull reels alone; body razed by frequent flyer flares, flags pushed here there, declaring consternation zones. Each smart begets another, emulates, and brass bands march in new-laid grooves, playing their loudest, most discordant tunes.… Continue Reading ‘Shooting stars’, by Marion Michell
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you sit in my throat like a stone in shoe eyes dry as bone. bones hurt. why cry? these days that feel different but all so same. little belly wrenches all the time as though to be freed from something tonsils i should rip them from my neck. daft neck neck forever stiff but why… Continue Reading ‘NIGHT SWEATS’, by Blair James
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Waking up at 2am Neck locked again Tilt forward, searing pain Then snap, try to get back to sleep A morning spent studying Sat at a laptop, the pain spreads To my shoulders, I stretch Moving head and shoulders, crackle Late evening and writing is done I think I might be too I move and… Continue Reading ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’, by Amanda Steel
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The difference between lowercase-p, pain, and uppercase-P, Pain, is huge. Bigger than just a shift-key should make it. The difference between “Yeah, let’s go on a hike today!” and “I can’t walk today.” The difference between pain that ends, and Pain that just backs off for a while. The difference between the morning pills and the afternoon… Continue Reading ‘pain and Pain’, by M-S-Y
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PAIN AND ITS KILLERS relief is an acceptable inevitable storm-head alarm that holds back its rain and mumbles thunder instead a hard-sell of cotton ignorance on the sofa that’s the world MOON the days hurt and the nights – well they’re a VHS video-nasty trembling on pause I only hope the the moon knows why… Continue Reading ‘A MEDLEY OF PAIN POPS’, by ford dagenham
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A rookery, long abandoned now, had been built inside my body. I don’t know where the birds went or why, one day, they uninhabited, leaving only their barbed-wire residues, strung across the boughs of my hips; all sticks and spit, all hollows meant for holding something small, still desperately alive. I’m sorry – I’m afraid … Continue Reading ‘The Diagnosis’, by Roseanne Watt
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I flirt with my itch. By turns it niggles, seduces, pesters; as it gapes, festers, I reach down, don’t dare to look, rip legs to shreds with nails, shorn short (but not short enough); viscous red smeared across my calf, warm to touch. I suppurate for art; as if sawed in half, shriek a pain.… Continue Reading ‘Seczema’ by Isabel White
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