THE MOON LOOKS IN By Diane Simkin

  The moon looks in at the window, staring, and I stare back. The moon lights up my body while the room stays inky black. The moon comes in at the window, presses its face to mine. ‘Look,’ it breathes, ‘at the things you’ve lost.’ But my dazzled eyes are blind....

THE PAISLEY-PATTERNED SOFA By Suzanne Wacker

In summer, our room was like an oven. When the afternoon sun shone like a spotlight on our wall, we stripped down to our underwear and drank iced tea. We bickered over who’d used the last of the ice cubes and laughed like maniacs while we dripped cold water on each...

WALKER’S FATE By Paul Macleod

Squeal… Squeal… Squeal. It was only when Walker stopped that he noticed it. The silence. How long had the trolley wheel been making that noise? He didn’t know. It was a few miles since he last stopped. Funny how you got used to things that got slowly...

CARNIVAL by Jo Riglar

His helper’s smell and skin, he dreads He hugs tulips, kisses the reds Searches flowers where he can breathe His soul is bleeding, a special need. His silhouette’s edgy on sandy bed. His thoughts are stuck inside his head His pet flowers, jumbled reflections His peers...

THE BED by Charles Kitching

In the year of the pandemic, we came together. Upon those cold, post-Hogmanay weeks, as tales of a virulent virus spreading from the East began to trickle through the news, we tended your horses and went for walks on frozen January days. We shivered, hand in hand, on...

THE INTERVIEW by Tony Warner

ARTLINE, May 2026 “I felt myself offered another worthwhile life,” says Turner Prize winner Kate Hoylake Total collapse and months of blindness changed Kate Hoylake from a party girl into a socially aware artist. In conversation with art critic J D Lesny....