The air has changed. It shrinks from us when we emerge – the sun a shrivelled leaf, the air thinning. Even the ants limp and the cats are eating their own paws. Buildings lean on one another like exhausted beggars; salvage – an obscene dream. This morning I wondered, Is it time for me…
A crucifixion but the cross is a threatened man. A bleeding victim clings to him. In the foreground another sprawls, nearly dead, trying to rise. The painter positions us face on to them in the final moment we could intervene before the irreversible end. Night in a stony place. Flaring torches, from the right, cast…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For January, we are delighted to publish three new works by Angela Graham. The first of these, ‘A Plan for the Development of Gaza’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. A Plan for…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish three new poems by Jack Houston. The third of these, ‘for a few dollars more’, is published today. (Note: if reading on a phone, please read in landscape format) i have been trying…
The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2025. For December, we are delighted to publish three new poems by Jack Houston. The first of these, ‘magic city’, is published today with two more poems to follow throughout the month. magic city it sure seems as if…
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…
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…
(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.