Eric was late to the airport, but Laura was not there yet with her life. The pieces of it would not come together. She was studying, she was being evicted, she worried her boyfriend was cheating on her. Someone had stolen her identity and was buying blenders from abroad in her name and she had spent a lot of time sorting it out.
The police told her the blenders were likely bought for mixing drugs. How could people do that to their bodies? Laura was training to be a nutritionist.
Winter played tricks on us. In the lean time after Christmas the days were short yet somehow passed very slowly. We prayed for snow or a fire at the school or the death of the President. Anything at all that would trip up the plodding routine of darkness slowly lifting becoming darkness slowly falling. In…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For November, we are delighted to publish three new works by Brian Kirk. Here, Brian discusses the creative process behind these new poems. In early 2023 I wrote a short poem about a family from a child’s point of view.…
In July the carnival set up in a three-cornered field not far from the church. The town was alive. Visitors came by the busload every day. Mothers and children sat in the wind on the long beach while fathers stayed in the city at work. At weekends the men came to sit in the…
We are open for submissions until November 30th, 2025. Short stories can be anywhere between 500 and 5000 words in length. Please send no more than four poems. Please send in word docs rather than in PDF. These submissions will be considered for our online Story of the Month series, our online Poet of the…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For November, we are delighted to publish three new works by Brian Kirk. The first of these, ‘Keepsakes‘, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. Keepsakes We kept our grandparents in a dusty box…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For October, we are delighted to publish three new works by Michelle Penn. The final installment of these, ‘Why acceptance is like sleep’, is published today. I launch my arrows — at the eye of sleep —…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For October, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Megan Neary. Michael left his apartment and walked to the spot along the curb where he had parked his car. It was gone. ‘Fuck,…
someone pumped the rooms full of cement obliterating tassel lamps, wood floors, sinks (the rings of Saturn are disappearing, the rings — ) kitchen, bedrooms, lounge, bath everything solid stopped the stairwells (ring-rain water from the icy rings pelting down) someone made this house a wall (the rings shrinking …
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For October, we are delighted to publish three new works by Michelle Penn. The first of these, ‘I’m arranging angels on the head of a pin‘, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. I’m arranging…
When a new teacher took a different approach to algebra it began to make sense. Rain dribbled down the high windows, their panes rattled in the wind. At break, a compass point became a gouge lifting splinters of wood from my desk lid. The letters I’d carved were blonde against dark wood – ILLYA…
The Lonely Crowd will feature a new short story by a different author each month throughout the remainder of 2025. For September, we are delighted to publish a new piece by Penny Simpson.
(In 1938 a group of hunger marchers entered the Palm Court at the Ritz Hotel.)
I was at a loss.
I’d just given a couple celebrating their silver wedding
a silver teapot of Oolong.
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For September, we are delighted to publish three new works by Chrissie Gittins. The first of these, ‘The Islands of the Bahamas’, is published today with more poems to follow throughout the month.