Welcome to issue 11 of the Wells Street Journal, featuring a range of prose, poetry and drama from a diverse, global selection of writers. Let us take you to Mumbai, Seattle and Florence and through the busy streets of London, where you can meet in the shadow of Big Ben, talk to Dickens and Holmes in Marylebone and party with Ares and Aphrodite.

Featuring

The Altar to the Jago by Antonio Serriano
This is me, in an unsurmountable and unpredictable undertaking to walk over the ruins of a place that once was, or still is, or has never been, or forever will be; in an attempt to entertain through the exercise of electing the Boundary Estate’s Bandstand at Arnold Circus as the Altar to the Jago.

A Short Walk off a Long Blockchain by Dawn Ostlund
Floating on Battersea bridge now,
my gaze falls into the Thames.
I am mesmerized by the face
of the city rippling below,
winding out to the wide-open sea.

58 Marylebone High Street by Camelia Birza
“There is time for everything, as long as you take the first step. Now, let’s make a few steps around London. I can barely feel my legs and my back is in pain, three more days stacked in that wall and I would have been completely dead.”

Prima Ballerina by Cory Ngyuen
She tried to stand on sickled toes, a place of transfiguration undergone. Hopeful and ignorant, she laughed. How lovely did the stale gasoline feel on her skin. How sweet was the sound of distant bullets. The best part of it all, she felt, was the gravel that pierced through her calloused heel.