Hannah Linden

Nearly Home, You Ask Me About the Moors

This land that offers itself
is broken bricks, weed-

taken grey. Fallen to barren
under a sunset over roof-tops—

mourning, here we lie,
oaths fed too late

for meaning. We store truth
as a keepsake, valued only

by the keeping. Can only dust
catch the wind? Our yearning

for home has almost, but not quite
fashioned a key to the door.

Hannah Linden is neurodivergent and queer and lives in ramshackle social housing in Devon, UK. Her most recent awards include 1st prize Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021, and 2nd Prize Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. She is published widely in Acumen, Atrium, Blackbox Manifold, Iambapoet, Lighthouse, Magma, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Setumag, Shearsman, Stanchion, Stand, Tears in the Fence, The Rialto, Under the Radar etc. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky, (V. Press) was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. X: @hannahl1n