ALT Image: a tiny bee in a tree Text: The Bee and the Lemon Tree like a lover the bee visits the tree every day on the window ledge the little tree is sky goddess Tony D'Arpino

ALT Image: hospital corridor surrounded by a blue border Text: After a Stillbirth He queues behind a woman holding a tiny baby, a woman holding a tiny baby, a woman holding a tiny baby. He watches the garrulous juggle, baby, Diet Coke, sandwich. They don’t seem to notice him until he stretches out a hand Sam Szanto

ALT Image: fish on a green table surrounded by a yellow border Text: Fish and Chips He’d been on his way to get more fish from the freezer at the end of their garden when he saw us next door: you, scared of heights, stopped Tess Jolly

ALT Image: one cherry on a floral plate surrounded by a light blue border Text: Poison Takes the Place of Food There’s no one in the flat when I come home from school, my dinner in the fridge – poison on a flowered plate, covered with tin foil, surrounded by full shelves of poison. Jenny Mitchell

ALT Image: strawberry candies surrounded by a yellow border Text: A mouthful of stones The sister I don’t have has pockets bulging with silver-foiled chocolate and popping candy, rustling- wrapped strawberry surprises and infinite packets of unopened love hearts. Sarah James/Leavesley

ALT Text: IS&T September 2026 Pick of the Month Sharon Black Anna Bowles Emma Dandy Betty Doyle Claire Lynn Rhian Thomas Image of a path through the bowed trees of early autumn.

ALT Text: The Miller's Tale Mark Wyatt Image: concrete poem in the shape of a windmill.

ALT Image: people in a cinema surrounded by a purple border Text: Cine Reels Our hometown Hollywood never had content warnings. Murder came in piano discords, a hymn swelling to chorus; Andy Humphrey

ALT Image: raindrops falling and rippling Text: My Story Will Be Perfect Rain like it was Biblical. Sidewalk empty, just me and a happy drunk with the weather-hardened look of a rough sleeper sauntering down the hill from Victoria Station in my direction, shouting out his joy to the world. Nigel Pugh

ALT Image: Sun shining through window slats Text: Some of This is True Sun comes out, my body opens all its folding doors, its windows. Sun comes out, my body floats – like feather, cirrus, floats across the grass. Chrissy Banks

ALT Image: succulents up close surrounded by a neon yellow-green border Text: Monocle remember when we lived in the shrubs? stewed in a shared room. its stench. our own ripeness torturing lungs scored elastic. mulika ojikutu-harnett

ALT Image: a tractor mowing a yellow field surrounded by a yellow border Text: Flintinage When my dad was a boy, his parents brought him into the fields. As the whole town picked sugar beets, their breath hugged furrows in pre-dawn darkness. L.B. Jørgensen

ALT Image: bird eggs in a nest surrounded by a light blue border Text: Minding Eggs all girls minding eggs a school project for cracking up blue girl brown tray beige egg Mel Joy

ALT Image: bedsheet ghosts in a field surrounded by a pale grey border Text: My Dead He reads aloud about visiting the Underworld in dreams, seeing his dead again. Through the big window behind him there's a flowerbed and some long grass; a road with not much traffic; and on the far side a strip of whins and conifer trees - the rough. Judith Taylor

ALT Image: a penny in a man's hand, surrounded by a pink border Text: Magic Pennies My dad was a magician. He could make a penny disappear with a twist of his wrist just vanish in thin air to pluck it later from your ear or nose. Anne Symons

ALT Image: two figs hanging from a tree surrounded by a brown border Text: Grandfather/ Grandson I will feed him snatches of song like sips of water, nudge him back to the track whenever he flags and falters. Dave Wakely

ALT Image: a sycamore tree surrounded by a green border Text: Samaras Everywhere you look these whips of sycamore, living where they fell, rooting out some well of nourishment in a wall, a bed, a yoghurt pot of rotting leaves. David Lukens