SPAM001

and shut out of a more
screen-time time
a common day of breathing
the cacti the glass windows
and through them our lungs.
And through them all ways
of unseeing ourselves

and through them

nothing in the whole word
too secular for you

except old-skool criminals at
the Free Mart Fair the doctors
batting away the stultifying air
the bad air
and the heat of the boring poor

who were once the Free Mart Fair
who dares to pull
to their lips A satisfactory real
And wresting of the ideal
from your arms.

you suck I said
ouch

but wasn’t ready to say why, said

could be worse for some or many
said lower than a vacuum in space, or
could be worse for come what may
that well of tears is mine, oh well

I wasn’t ready.

No community is to me
as I once
said, I said John look
down at your wet pants
and what is coming there,

that xenofeminist manifesto
a weight upon your heart, I said

Joan, I said a bread riot is
a bread riot is a bread riot is
all that’s keeping you from me and all
those ways of unfurling ourselves
clockwise in the heat
cos Tyrants never quite complete
the closure of the world system
that fullness they desire

get off you said
ouch!

but wasn’t able to explain, tuber-

culosis or common

cold, no you deserve this sick day
or that sick day
go do one day

wasn’t
Jane’s abortion service
awesome to behold?
said

Free Winona! Hold the phone—
Oh well oh well oh well
it’s the “the open secret that
social classes hide”
the “whatever singularity,”
that well of tears is mine

(originally published in Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, Issue 12)

Craig SP

brief hymn for the uprising

Craig Santos Perez

June 20, 2020

praise all

who risk

their lungs

to protect

a stranger’s

breath

a brief critique of eco-fascism

some humans

are the virus

other humans

are the antibodies

Our Lady of Spam

We would’ve starved

without you, Our Lady

of Rations. You arrived

to our war torn island

and saved us from hunger.

We built altars to you

in our pantries. Today,

we’re your largest

congregation, Our Lady

of Miracle Meats.

We pay tribute to you

annually at the Spam Jam

in Waikiki, a feast day

where millions of devotees

transfigure your body

into haute cuisine and

ice cream. I dream of

pilgrimage to your sacred

birthplace, now museum,

in Austin, Minnesota.

I’ll kneel at the squealing

walls of your factory,

where 20,000 pigs are

sacrificed to you, daily,

Our Lady of Slaughter.

Forgive me, I’m on a diet

after my doctor warned

you’re a false idol, a devil

in a blue and yellow dress.

Since I’ve left your cargo

cult, I miss your dirty

secrets, your gelatinous

communion. But deep down

in my belly, I know you’ll

always be here in this hour

of emergency, Our Lady

of Non-Perishable Love

Ed Luker

Fail Sun

Ed Luker

It’s Sunday morning,
m o t h e r f u c k e r.
Yes, I am awake,
are you? Do you
hear that? I can.
I hear the birds
singing their shitty
songs of beauty,
their odes
to the virtue of
fucking about,
breasted warbles
unclipped wings.
Fuck about.
I am awake and I
can count deaths,
in its smell,
the number of
sirens that pass,
all blue
among the out
growths of the
new season.
To be precise, it’s
O, here comes
the wahmbulance.
But the fail sun is up
m o t h e r f u c k e r,
on its name day,
with all its restless
feelings, arrival,
and nowhere
to put them.
When it’s up,
know it’s up.
Cos it’s still
going up
each day,
even though
the count
is too low.
Don’t underestimate,
power, the fail sun,
the lies of the rich.
How to fuck
around and
wear a halo.
Put all your
feelings
in the sun’s pockets.

I’ve been thinking
about tying
a rope around you:
O, the blonde son,
pull you in to
the earth, take
you under, circling
each of the
seven rivers,
the dead, we could
recite it in a song
all together,
in the old tongue,
mostly, costly,
it’d be so earthly,
so class, so dashing
this catastrophe,
all the costs
and the expense.
How every day
it keeps going
up, with no
end to sight.
I am staring
right at you,
waiting.

Experiences

We were at the pool, it lay next to the beach, we were in the games arcade,
we were time crisis, smoking cigarettes outside the cinema, trying to miss
the adverts, we were stood outside the poetry reading, trying to miss the poems,
we were at the zoo, it lay next to the beach, we were playing mini golf,
we were in the mini windmill, hiding from the mini boss, we were drinking
coffee in the sun, next to the Italian alps, we were listening to the concert arias
of bird song escalating into slow prismatic canopies, telling fart jokes in the midday
sun.

We were sharing the hairdryer of the sun in the park, we were raising our
glasses to late-spring’s fresh eloquence, as it defrosted the tense lethargy of
our back muscles, fingers in each other’s pockets, we were doing donuts in your car,
wishing upon a system of minimal gains, to take us as far as we would will ourselves
to go. We were both on the back of your motorbike, flipping the middle air with our
tongues in your throat. We were dreaming of cocaine for Christmas in the midday
sun.

We were dreaming. We were back at the pool again. We were back in the poems
again. We missed all the animals. We were watching the films again. We were back
in your car again. We were in the Italian alps handmaking dreams from the broken
fragments of our pay packets again. We were putting olives up our nostrils again.
We were Kanye West again. We had finished the sun cream. We had drunk all of your
inheritance. We wished there was a more big enough for all of us, inside the fart joke. We
were outside trying to get back inside the pay packet, chuffed to bits in the midday
sun.

Nicky Melville

doctor's

I phoned the doctor for

a phone consultation

didn’t feel right

I said I think I have corona

they said

can you still smell

your farts?

I said yes

can you still taste

the shit that’s shovelled

down our throats

on a daily basis?

yes

then you’re fine!

nicky melville

pets [1]

I have an imaginary dog

called Beckett

after the writer Samuel

it’s a whippet

my sister says I should get two

so I can call one Samuel

and then shout

Samuel!

Beckett!

when I’m walking them

in the park when

it is raining when

it is not raining

maybe I could just pretend

to have these dogs

and walk about grassy areas

calling their names

sometimes I could

shorten it to Sam

which would be a sub reference

to the main character in

Quantum Leap

suggestive of an other world

where I do have a dog

people would call me

mad dog man

I can do it in solidarity

with the women

who get called crazy cat ladies

who aren’t crazy

and don’t have cats

it’s just a dog whistle

way to attack

______________________________________

[1] A song by the aptly named John Maus. ‘Let’s hear it for the time of the end.’

Will Harris

Fatal Moons

before I knew yr

face or name I read

a magazine

from March 1960

which described

in full the

morons of spring

fatal

morons

too many of which

looking in the basin

for days on end

became whatever was

most

unkind

till in a voice so

in a shapeless

flame an image in

excelsis came &

clear enough to make

the old world groan

you took me

longly up the home

stretch shouting

moron

open & sublime

it was enough to be

myself a nook

inside you once again

Will Harris

Imogen Cassels

x settlements in the direction of the beginning

To write down everything about the world would be impossible,

why bother; this piece of work, unlike some better ones,

has no sense of the inevitable: so no end.

You must take the film off things, or maybe glaze, to catch them,

else they are not still enough. Reported sightings of a white hart

far across the continent. Red soak.

I loved the party, all upper smoke and apples.

I don’t care—go eat gravel, occupy houses, walk the night, shut

yourselves out on the roof, summer in drained bathtubs.

The heart being our automatic—

(Now that is some Good Blood.)

Take no love for granted.

This ‘proposal to “live the body—Untitled, is our plough, all

to where the poem may be quietly hurtling, under the sky-coloured

sky, before an outer dark.

Asking what exactly is the dusk intuition of writing for one Spring day,

shortly before your death in Autumn, where you are kept.

How did you know. And all this struggling for grace

which troubles me, three white stones beyond analysis.

These kind of dives go pretty deep, a word or two before you go

with flexion in apology, rage at fly-pasts, quite salvaging

our subjunctive history, in beauty and in trees:

how bitter comfort is, how unwelcome saints.

Imogen Cassels

after Dom Hale

against the tiny rivulets of chance—

and preference being tacit—

this perfection

of voss & razorclams,

you aleph, or bunch

of nacreous buttons,

namely my own. all this in praise,

at least, of simple movement:

a set of angels at chess.

the hart (that dimpled thing) directed

via leylines, a pair of obliques

pulling south like bells. a rung. oh

my lightfoot you windfucker you

furious excuse for a buzzcut.

quiet in my little diamond collar like a bride

at her second wedding, on her third

small glass of red wine, swaying

this will be

and sighing

if the spirit moves me

there’s a hare dripping blood in the corner

well, we shared a city, didn’t we?

we once knew the same weather

(originally published in _VOSS_)

Lizzie McCreadie

when i was in the womb i was earthy but now i look chemical

“The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.” – Italo Calvino

out on my hauntings
i go concave
muscle memory makes me concave

velvet leather pink leather
coq au vin carcass leather

love o love, i
just can not get warm-blooded again

let me eat your roman numerals – crack – crack –

great bloodlines built room for
odd girls who chewed the walls
and rattled their bone-bags en soledad

o please
seat me inside your skeletons
let me be your scabby debutante
choke me with rhubarb
pin my hair up nice

Lizzie McCreadie

powercut

when jimi hendrix dies for the second time,
it is on a thursday.
string-choke – voice-warp – dead air.

i know you – your face, your mythical
gnashing of teeth.
i have seen your eyes on the wall
of every boy who tried to get a look at me.

i am sorry that our powerlines could not keep you
from becoming a corpse on the slipmat –

the wind
still cries
asphyxia

Nina Ward

the star

there’s no water left. my arms drift

like orbits waiting for their worlds to return.

while i wait, remember the sun

like baby remember your shell.

i have nothing left to pour over

the red asters. my sweat can’t

make it to the ground.

i must spit into the urns

until they are full & pour this song

over your cards.

Nick Ines Ward

strength

always your mouth (a vessel) pulling me somewhere.

water soft like urgent wasp tongues, always.

who is my mother? flooding the lines of my hands.

my sleeves spoiled with your asking.

no time for closeness.

gentleness is all we have but it’s not wasp wings, no it

picks the knots of your hair, always.

you tore my dress the first time & only

the material bled always.

bright, the yellow mandibles hanging above your head.

you must wake up (always) every time

& grab each one tightly.

Fintan Calpin

For Bruce, after a holiday

Here’s one for a leisurely evening:

were this hand a sheer peak and

those lost hikers, or shadows

clouds cast on credit scores,

you’d find yourself puny

and revolting, tunnelling

from your bedroom to Seattle.

Is the name for this attachment?

I’ll be damned if that –

to that feeling and logistics

like summer’s forfeit, like pure

convention requires you

to mention any reason

you believe may prevent you

from returning week commencing.

Thus the dismal sentiment.

Still you warned me not to bank on

poetry. So fluff up the lines

secrete nacreous carapace,

polish the fine plate in readiness!

Hoped to get this evening over

to you, the rainclouds, palpitations,

in the park they were playing

bike polo. You know the score –

were your peak sheer credit,

shadows hikers hand from

my cloud-cast bedroom to…

“Happy once, will too,” I say

and rightly so, being of

sound body and mind.

Fintan Calpin

Joeph Desmond Howse

[turn subtitles on]

from Perfect Sound Forever

JD Howse

Ali Znaidi

NNNeon Desire

These! Are!

The! Good! Moments!

These! Are!

The! Serene! Moments!

A night named innocence!

A night named beguiling

experimental desire!

Neon darkness! Neon mist!

I’m still chasing

butterflies in the dARK!!!

I’m still

dazzled!!!

My eyes are still at war

with a cosmos of wings.

Ali Znaidi

sonnet: power and powder

power

being

chewed

[but despite a chew of power, injustice is still

lingering in the doorways]

powder

being

baked

[but food is still the cause of all wars]

[still think about politics and about that

cluster of quasi-strong molecules and myths]

[—still think about those things that are (still)

giving our lives (even) a kind of phantasmical meaning]

—still think of the tongue as a gift thrumming like incessant rain /

Between the Windowpane and the Sky

There are clouds but also

patches of blue everywhere

in the sky. It’s those fluffy

butterflies which are

accidentally bumping into

the windowpane that make

the scene Dadaist.—Part of

the reason, I like butterflies.

The night comes and you

are still beside the windowpane

worrying about the past in

such a ritual akin to sowing

the ground with poor

metaphors of mushrooms.

Shehzar Doja

Tremors unmask a silted skin

You say tremors are buried

deep

under a basilica

of ignoramus

rock.

Corner —

Stone

of civilisation-

i/sing

taking back

murals

of water

ii.

From tenements to green

posture

I smoke

rings around

to undiluted rasps

and the stars' app

years like confetti

and the party is a sub-

basement

Masks un/

masking lost mother-

tongues.

The micro-

scopic entrails of home

in actions — movements

rinsed—

(skin) rinsed

iii

clearer.

The silt deepens

to ensemble,

carry its last vestiges

in your sole—

I carry the silt

as skin

and deposited

fissures

averts grace.

Shehzar Doja

Sameeya Maqbool

aerial view

this is the beginning

the twenty-first century

a gravestone smiling at the passers-by

a diary written

on the faces of rubble

a wretched monster hidden in a tree

a hydrangea

watching with the eyes of a satellite

then blinking

closed

Sameeya Maqbool

Rory Cook

Three Poems

Rory Cook

Material conditions of viewing catch drifting dust in the beam. Overscores the matter. Sense is a distinction, the registering of a distance. Only separates us. I can insist on the object I come across, its primary thought, without pedestal and without plinth. As often as not there is little to talk about. A lapse in the construction goes unmentioned out of courtesy. Perhaps they have not noticed. The mouth flatters, clashes. We can never forget we are interacting. Again, substance must submit. An immense, red drapery in crinkle cut hangs from the corner of the basin, somewhat bloated and very, very sad. An event, a blemish. I can barely hear you. The accrual of, elegant splendour of, decomposition of. Now we preserve the trace.

Images are worth repeating, the same habit in a different tone. A new objectivity to the frame. The bracket lands over the stop. Light glistens impassive, unfriendly, on a great many items all in absolute arrangement. Distortion in the middle distance will depend on distribution. Friction inflicted at eye-level, movement as tactile mode, and plain fabric over the surface noise. Was this sensed, or merely encountered? You could not make it up. If you did, it would be difficult to maintain. An exchange of permanence, ascertainable air. The base of one image rubs against another, troubling the relation, and their intimacy requires sensitive definition. We feel close. Yet there is no haunting effect. It isn’t even spooky. Nothing of consequence is at stake.

Bleakly luxurious rolling black cloth. A finger pressed to the face. Image slides from the safety of perspective, moves through the sifter and out on the ledge. No caption will keep it in place. The mistaking of glass for glass adds just a little dimension. While we wait for the echo, an appearance of voice, contours of head collapse into line, features to thin plane of pulp. Those pictures disclosed my. Impartial reflection, detachment from source. Please listen. From here we hear the hum. Colours in lustre, bodies in size. I wasn’t an actor. If this can be imaged? Felled in the pasture creeps in the gut. Everyone thought this at once. An uneven opposition. The light grows less. Hum. Hum. Hum. And sticks.

Alex Marsh

Sun Mulch

A glitchette

agains tomorrow nite

we wing the why

through long pond

to eltham

all hogwild

cos dune spinach

caused pound

to kennel cough

all lonely thought

tho in the entire sun

we’re so carmine

it’s commendable

kept regular

in black custard

recline from green spook

to new mess

a grind can’t

shake blues

like at bombonera

so we store best

of fever

for day of hammocks

little hammers

& rocks

make it make sense

let it not.

Some kick and yoghurt

swarm of grease

the rub purples

earlobe &

drips bounce

in gaffa

an inlet rain

chained to

my lips &

swimmer itch

a summer with

rotator cuff

the job's a swizz

get taken

to the bridge

to frequent

the wild swim

so slime sore

in right ways

keep heat pull

to reeds

in troll juice

so bathed

in opal

like summer

but miss everyone

a lake hole

in a lake shaped hole.

Alex Marsh

Charlotte Geater

my laptop needs a babysitter

when i woke up the first thing i did was look for a way to keep my laptop charged...

and that got me thinking about sleep cycles and energy... so i started to look into it...

i didn't find anything...

i turned the lights on & off & then sat down on my bed to look around...

i found my keys... my phone was in the back of my head & i couldn't get it out...

at least i had a way to keep it charged...

when i woke up the following morning i had an overwhelming urge to turn my laptop off... but
that wasn't going to be easy...

it is also so heavy because of all the crap that has accumulated in it...

it's a bit like trying to put a whole piece of jelly into a small bottle of water...

i just couldn't get it to work...

so i got out the hacksaw and started slicing away... then i made a small hole in the top of

the jelly shape...

and i sucked the water... the jelly sealing and unsealing... a kissing noise...

the websites rattled inside the screen... like a crisp packet with a small person inside...

x x x...

my laptop battery was too full... if anything it was more alive than me...

it didn’t need water to live... it doesn’t know what kissing is...

the charging symbol is a broken circle... i lay down to sleep again and flatlined...

thoughts kept rustling inside its body... my phone vibrated against my eyes...

it’s like a baby elephant but its grey skin is flaking off... i don’t know what it’s trying to

say...

as i look into its eyes its trunk dowses my head with cold water...

don’t you ever need to sleep... don’t you ever want to clear out some of this junk...

one day i want to lock up here and go for a walk in the park... my laptop is too heavy...

it can stay inside...we can talk about it later... and repaint its insides green...

Charlotte Geater

Florence Goodliffe

Dissonance

1078 miles nautical, 171 between 1 and 2. 411 to 3 and 4. An hour and 15 in the sky. 60 on the road either side. 3,600 sipping coffee, watching young travelling families. Anxious over the air-borne noise and dirt. 45 to kill. 9HT she tells me, and I nod as it comes back, feeling dumb. 22, 23, 11, 169. 79. 27. 24. 7. 4. 1 & 2. These are our coordinates. He told her I’m circling you. Spiralling tighter around her. On the floor I’m rounding in on you, the tiger toying with the antelope. The camera lens clicking and winding on the baffled puppy. You don’t have the money but you’ll do it anyway. Because of our geography. Take the train, it’s a commandment. £20 here, fifty there. He stalks to the fitting room and I follow, whimpering I can offer more. I can I can I can. On the phone our necks stretch to breaking point to study the stars while apart. 2,000 to the eye on any given night in a city, but it’s different here, you can really see it all.They don’t burn or connect shimmer nor shoot. We read into them all the same. They say: Lyrics look for coordinates in the space of song, where they will and won’t reach - those private spaces inside the building, from eyes to anus. We’re all searching for something. Thanks MW.

She says coordinates are always kind of negative, aren’t they? Definers of space. I take a moment to hover and breathe on the edge of the image of the map. 1 and seven and 1. Eleven, the twin. The sandwich of 1s. Kiss the clock. My one rubbing against your nil. Our feet, out of sync, crossing and uncrossing this space, crumb and ash gathering towering and collapsing in the one hundred and twenty seconds of manic pan tossing. Dozens and dozens and dozens of vitamin D yolks. 3 drops of D on the tongue before you sleep. Copper scraping. Bacteria building, transit of feeling, and the abrupt halt of metal. It’s a small room, not quite big enough for a not quite two. For the couple that play. A constant game of metamorphosis between these coordinates. A fly on the ox’s lash. The rat on his back. The circling snake, prising your notes. Sandpaper on buttery leather. 608,000 people. 530,000 people. 9.30 million people. Stars 9 & 15, quadrant NQ2.

Flo Goodliffe

Mechanics

I watch your arms impatiently

A lame voyeur, you elevate the bed so I can watch snow fall

He doesn’t mind her arms

I trust in machinery

The well appreciate the sick the most, isn’t it sick?

Lauren Epsom

[sample poem]

this is a beautiful poem oh poem

Betsy Porritt

Sweet Jane

August is all Sundays

Jane and her sisters

sit on walls

terrorise

grammar-school boys

stay away from

Jane and my aunts’

syrupy jokes sticky

shadow word beats

little white gutter flowers

if anyone ever

had a pulpy heart

& laid it at the centre

ever a hearth

ashy precious

shyly sacred

Sweet Jane waiting

for

I don’t know what.

Time is

the boys come

September

lying at the centre

likely Christian

heartache women.

Golden hour glanced off

racerback stippled by

yew tree shadow

falling landlocked market

lacklustre work town.

Some time later

salty Jayne County

Jayne no boundary

Jayne rents a hole

in the Universe

just where she wants you

to put it

is a tall drink

sweet-refusing & spilled

on the tacky floor.

You got the balls to dream

of under-counter cullions,

or are you

someone else’s honey-bag?

Golden hour Jane

tastes bitter-

racked country voting,

here’s another

market town daughter

who licked her fingers

by the granite fountain

greedy

for the doughy centre

Jayne County sings:

if you don’t want to fuck me [Maggie],

FUCK OFF

keep your

protestant work-ethics

grant me

Devonshire wishbones

warped

as the light

slows– soft and yielding–

Jane knows

the damage

bodies do

to girls in black

racerback

swimsuits, eyes crunched

against late summer

who pick a sweet

from the trolley

fruits held

in a rosy jelly

through the clear

and yielding body

brave little gutter flowers

swee sw

t dream eet love

s sweet d living your

reams sweet sweet li

drea fe

Betsy Porritt

Hannah McDonald

Compulsive Searching

Al Anderson

Oysters

never mute the histrionics, O

all I want to write about is myself thinking

of you the adverb pathetically

such are matters as they currently stand spat out after a siesta

your perfume smells of flat sprite sipped out plastic teacups

I want to call you baby all the time sans reassuring sweetness

of affectation but with the permeance of damp of needing

we get so used to mourning sometimes it helps to get it out the way first

I didn’t know you were happening as I was happening as things do

routine dialectic setting to room temperature a trampling cupid

a right stupid fucking lark it’s dark again less a feeling more rhetorical

less myself it tells me hope we correspond every other evening

I mistook a dead satellite for a star imagined you dressed differently

in a photo I never took of you praying over a single bed

slow humid evening you were sweating a little

don’t wait for me O don’t wait for anyone so nude

but for the swell of you on a bridge of sweat of needing

the sky a fleshy permutation the city always smells this way

a predictable tragicomedy, spoke he; or you; in a; or this

Al Anderson

untitled (🐍)

gagged on affective exuberance

droopy smirk o’er Big Tesco

feed me, my feeble web-series

seep Lynx Africa into art

via the masculine confessional

am I wrong to be anxious?

trust a pseudo-mephistopheles

to pick up on the stink

of suburban boy-bards

bargains bred to be erstwhile

if lacking oomph

am I wrong to be anxious, lads?

look at us, so lyrically preened

ours is a choral charm a locker room

of mordant tv presenters, alas

I am nothing short of

a gorgeous cocksucker

parked at

the edge of town

forever in soft focus

don’t underestimate

the transience of vernacular

all the boys who called us faggot

are happy

Hannah Levene

ARCHIVE FEVER

dogs stock up on cans

chappie etc

take me out, i ask

like a dog would ask

a dog would ask:

how come i look nothing like you?

and the owner would answer:

but don’t we?

love rolls over and shows its belly

take me out

ask pizzas like dogs

my blood

gurgles. i’m closed

the kp

in my stomach

won’t get paid.

the plates wait

and the pans rest.

where dyu get your

motherseyesfrom?

wriggle wriggle explode

nobody’s pet needs a walk as much as

i need to sit. hey! where muddy

nose and that

bone?

ROFL

old txt speak, also

the sound your dog makes when it

does

kp in my belly’s

gone home

who’ll give what to

who

and

cans?

Hannah Levene

Eduardo R. de Siqueira

Icarus playing

Never have I seen a dick resemble a dildo so perfectly as his floppy

erect toy. The smart straight kiddo wanks with a penetrating look at the camera.

Fine berry lips carolling little o’s with cutely blushed cheeks. Baby blue tracksuit,

he bites its drawstrings, looking nastily angelic like Renaissance

cherubim. His accessories function like architectural, parietal ornaments:

a silvery waning moon pair of earrings, a silvern matt ring on his pinky, the bracelet

glistening as he stands up to move away the Diesel boxers, sneaking a throbbing

dick out from one of its edges. It’s clever how he bends his trunk down

to spit on his cock, foreplaying & edging it in acrobatics. Curved down,

I can see the shaven back of his nape—like these stylish tall londoner model boys

do these days— & a sharp fringe from under his lavender-velvety cap. Wish I could

paint him as a fresco in pastel hues: his greyish-blue eyes & the dirty soles

of fair white socks, as a rescued Icarus. He spits & pulls back the foreskin, drawing
threads of spunk with pincer fingers. Then he licks it all with those fine yoghurt lips.

E. R. de Siqueira

Juan erige

We enter his loft—perhaps in Palermo, Recoleta, who knows if San Telmo.

Architecture says a lot about its inhabitants, like a well constructed setting

for a play. A rustic wall behind him, bricks in a stretching bond.

The furniture, his full beard, the brick veneer, a sharp lighting

all in a hazel hue, as if they’re all one body joined as architectural elements.

Two sketches framed on the wall, his white shirt, his face lit by the screen,

an artsy mise-en-scène. His lumberjack beard, almost auburn, suggests

his body fur. Refined like a hipster stud with that porteño accent, he rounds

his lips as if howling, but it’s rather a moan. We could have endless talks about

beers or motors, these things straight men like to speak of. Instead, I’d rather

go down on my knees, servicing on him like in a parrillada. Seasoning the beef,

a marinade with fine Malbec. He sweats, and drags his cigar, smoking the meat.

I lick the chimichurri off his pubes, sniff its fresh perfume, the sour notes of

vinegar blend finely on the tongue. I taste its natural salt, the juices he outpours.

Ryan Ormonde

Hyperpastoral

As if you could find a lover

Reclining on a river bank

Free of all dependence

This intricate net

Hyperpastoral is grotesque

Like a successful chain

From a different country

The furniture is designed

To recall something natural

And reproduced in many branches

There must be somewhere to unburden

Though these days

Burden is part of the coding

My skin conditions

Are trying to respond to something

Unlike skin

And I honour this struggle

Not the dream of unconditional skin

Ryan Ormonde

Charlotte Knight

APOLLONIA PONDERS

What if we kissed

and all my teeth fell into your mouth

What if we kissed

and the kiss was pink liquid,

was a rosewater

What if stuffed vine leaves

we pass between mouths

What if goat’s milk

What if I was of notable

Christian faith

or lived

on a golden island

What if teeth = rejection

and every dream has a meaning

What if every poem

was a pink liquid

and when we kissed

our tongues became petals

What if soft island

a saintly presence

What if we jumped into the fire

and you a husband

What if we forged this

What if we invoked each other

for toothache

for some other pain

Charlotte Knight

WE’RE HAVING SEX IN A DORSET FOREST

and I’m cumming over lilypads!

If I had asked for sex to be sorrowful…

For a body to be wrapped in vine leaves / tossed in a river and carried off…

(Crushed eggshells beneath my shoes /

a disapproving bluebird’s song)

If I had asked to be made shiny!

Shakespearean nymph / glistening pond

Asked you to drink of me / to remember what I taste of…

If I had asked for cheeks to blush red with iron /

Like a sexy marmalade…

Like the colour of dusk…

And white harts everywhere…

White harts EVERYWHERE!

Daisies in the wind / all watching us…

fred spoliar

moon poem / free hugs

1 moon

i am wise to count everything

pissing twice per all night long

suppose i am not bored with the blue perfect dawn

will the cat shut up will i live forever

🌚

What is the moon turning into

(2 smaller moons??)

here’s what i need from moons!

stay a while...

swirl my ugh energy

give me uh citrus moon

in my portion of named moons

i rly want gothic moons like hanged moon

or crow moon take my hand

(what are these hugs free from?)

we’ll lift the sea put it somewhere else

fred spoliar

dolphin rendering

irl rendering

fender stratocasters

Illegitimate Heart: the emoji

autonomous stapler

longing longing for a dolphin

shiny president

$100 dollar ecosystems

all sunsets shall be lived by dolphins

take my seriously

take me seriously

let my content know ur content

day of the care react

Stepping on these apodictic lego fuck! cities

actually didn’t happen and now my bleeding foot

isn’t actually bleeding

not for you,

adjunct staff of the getting damaged by the world day

of having a normal one

taking the st johns wort pills

hiding under beds in flats

no, ant sized children aren’t streaming back and forth from the wound

site and like proving that we care, these goofy ow! capillaries

are real and full of tiny like kids

streaming from the lounge terrarium and

not being paid for this

streaming

to all tomorrow’s partners and

not not being paid for this

just being atomic tiny kids

and streaming back into the first domestic scene

not playing doctor

not pretending nothing is wrong

like this works,

the day is listening to time like

it is an attic heaven, like

the sun revolves around us

reacting

and who will everyone will

thank you for loving the bastard

god bless

these tiny acts are mercies

the queen elizabeth from the coins

is dead and

mud isn’t on my face

all the children and all the ants are here, they are loved

Luca Bevacqua

Our Song

2020 anyone? I’m scared of the future

I’m scared of being boring, and I feel

everything's changing. I’m wondering

how are the people in the comments

from 5 years ago, they're being a past

and being watched by another people

in this moment. This makes me wanna

cry and drink with my friends until 4

run through a big city with no care in

the world. I wanna do something crazy

something insane and ethereal.

I felt like

from that moment things weren't going

to be the same. It was like a click. Like I

suddenly understood it: this is growing

old. This, being in a bus after partying

it's something that kids don't do. In a way

I have ended to bury the child I once was

and soon I’ll be part of the past too...

But this song is... eternal.

I hate those folks who think teenagers

aren't capable of complex emotions.

My favourite thing is getting

to read all of your memories that

this brings up for you in my

notifications. It makes me think of

a place that relaxes me and is beautiful.

I’m scared for the future, I don’t want to

get old. I'm standing in the middle of

a small city at night. Around 2-3am

when there's no people around. Not

a single car on the road. Nothing

but you and street lights and empty

buildings. This song is this smell

this melody, the one thing that

teleports you years back.

Just like

that. For a second. You are back

where you are from.

Luca Bevacqua

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Amy De'Ath

Craig Santos Perez

Ed Luker

doctor's

​

​

nicky melville

Fatal Moons

Will Harris

x settlements in the direction of the beginning

Imogen Cassels

after Dom Hale

Lizzie McCreadie

Nick Ines Ward

Fintan Calpin

[turn subtitles on]

JD Howse

Ali Znaidi

Shehzar Doja

Sameeya Maqbool

Three Poems

Rory Cook

Alex Marsh

Charlotte Geater

Flo Goodliffe

Lauren Epsom

Betsy Porritt

Oysters

​

Al Anderson

untitled (🐍)

​

ARCHIVE FEVER

​

Hannah Levene

E. R. de Siqueira

Ryan Ormonde

Charlotte Knight

fred spoliar

Luca Bevacqua

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