Dear Reader,

Welcome to our forty-first issue of StepAway Magazine. As I spent time with the poems and short stories gathered here, I found myself returning, again and again, to a particular mode of wandering: walking at the edges of the city, and walking through it after dark. Many of the pieces in this issue are drawn to these margins — post-industrial landscapes, dimly lit streets where the usual rhythms of urban life begin to tire. These are not fixed or stable places: they can be hushed or unruly, suspended or volatile, shaped as much by absence as by excess. In different ways, the work collected here explores what it means to encounter the city not at its busiest and brightest, but at its most exposed and intoxicating.

Much has been written about the flâneur as a creature of the boulevard, drifting through arcades and grand thoroughfares, observing the theatre of urban life. Charles Baudelaire imagined him as both participant and spectator, suspended in a state of curious detachment. Yet our wanderers are equally at home at the city’s edges, where spectacle does not diminish but changes, taking on forms that are less staged, less continuous, and no less real.

At night, the city both softens and hardens. Shop shutters descend, offices empty, and the purposeful stride of the commuter gives way to slower, less readable movements — but other intensities take hold. Space itself comes forward: the hum of distant traffic, the glow of artificial light, the echo of footsteps, the sudden nearness of other bodies. If the daytime flâneur reads the city as a text of abundance, the nocturnal wanderer reads it for what has withdrawn — and for what gathers in its wake.

The peripheries intensify this shift. Industrial estates, bypasses, retail parks after closing time — places designed for function, not for lingering. Marc Augé might recognise them as “non-places,” defined by transit rather than presence. Yet these spaces resist that definition. Stripped of their daytime purpose, they do not empty out so much as change register, becoming sites of drift, encounter, and sometimes unease.

Here, wandering becomes less about witnessing others and more about inhabiting a heightened awareness. To walk where one is not expected, to linger where there is nothing to buy, is a quiet refusal of the city’s dominant logic—but also an exposure to its sharper edges, where attention is not optional but necessary.

These spaces are by no means empty. They are shaped by different rhythms and different lives. The writers featured in this issue — Bob Beagrie, Oisín Breen, SJ Butler, David Capps, Craig Constantine, Irene Cunningham, William Doreski, Julie Egdell, John Grey, William S. Kilgore, Phil Kingston, Rodolfo G. Ledesma, Elizabeth McSkeane, and Kate Young — attend closely to these overlooked zones and hours, tracing the shifting textures of cities at their edges and in their quieter and more volatile moments. Together, their work reminds us that the urban experience is not confined to centres of activity, but extends into margins where meaning is harder won and never entirely secure.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

(AND)
she spun then skirts around me as she sat
she up-on me, I with my belt undone
two pair rocking, whose joining need begat
on Spanish stone, a clattering our own

the stout coursing through me, it drove me wild
and mad, too, with the sensefulness of it
for its tar heightened truth unreconciled:
love stowed for lust, as red-flesh bursts when hit

and our public bodywork left us rent
two harlequin figures in motion, spent

(AND)
the raised and flat stone bollard cool to touch
in summer sun invited us to lie
as though it were a civic street-bed plush
ashlar-spun to meet our keen wanting cry

and we slurred, too, in speech, but knew enough
to leave together in the day’s twilight
our blood too hot to ever slough lust off
and in our stupor, thirst became a blight

(AND)
surrounding us, as we both swayed, were men
and women, too, juggling and dancing there
where others lay, unable to condemn
we pair, who hid sighs with deep breaths of air

and ours would be the truth of sharpmost teeth
we drunk and want mad on unsteady feet.

Oisín Breen

Bob Beagrie

Part 1: FIRE

1.
In abusive Arts long had Hatred swelled,
From fetid backwaters to full mainstream.
Now this year delivered its overlord.
And a near-mortal blow to Martin’s dream.

2.
Suddenly best are last, and worst are first.
And Resistance is barely a murmur.
As foulest of the fowl come home to roost.
In disaster.    And terror.    And Murder.

3.
And so we go back to the smallest hours
Of birth of the year when all came undone.
The spawning, in darkness, of two fires.
One in parched hills, one in tormented son.

4.
Both burn unnoticed, for days, or seasons.
Till they detonated, and extended
To the farthest reaches of our demons.
Two fires, one vilest year bookended.

5.
In far badland a dust devil spirals,
Painting bone-dry air with burnt sienna.
Ballooning the wind until it barrels
West, as a withering Santa Ana.

6.
Now the desert heart of the city beats,
With the coldblooded pulse that deep-down lurks.
Murder and ruin prowl the hillside streets.
LA, straw house inside a tinderbox.

7.
But here? Not in striated westside shire
Of the inner sanctum who have it made.
No wildness here, so no wildfire
Could ever despoil these Palisades.

8.
So when dry wind stokes the smoldering coals
Of the New Year’s blaze, and shoots jaundiced threads
Of smoke above chateaux, and charter schools,
No screenwright could dream up what lies ahead.

9.
A home office:  salesman takes Turkish
Tea, with his sister at mid-morning break.
Windows moan, and mirror something freakish.
Tongues of flame that well-groomed terraces, lick.

10.
Man and wife:   on one of their dreamy walks
With vistas across all Pacifica.
Look back, and see the cannonade of sparks
Cascading down Piedra Morada.

11.
Alarms shriek, from already fire-intruded
Homes, to great buzzing hivemind of LA.
Now the scramble starts, as blaze denuded
First Palisades Drive, then Enchanted Way.

12.
Now the serpentine canyon roadways jam,
From The Summit down to storied Sunset.
Now cornered rear-view mirrors bloom with flame,
And there is no out-driving fire’s onslaught.

13.
Worlds away from these unfolding horrors
Or even plush next-door Pasadena,
Lies a hillside town that starkly mirrors
The dark side of LA: Altadena.

14.
When Black Angelenos fled sundown laws,
Like Burbank flaunted, and La Cañada.
And redlining that all of LA scars.
They found sanctum in West Altadena.

15.
North and away from this leafy refuge
Came a buzzing like gigantic hornets.
Along high-tension-wires, power surged.
And from blown transformer, a sparkler spits.

16.
Hiker fumbles camera from pocket
And first efflorescence of fire films.
That fierce Santa Ana soon skyrockets.
To cloud of combustion that townward storms.

17.
And once more the alarms and sirens brayed.
But to eastside and south, not to the west.
More than eight hours were red flags delayed.
More than enough, for fire, to do its worst.

18.
The Pitmaster father figure, sleepless,
All night with the Santa Anas screaming.
Now wheels his chair to the bedside, boundless
Worry for his son, fitfully dreaming.

19.
Anthony Mitchell Senior is his name.
Quick to “flip a steak” as to “drop a joke.”
Now hears shutters from roaring wind complain.
Now eyes his one good leg.   Now smells the smoke.

20.
Crosstown, shedding their Teslas and Rovers
Palisaders make a run for the beach.
Downward, seawards, to somewhere take cover
In Venice, Topanga, or PCH.

21.
But fire like a reverse tsunami
Deluging boulevard and avenue,
Breaks high over horror-stricken city,
And streaks to the borders of Malibu.

22.
None can fathom how much fire consumes.
Of wealth. Of life. Of culture, and its kin.
Too many markets torched, and charred classrooms.
So — cut from wide. Zoom in on the Reel Inn.

23.
Malibu haunt with shaggy beach shack’s soul,
Between wide ocean and sheer cliff slumbers.
Where surfers hang out till they hit the swell.
Or nurse beers to kill the endless summers.

24.
And fish, cheap as it’s fresh, tacoed or broiled.
And snaking line of famed somnambulance.
And the floor with sand so liberally soiled.
Reel Inn, relic of surfdom’s innocence.

25.
But now, most cruelly, at happy hour,
Fire tunnels down Topanga Canyon.
Bone dry brush and stunted trees devours.
Exhales like exterminating dragon.

26.
Braised in that hottest breath, the fish shack reels
As fingers of flame through restaurant grope,
And each memory-scarred table recoils
From less like wildfire, and more like Rape.

27.
In a thumbnail of the year’s disgrace
The Reel Inn is soon ashen skeleton.
Though the mocking fire spares iconic piece.
Candy-colored neon sign, now blackened.

28.
A tiny luminous pod in the dark.
Bright shrinking, dimming window of escape.
The Pitmaster works it like flipping steaks.
While closer and closer creeps the hellscape.

29.
He punches in the lifeline, nine one one.
A harried voice says, “Help is on the way.”
While his nephews now drive, and now they run
To him, as daughter, in Arkansas, prays.

30.
And the sirens scream, but come no closer,
As nephews are summarily rebuffed.
So he dials again, gets same canned answer
As flames, at his yard gate, ferally cough.

31.
He looks at his one good leg, and one false.
And two strong arms to power his wheelchair
To Pasadena, or anywhere else.
But now gazes, at bedbound son, with care.

32.
Care fatherly, unfathomably selfless.
Wherever he goes, together both do.
So he makes one more call to Arkansas,
“Baby, I love you, but I got to go.”

33.
And he enwraps Justin in those great arms
And every last loving word left, imparts.
Now holds his breath as insolent fire swarms.
And Pitmaster, on sturdiest legs, departs.

34.
So fire, like misbegotten year just born
Heaps insults on the gravest injuries.
As the powers like ruthless wildfire turn
On our Reel Inns, and our Anthonys.

Part 2: TERROR

35.
Palisades and Eaton wildfires still burn
The day the flabby hand gropes the Bible.
As steaming mountain of Shit hits the fan,
Bad-omened year turns Abominable.

36.
Now we go rudely through the looking-glass.
Immigrants, refugees, are pariah.
Insurrectionists get a gold, free pass.
Mad Hatter becomes grotesque Messiah.

37.
The bright Beacon on a Hill: cuts to black.
Good Samaritan to the world: undone.
Miss Liberty: to Europe turns her back.
And this is just the wreckage of Day One.

38.
Soon wounded city swims into the sights
Of predators homing in on fresh blood.
Like Combat Barbie in her tailored suits,
Who with her fawning goons, our streets now flood.

39.
Beefy, beery, and bent on harrassment
And yet too chickenshit to show a face.
These rejects and dregs of law enforcement.
These agents of chaos, these men of ICE.

40.
Way down in OC is one more IHOP,
Where father, of three Marines, tends to planters.
An unmarked white van comes to shrieking stop.
Doors fling wide. Out pour masked bounty hunters.

41.
Narciso Barranco freezes in fear.
Weed-whacker, unmenacing, in his grip.
Then he makes hesitant move for his car.
And the ICE men, their insensate rage, let rip.

42.
Stun-gunning, shoving slight figure to knees.
Whaling fists and kicks on submissive man.
Rip shoulder from socket, and shatter nose.
Then frog-march the bloodied father to van.

43.
Glutted like so many blood-feeding sharks,
ICE men take their prize to detention jail.
Where Narciso crosses his river Styx.
And plunges in newfound circles of Hell.

44.
Cut to downtown: LA’s Fashion District.
A young woman steps out of mother’s car.
Off to work she goes, only to be plucked
Out of restive crowd by kidnapping cur.

45.
Andrea Lupe Vélez is her name.
Born and raised and bred, an Angelena.
As American as any strong-arm
Would-be cop, from Fresno or Fontana.

46.
“Citizen!” she pleads in her common tongue.
Though they spit at her in pidgeon Spanish.
“I’m a citizen!” she shouts long as lungs
Have breath. Then, Andrea, too, is Vanished.

47.
¡La migra! Echoes the cry of terror
Across fields of fruit that feed multitudes.
¡La migra! ICE! From car wash, to daycare.
From Boyle Heights, to Bell, to East Hollywood.

48.
Immigrant, Dreamer, citizen, or not.
Pregnant, student, sous-chef, electrician.
All caught in the scabrous, scattershot net.
All hurled into jerry-rigged detention.

49.
Here’s a reeking cell, standing-room only.
That any Russian Gulag would do proud.
With a single toilet for seventy
Men, Narciso Barranco in the crowd.

50.
Here’s another, both men and women hived.
Here’s LA’s daughter, Andrea Vélez.
Of phone and food, even water deprived
As in one more Stalag, or Alcatraz.

51.
But everywhere, always, videos play,
Of masked thug manhandling Andrea.
And now like hissing cat torn from its prey,
La Migra unhands the Angelena.

52.
But Narcisco hears his name misspoken.
Forced to knees, shackled from ankle to hand,
Now to ghost van by stone-faced guards taken
And launched into LA’s vast hinterland.

53.
First stricken Altadena leaves behind.
Now Glendora, now San Bernardino.
Up wooded mountains, and down to wasteland.
To the netherworld of Adelanto.

54.
Ghost town of a prison on Biden’s watch.
Now thousands of souls, squalid barracks cramp.
It’s the cut-rate Führer’s fever-dream hatched.
The All-American Concentration Camp.

55.
In blood-soaked clothes of his last free morning
Into one of the concrete bunkers thrown.
Narciso looks at faces surrounding,
And in their fear, and loss, he sees his own.

56.
He sees them chained, and herded, one by one.
And to far-flung southern exile, Vanished.
Sees mother from daughter, father from son,
Torn.    Families splintered.    Souls extinguished.

57.
And still, sleepless sadist on other coast,
Tiring of his self-made horrow show,
Now inflicts on LA still greater cost.
Indulging deepest fetish, Martial Law.

58.
Now with National Guard spray-paints downtown
With desert camouflage, and Army green.
And now the graffitist, doubling down
Tags scarlet and gold of U. S. Marines.

59.
This:    not just slur on city, or nation.
Or to greater Democracy, a blow.
This is to all troops humiliation.
Cast in such sleazy reality show.

60.
For all must know, deep down, they’re shameless props.
Merest guinea pigs, and trial balloons.
About to go down the slippery slope
To Portland, Washington, and New Orleans.

61.
Vanished:    Narcisco fears his name is next.
But juggernaut deportation machine
So cocksure, monolithic, gets perplexed.
How to disappear dad of three Marines.

62.
Desert Gulag does its best to break him.
No doctor for shoulder, dislocated.
Brute lights and shouts, at all hours to wake him.
Unbathed, starved, just shy of dehydrated.

63.
Good as gone, now, but not near forgotten.
As Narciso’s oldest, Alejandro,
As unflagging as he is soft-spoken
Keeps the harsh spotlight on Adelanto.

64.
No good dad deserves such degradation.
From his dignity, and family torn.
No father gave three sons to the nation
Who was so disrespected in return.

65.
To highest heaven, depravity stinks.
To farthest reaches of the barrios.
Under greatest pressure, La Migra – blinks.
And from iron-sheathed claws, unclutch Narcisco.

66.
He breaks his long silence, but not to share
His own immeasurable sufferings.
But to offer plainspoken, selfless prayer.
“Don’t separate families.    That’s the thing.”

67.
Narcisco saw the iron fist unbound,
In all its cruelness and impunity.
Gone was his freedom, but somehow refound
Our lost, demoralized Humanity.

68.
Still, thirty-one died in ICE’s clutches.
As did thirty-one die in LA’s flames.
But Death now its full momentum reaches,
And bullets hissing, knives out, for us came.

Part 3: MURDER

69.
For untold years, snub-nosed tree skyward worms.
Bloated, branchless shoot of camo color.
Then overnight bursts into hideous bloom.
Into one monstrous, stinking Corpse Flower.

70.
For day or two, at most, the thing appalls
With gothic colors and carrion’s breath,
Then just as quickly, it lurches and falls
Back in featureless, lurking, living death.

71.
So like the Corpse Flower, murder irrupts
From straight out of nowhere, and back again.
And our hardest-won peace of mind corrupts.
Though we know not Why.    And we know not When.

72.
For the whys and hows have been done to death,
And cause is another quaint fallacy.
For Motive is just an old shibboleth,
But Murder is All In The Family.

73.
Now we come to most gruesome Corpse Flower
That germinated for many a dull year,
Or slow-smoldered, like the Palisades Fire
Till flaring when the Santa Anas roar.

74.
We come to hollowest of holidays,
Where we gamefully go through the motions.
For in the year when Hate has come to stay,
Our appetite flags for celebration.

75.
But this gala dazzles on the surface.
With seeming half of brightest Hollywood
Illuminating Conan O’Brien’s house,
On cliff of Palisades that fire spared.

76.
Here’s a sprinkling of the almost-famous
Among the much-laureled and iconic.
Here’s a writer hitting on an actress.
A surgeon trading punchlines with comic.

77.
A glaring paradox of high success
In a year so degraded and bloodied.
Gleaming people, mostly oblivious
To the sullen young man in the hoodie.

78.
He glares with cold, contemptuous malice
At the glitterati round Bill Hader.
And when animus builds to some crisis
He storms off to look for famous father.

79.
Some say there is a fight nearest violence
Where the host is urged to call the police.
Some say, “Bullshit.”  A tale, to make sense,
Of the murkiest of monstrosities.

80.
The son now vanishes into the night.
And parents take their leave not long after.
Shrugging off what’s just one more ugly fight,
Telling last jokes to uneasy laughter.

81.
Through long therapy, rehab, and relapse.
Through long struggles most public and private.
Through stretches of calm that straight off collapse.
Such is their terrible, open secret.

82.
The scourge, the brain fever, it comes and goes,
With a cocktail of the latest pills.
But now it’s rekindled, and now it grows.
And the inner wildfire outwardly spills.

83.
- That thought again.    Like recurring nightmare,
That consumed you as long as it lasted.
With no fantastical detail spared
By auteur as painstaking as twisted.

84.
It’s Grand Guignol post-apocalyptic.
It’s that painting by Heironymous Bosch.
It’s the Tree Man’s face, so coy and cryptic
In the crush of demons and their debauch.

85.
I look into this forbidden nightmare
Deep into this graphic depravity.
As if into shadow-laden mirror
Only to see the monster that is Me.

86.
And yet — I see Another, the Tree Man
Morphing into some long-gone therapist.
Who commands me to do the ancient sin.
And me, I am powerless to resist.

87.
How did I get here?    In this dark hallway,
With my baby sister’s room at one end.
And at the other, the dead end doorway.
And what feels so hard and cold in my hand?

88.
The hall elongates, and then foreshortens.
And my one free hand cracks open the door.
And then the other on the thing tightens
As I hear that butterlike, Bronx-tinged snore.

89.
A snore. So rich with fame, and accolade.
Susurring all those celebrated lines.
A Roar. So disappointed and dismayed,
By son so much loved, but so misaligned.

90.
Now all’s a red blur.    All is fearsome noise
That I need to stop, now, forevermore.
Now, all I can hear is thundering pulse.
And spattering my hands – what awful gore?

91.
Now that the ghastly news is emerging
From wide valleys to high Mulholland Drive,
What room, if any, for more soul-searching
With non-stop shocks of twenty twenty-five?

92.
Are you stunned, or horrified, in the least?
Or in sluggish apathy, sleepwalking?
Or could you see, like Nick, an inmost beast
In the tragedy of his own making?

93.
For highest Tragedy is that the prince,
Who gave us Spinal Tap, and Princess Bride,
And those other touchstones, before and since,
Is taken by such sordid Parricide.

94.
And now we take leave of this monstrous year
But like father breeds damage into son,
Immemorial crimes will reappear
As the old year bleeds into the new one.

95.
Not yet are nations so crudely ambushed.
Not yet a good woman gunned down by ICE.
Not yet all of Democracy vanquished.
Not yet War.    But still more threadbare Peace.

96.
But what this year, now barely past, has shown
Is how much Hate and Bloodlust are undimmed.
Twenty twenty-five the wind has sown.
So now, brace – for one hell of a Whirlwind.

January 19, 2026. Martin Luther King Day

Craig Constantine

People drinking and fighting,
in ecstasy of thoughtlessness.
Fucking in Victorian alleyways

for money or fun. People
dying on the steps of exotic
Georgian hotels, the cruel wind

having left too late.
People dancing and dying
and outdoing each other

again and again in the glow
of impossible buildings,
in the glow of the summer dawn.

Spilling themselves on streets -
so suddenly beautiful,
so suddenly tragic.

Julie Egdell

a three sixty balustrade where all compass points
command a kaleidoscope of rooftops, flat and pitched;
Christian spires, Arab towers and cupolas, brooding
apartment blocks, their facades pockmarked with air con
and satellite dishes; the Calatrava bridge
over the river: a mosaic of fragments
shed from the eighth century to the twenty-first

yet from up here it makes some kind of sense, sort of.
And so you wonder if there’s a glimmer of hope
that with a bit of distance and a dash of luck,
if you can manage to live a little longer,
go a little higher and consider from there
all the crazy years behind you, maybe one day

everything else will, too.

Elizabeth McSkeane

Spring nods at us. The sun peers down.
Policemen stroll in pocket-fronted vests – noticeable neon inactive. Kilted men draw eyes. Platform boots, strappy sandals, super-smooth 4-wheeled cases, tartan trews, blaring scarlet trousers and a Gothic coat pass my time.

Time speaks Bell, understands Alarm,
I see it in crocheted blankets, diaries, photo albums, on film, in fossils, pressed flowers, poems.

White Shirt with tartan bow-tie and skinny jeans escorts tottering Cinderella in her glass fuck-me high-heels – at this time in the day! I suffered the sight of an ugly shell-suit jacket in a hurry… know that this is how my friends will dress me on my last journey.
I wonder at a new career as a personal shopper to save the world.

Common years leap, Olympiad cup themselves.
Time shapes decades over Jubilees and down centuries into millennia. Done.

Irene Cunningham

Cum on feel the noize.

Tom is quite red but you can tap into his green side.
Yeah, yeah I have them. Cough.
Jamais? Ici? Jemmy, easy.
Girls grab the boys.
She’s different in the afternoon than
what she was in the morning.
Ere? Not at all. Bell.

Next stop James’, ospidale san shaymass.
Sigh. Let’s get wild, wild, wild.
Ach, boof. Theatre is entirely appropriate.
Silhouette, non? Nothing is a work of revelation.

Turn, tram screech. Wild, wild, wild.
Warm sun on skin. I think cos she said.
Graffiti, anti-climb spike wheels.
So you think I’ve got an evil mind.
But the truth was he had become an informant.

I’ll tell you honey, that I don’t know why.
Young woman with headphones, wry expression,
to herself.
No problem, no problem, anytime.
Rialto.

I don’t know why.
Door beep. Frame shudder.
All the way down the carriage.
Taste of stale tea. Sun strobes through the trees.
But it felt deeply jarring in London.

So you think my singing is out of time.
Give of skin against phone glass.
Canal dried to a stream, bright litter
against the brown grey mud.

The MRF had a name for
this secret coterie of traitors.
Siren. Clatter of scooter, metal, heavy.
Do you see the blue?
Cum on feel the noize.
On clickin gorrum. An Cloigin Gorm.

Cabins, Ireland. Plastic bag rustle.
Each was carefully fitted
with a mammoth incendiary device.
Red cow. An bhó darg. Arn bo drareg.
So you think I got a funny face.
Kingswood. Keel Ann ree. Coill an Rí.

At the end of the line
Emerge into watery sunlight
through the bare trees. Like.
Tic tic of caliper, scrape of boot. Bus stop.
I don’t know why. And I don’t know why.
Cigarette smoke. She flew from Dublin under an assumed name.

Stink of smoke. Feeling of a pattern coming.
Man takes off his hat, rubs his hair. Iron railings shiver.
Drone of a plane hidden by light blue clouds.
Before sunset, Price assembled everyone in the portico of the National Gallery.

Schoolchildren get on the bus
65 Baile Coimin. Seska a coo-ig balya quinine.
So the young terrorists went sightseeing.
Gum shapes in the pavement, fat stars.

Oh I gotta sing with some disgrace.
The man with deep set eyes has a torn coat
Have you a ciggie? I’ve only the one.
Price, who was more high minded, went to the theatre.

Suddenly it’s all wheelchairs and buggies,
bus grumble as ramp lowers.
I ain’t in no hurry.
The Freedom of the City by Brian Friel.
The interior of the Corsair reeked of explosives
Bus lurches up the hill away from Dublin.
And I don’t know why.

Peering through the windows the officers spotted
a thin white cord snaking
from the front seat to the back.
Fields wide on each side, brown dust on the hedges.
St Brigid’s Home.
And I don’t know why, anymore.
Fields are pure green.

Oh, oh no.

CLOSE ENGLAND, lock down all the exit points.
Kilteel road. A donkey sitting.
Bell. Electronic sign for local election.
Door hiss. Slap of wind. Feet on the ground
again. Cum on feel the noize.

Birdsong, chittering. Smell of manure.
It was as if people couldn’t imagine it was happening.
Sheep. Hills. A young man peels away
into one of the houses off Red Lane.
Girls grab the boys.

Watery eyes. Cropped hedges.
Neurophen packet on the ground.
We get wild, wild, wild.
A house called Hillsborough. Tractor
carrying a black plastic-wrapped bail.

Evergreen leaf clippings in the road.
Wild, wild, wild.
Question any Irish people looking to leave.
Cottage. Virgin Mary in the window,
looking out, hands wide, white and light blue.

Cum on feel the noize
Girls grab your boys
We get wild, wild, wild
Wild, wild,

Phil Kingston

notes of last night’s jazz & blues
drift into semi-breve mist

lovers’ limbs fuse in a doorway
fingers grazing shadow-skin

trash swallowed in garbage jaws
debris swept from sidewalk grey

suits criss-cross waking streets
Tim Horton cups raised to lips

a jogger pounds   phone in hand
dodging early-bird flow

somewhere Justin Bieber stirs
ringtone bruising the air

a sleeping bag squirms
jerks into daily fentanyl haze

Kate Young

Two cars outside the bar have smashed windshields.
A cop strolls by, doesn’t even notice the damage.
The boxing gym is boarded up.
The only hotel for blocks is closed for reservations.
It has been for years.

The neon signs are on strike mostly.
They’ve no glow. No promise.
Just an outline. Just bones.

I take one step – just one -
and I break up a logjam of pigeons.
That’s how it is with city birds and people.
We live close but we don’t trust each other.

It’s hot, real hot.
The sun has a grudge or something.
I try to imagine a cool place
somewhere with a breeze, a drink, a chair.
But every fantasy shrugs me off.
There’s only my place and the window
to the fire escape.

The crooked little balcony
is just perfect for cursing the heat.
And wait for the night to cool the city,
which it does, just enough
so we I can lie to myself again
about tomorrow.

John Grey