Content Warning: blood, illness, dark themes

Jon Alex Miller – Leukaemia

My blood is crowded

with thoughts, it pulls through me

a strange eroticism

so I am confused

to be so compelled

by my own ending.

It’s Springtime —

white petals will fall

on the winter-dark lawn

like stars.

Jon Alex Miller lives in London with his husband and dog. He has poems published/forthcoming in Magma, the Haiku Quarterly and the Hyacinth Review.

Artwork: Cervix by Claire-Lise Kieffer

Claire-Lise Kieffer is a painter, poet and short-story writer. Her artwork "Crocodile and flamingo" was shown as part of Westival 2020. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals Banshee, Crossways, the Honest Ulsterman, Bending Genres and more. She is working on a collection of short stories for which she has received the 2022 Arts Council Agility Award. She lives in Galway in the West of Ireland.