Cyphers Magazine

Month: September 2021

Her Last

By Breda Spaight My mother, forty-five – another child, opens the door to Nurse Begley, all smiles and too much pine air freshener. I had forgotten how beautiful her face is, rinsed with innocence, like she’s brand new, as though under a spell. And her hair like a moonlit lake – black with silver ripples. […]

Two Fabulists

By Andrea Ward One doodled wolves in margins and spelled them in scrawl so urgent that they tore life-size from her copybook, padded between rows of pupils who turned back to see the fire door spring open, who pressed against windows to watch the pack lope across the sports field and around the gym towards […]

O’Neill, Shelley, Prometheus

By Lawrence Dugan Her paper to a dozen of us, a lady From Texas before the MLA at last, Quoting O’Neill’s characters remembering Their days at sea. So she should have, for who Better to feel the vastness of the sea At night than a teacher from the southern Plains, able to toss aside the […]

Elegy To The White Sea

Elegy To The White Sea

By Anzhelina Polonskaya My countries and landssend your nights out for profit.O, White Sea nets,I am your fish.It’s over. Let all whom I lovedbe forgiven.I’ve lost the wordsor they’ve been burnt.Maybe the fishermen willrelease me into that cursed sea,looking into my eyes –With my fins, I’ll shield the boatfrom the white waves,and swim instinctivelyto the […]

A Springtime Day

A Springtime Day

By Vladimir Gandelsman A springtime day – May holidays, I guess –long fallen into my well of winter memories,like many others – into marine binoculars;a typical Leningrad day. Some Navy captaindrops by, a little buzzed, in full dress uniform –one of Mom’s coworkers, if I had to guess,and gives her a big book, and signs […]

Forest Park

Forest Park

By Howard Wright The starry track of the sun runs disorganisedacross the lake. Snow melt gurgles underwardsto a low stone bridge and a child’s gravel beach … All gone quiet. Nothing much is alive here,tree-trimmings and wood-cull, leaf-blood.Paths close their eyes as the forest thickens. A mist of dead needles; frizz and corrosion;a killer cabin, […]

Lapis Lazuli

By Matt Kirkham You call me outside to hear the bats and I find I can no longer hear the bats. They flicker from the outstretched sycamores through a world of rarefied speech normalised, their accents no longer open to me. The clouds above the light-spilling city, above its flat streets, above the mountains beyond […]

James and Jack Travers

By Rachael Hegarty James Travers’s Deposition and Statement at the Coroner’s Court 02.10.03 I am James Travers, brother of the deceased, Thomas (Jack) Travers. Jack worked for himself, supplying wood shavings for chicken farms. On the 17th of May 1974 I heard the news of the bombings in Dublin. I drove home to Monaghan. On […]

Scroll to Top