Issue 30

Popshot Magazine

The illustrated magazine of new writing

Popshot Magazine2 min read
Editorial
Protest comes in many forms, quiet or loud, obvious or cleverly disguised. Whatever its form, the tentacles of objection, of outraged dissent and moral conviction travel. These tentacles reach outwards, upwards and coil around to tap us officiously o
Popshot Magazine1 min read
Popshot Magazine
Cover illustration by: Neil Webb neilwebb.net Editor: Matilda Battersby Art Editor: Lauren Debono-Elliot Group Editor: Steve Pill Publisher: Simon Temlett Distributed by: Seymour Distribution Printed in the UK by: William Gibbons ■
Popshot Magazine1 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Eat The Fox
The fox. Chased. Ripped apart. Killed. Unrecognisable to the living animal it so recently was. Disgusting! I rip open the plastic packaging and remove the raw steak. Those poshos, doing something so ridiculous and barbaric just because it was what th
Popshot Magazine1 min read
Sidewalk Chalk
All summer longlittle ones write messages of optimismin chalk, to decoratethe sidewalks But, no one in Jingletownwrites aboutblack bodies and the concrete is so very silentfor black lives unless our silhouettes paintthe pavement withwhite outlines ■
Popshot Magazine1 min read
Bark Beetle To Bard
You break the silence with your chainsawsthen call us an outbreak.You fell a forest with monstrous easethen call us a disease.You make our bodies acheand chirp, yet all you hear is applause. Yes, we burrow through barkand build our galleries in the w
Popshot Magazine6 min readCooking, Food & Wine
To Eat Your Own Children
To eat your own children is a barbarian act. The Soviet regime printed this on posters during the Great Famine. Ildiko learned this while studying wartime Europe in the sixth grade. To her, Europe was a faraway land where either beautiful or horrible
Popshot Magazine8 min read
Like Ripe Fruit
That June night in 1969 when the border closed between Spain and Gibraltar, my mother cooked rosto. She stood by the beige electric oven and tended to the pork cheeks sizzling in the pan, turning them over with a metal spatula. With her other hand, s
Popshot Magazine1 min read
Join The Marches If You Are Able
I don't make a habitof tellingmy love what to dowith his body but his bonesare made of teacups & I keep picturingelbows at collarbone level, cocked& loaded like rubber bullets& rubber bullets& steel toed riot shields& shins in iron-creased bluepressi
Popshot Magazine1 min read
A Concerned Citizen
Yes, the world is burning.But I have read the books. I soak it up.Friction that ignites dripping discontent.Spread. Resistance. Righteous insistence. Imapped it all. It's plotted on my wall. Tonight mine is a lonely estate.So grand, so iconic - a fit
Popshot Magazine1 min read
I’m Gradually Stealing All The Pens From Rupert’s Desk
I’m gradually stealingall the pens from Rupert’s desk.It’s my largely unacknowledgedform of silent protest. So as my cheeks reddento loud jokes at my expense,my mind can drift awayto this quiet recompense. The giggles of our colleaguescost him books
Popshot Magazine1 min readWorld
White
The moment you see white as a colouryou see that everything is about race. Movies full of white peopleare about race.Social media pagesads search results and magazinesclassrooms governments neighbourhoodsoffices and leadership teamstourist attraction
Popshot Magazine4 min read
Stumbling Over Bristol
On a sunny day in the city of Bristol, Esme stumbled in the street. The tip of her boot caught against a raised paving stone and she clattered to her knees. There was a small golden square of metal on the floor: Fugra from Freetown. Enslaved 15 years
Popshot Magazine1 min readNature
A Bird Eat Bird World
Shrieks peak as a chorus of protest emergesManifested out of thin chit-chat air by a hawk surprising at the vergesThe sudden stealth-like swiftly swooping strikeMaking all peripheral and ambient songbirds alikeSpontaneously combust and simultaneously
Popshot Magazine1 min read
The Painful Love And The Gratifying Hatred
I do the same thing every night. I climb the groaning stairs and head straight for the nursery. I change my little one and sing her the sweetest songs I can think of. When I rock her, my lullabies punctuated by the squeaks of my old wooden chair, I f
Popshot Magazine2 min read
An Ode To An Nahl
We know we are no differentfrom the honey bees.We too are creatures with wings of hope.In fact, every living thingis said to be in a state of worship. The miracle of it allbrings you to your knees.Does it not?Together a synchronised falling.We place
Popshot Magazine9 min read
The Penalty
The queue pares down to a fat guy, a junkie and an old man. Then me. The fat guy is up now. He hopes he weighs enough to pop him over the benefits line. He tells the advisor he got sacked from his previous for health reasons and has a doctor’s note a
Popshot Magazine11 min read
The Names Of The Dead
Ashif was shuttling books between the library and his dorm when Tahir stopped him and asked him if he had heard about Shakarullah. He had not heard about Shakarullah since the three of them had been at school together. Had he heard about yesterday's
Popshot Magazine4 min read
Solidarity
To say I felt out of place at the protest would be an understatement. I’m very white. I work in transport policy and have been known to spend over thirty pounds on a fleece. Luckily, social distancing meant I could ignore the people trying to dance w
Popshot Magazine1 min read
I Used To Ride In The Rodeo
You going to take down that mirror? You’ll need four people. That thing is heavy as a broken heart. Four people to take it down. Maybe three. Me? I spent twenty years in the army, five in the nick, five in the rodeo. Snakeskin boots, pretty as a girl
Popshot Magazine11 min read
Ray Halliday’s Last Wild Days
From across the courtyard, Nelson saw the scatter of debris Hannah had tossed from their apartment. Socks and boxers, one Nike, one Puma, his poo emoji pillow, blue milk crates of nested speaker cables, their artificial Christmas tree. All of it look
Popshot Magazine1 min read
Chopping Board
If she picked up that packet of onions, it would all be her fault—wouldn’t it? Double the price for half the amount, a plastic tub brimming with pre-chopped convenience. That’ll be nice, less prepping so the twins can get fed quick– But what’s the pr
Popshot Magazine4 min read
Blackout
The first few hours are the hardest. The urge to turn on the TV or your phone is strong, powerful even. It's like a drug, that pull, that need, to go online, to watch something, to buy stuff, but it never lasts long. Within a matter of hours, you beg
Popshot Magazine1 min read
How Ordinary The Revelation
I left my beak hanging on the tree, but my voice continues in my head. There’s no silence in this house. No forgetting. No beginning of forgetting. Humans walk by with their widening language, their twitching wings. They don’t understand we must be q
Popshot Magazine1 min read
How To Catch A Fruit
to get rid of decomposing fruitssearch for the death-fruitit is the fruit with the least remorseleave out the sour remainslick the blood from the spoongo after the fruitsbare-hand the fruits openso you can close after the fruitsquickly so they cannot
Popshot Magazine8 min read
I'm Ready
Sometimes after I drop my kids off at preschool, I’ll take the longer route home, through downtown, over the potholes and tent-lined streets. When the faded pastel sign of the Spaghetti Shack comes into view just before the freeway on-ramp, I smell t
Popshot Magazine1 min read
The Gay Woman Composes A Rainbow Poem
Red as the smoulderof a second-hand lie Orange as the courageof a woman’s tie Yellow as the picturesof the silenced dead Green as the softnessof the shaven head Blue as the crackleof our palms held tight Purple as the velvetof a hot midnight ■
Popshot Magazine3 min read
Endnotes
8 – Harry Wilding is from Nottingham and has a BA in Creative Writing. He's been published in Serious Flash Fiction, Everyday Fiction, and Flash Magazine. 10 – Lyn Patterson is a widely published poet originally from Seattle, Washington. She writes a
Popshot Magazine1 min read
Illustrators
Antoine Doré antoinedore.com Charlotte Bayliss charlottebayliss.com Connie Noble connienoble.co.uk Freya Lowy Clark freyalowyclark.com Hazel Mason hazelpmason.co.uk Isip Xin isipxin.com Jack Holland jackholland.co.uk Janina Diller janinadiller.cargo.

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