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Caitlin Stobie - Video Games

 

Meredith Grace Thompson - the hammer

Fred Carter - from notes for presenteeism & sleep

Natalie Cortez-Klossner - STILL LIFE

Cassandra Troyan - Untitled, Port Ref: TN2/5336432 (For Fred)

& five 'FFT (Fast Found Textures)' by Federico Federici
(1)  (2)  (3)  (4)  (5)

Tom Crompton - spin coat
 

Alex Grafen - this song what is sung in it

Astrid Alben - Hermaphrodite

Ezra Mars - Loose Squares

Ian Macartney - from Comment Section

Sam Weselowski - from COMBINED & UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT

Caitlyn Main - FLATTERY (extended)

Naomi Morris - Communion

Raian Oliveira - finally introducing myself after 5 years on youtube

Emer McGinnity - Poverty Alliance Webinar, 84 words

William Gee - good day
                          -  lovely day

Kushal Poddar - A List About My Father

Rachel Cleverly - A Good Age to Go

Ollie Tongfrom CAUSTIC NETWORKS

Alex MacDonald - Until Then, The Balcony Is Closed

gentian rhosa meikleham - underpinning

Tom Betteridge - EXPERIENTIAL GROUP

                                 - NURSERY

 

Imogen Free - Tuesday Afternoon

etaïnn zwer - this particular dyke life (living/recording)

                        

Alex Noble - birds

                       - at Christmas time

spin coat

Tom Crompton

tho any line will do it is useless to 
reverse     no hope     like a feeder     
nothing-loops 


                          (quiet as this poem started 

backing into cages we’re the same 
sunflower seed the cheap from cheap 
reading like-rushes and lark of a 
lollop                               twatting 
routinely (the head 
against glass  

not my day this
trays migraine 
                      surface eased 

 

by the ringaround after in corsa 

and giggles it’s all shopping 

by music      kids pigeon impression 

crumbling through the big big sleep 

 

from next door a chiff chaff no fist no 

ordinary grease state this

shit-trough for an accent 

 

                                          rough plans 


 

bummed out by uppers on waking 

and necked by a cadent dawn

yawning gas speed and snake magnets

 dribble networks  

dug up frames from basement’s where 

 

we once dwelled all listless but not a forest

a few trees rattled             (unable to focus  

stiffs and investors go here

 

nice drive for sum wall art jobbie 

the hard shoulders all read fuck ‘em 

into poetry not getting in trouble

 

but punched down on by chances and rates 

my preferences set to mosey       set to spit

bad brains and hooded crows

the spoils of the park 

go outside of the park      get it

 

in through the boundary 

of evergreen winnows  

ark my sub cooker grave my counter mouse

assay of starkers                           (not quite one 

but not you either             cos am 

 

lowly n sockless through fields

mild silage blistered 

and incoherent to call

 up

on luv 

 

yeah you know it all this but this 

is like a map returning

to the cut between reels            everything lifted 

no receipt and no sample          towards dreamy 

the pits and lands of the part-light       tip

-ping into the bean phase stutter

on the substrate     iron fingers   (blowing up late 

onto the table to dint vowels

 

trying my hardest 

not to wake you

these municipal extractions don’t count  

waste and bugs and owls

tho I’ve nowt to adjust you          (from my  bedroom 

the scream of the walloping stars

 

they are having a benny 

they are having a do 

 

went booloo on the regional fader

used to race along the towpath

mornings of lipbust to shimmer

to keep up 

            without keeping 

now here is a form 

now fill it 

first sap of not 

winter         not spring and not summer 

cut rhythms          echolalia 

resin hat


 

somewhere in retail

above retail 

the signage is singing  

 

 is he sound 

your brother

is he sound

Alex Grafen

this song what is sung in it

Alex Grafen

this song: what is sung in it?

      words about a mirror: watch

      your life in it & you will see

Death working like bees 

     in a glass hive: you will see

not just no people but their

     positive absence.

gone is the rain of still

     life: the apples have had their day. 

          nobody needs me & 

          nobody needs me & 

          life is glimpsed thru 

          a glass of dry wine 

                song strips

                the tangle of 

                features that you 

                outside the world

                imagine 

don’t depend 

on a sudden & surprising 

harmony, but on bad taste

& crude responses, on the 

frogspawn’s sticky pop, on the

white ceiling falling asleep. 

Astrid Alben

Hermaphrodite

Astrid Alben

Shape of a screaming Goya face-to-face with the face of
my early life a boy is a boy by birth not a girl not a choice is 

breaking news worse far worse than when Poet longed to grow

up a Jew chronicle man’s history hard-pressed to my diasporic 

chest. A slug (hermaphrodite) glides from B to trachea 
drainpipe go-kart boy girl girl boy boy girl girl Goya boyohboy 

Goy — the rage of sex is fragile outlives the scattered ruins 
no amount of Fairy Liquid will wash the mucus off.

 

Ezra Mars

Loose Squares

Ezra Mars

We are trash thrown from skyscrapers

Kicked out of trailer parks and picked up crying

With the cold sweats in suburbia 

 

We are junk to be used and abused again

We ride shotgun to traps for our daily dose of filth

Our pockets stuffed with crumpled presidents we beg our internet daddies for,

and we get discounts because men want to lick our pussies

 

Uber is the closest thing to God when you’re stranded on a week long bender

and town stretches away from your grasp

I lost myself in Grindr blowjobs and Grindr heroin 

An older man asks me if I’ve ever been in handcuffs and I say

Don’t you see them on me now?

 

Let’s compare DUI stories and all the times we made an Irish goodbye 

to go shoot up

Look at my track marks and tell me the color is unique for such a pale kid

clean needles and dirty environments 

We were the graduates of D.A.R.E

caught up in escapism and feigning to feel something other than the struggle

to stay sane 

 

We don’t stick around long,

we prowl the streets and chat rooms looking for the next fun time

We don’t understand danger because in our minds it’s more dangerous to be sober

So we linger around Sheetz parking lots and Jewel-Osco's looking for the eighth day

When God tells us that to feel anything you first must feel pain, 

 

and if you want to see pain–

Wait till the fix is dry

Anchor 1
Black line drawing on grey noise background

Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 1

Ian Macartney

from Comment Section

Ian Macartney

Saw them at primavera sound In that same concert i kissed an irish girl Punched a bunch of

people Lost my cellphone Almost had a heart attack In the end i found the

cellphone It was not broke 

It was biblical 
Cheers from brazil

I’ll tell my secret to the perfect stranger >.<
It’s 3am Christmas day Why am i here
This hurts in a beautiful way

A girl from tinder brought me here
I didn’t even meet her
It is unlikely that anyone will read this or care But i really hope that my life will get better

soon This gives me hope that i can better myself as a person and open myself up

emotionally I love you all

A sort of perpetual chime somewhere in the wall
Probably
It’s late and time for me to stop trying to open the door

Perfect for another gloomy day in los angeles
Let’s all do the naughty virtual things we so crave
I will find a matrix of love in your psych outs Is there a mansion in the works for the kids of

the next generation

Me Should get ready for my first ever job interview 
Also me You uploaded Nevermind
Update The interview went really well


Millionaires fuck with you Aren’t they just a a barrel of laughs
And why is that Why do people who As punky youths Seemed to want to change the world

Seem to become less effectual the more successful they get Because Intrinsically

we are On a bacterial level Just a grouping of parasitical flesh

Ace song Vote for it Biffo the bear is here too Woo

This is great for long bike rides at 3am in your sleepy small town
My moment of doubt When i remember who i was This song makes me remember coming  

back to myself 

Alright I will open my mind I am ready to accept god Show me the way As an atheist i will

try my best to give this a shot Here we go

Mastercoco says Garbage
Mastercock doesn’t know real love
This video was posted 4 years ago and has 13k views

 

I know all about the brakes-don’t-work dream 
My personal favourite is when you don’t die right away and then wake up but instead careen

off a bridge into a lake and fight and struggle until the car fills up with water and

you wake up sweating and choked up

Anyway Great podcast

I’m from algeria
I was listening to bbc radio 1 on euro truck simulator 2
I did every thing to find this song Now i’m addicted to it and bbc radio 1 Help pls

Sick
So this is new generation vernacular You use a word which is either vomiting or other illness

to describe something which is awesome Fantastic Mega Incredible Does not make

any sense

The shit dancing in this is sick 

Hey bro She didn’t deserve you anyway
Sometimes When i’m alone I get naked and play this song on my speakers while doing the

dance that is thicker than oatmeal made of cement 

In a 100 years this will be nothing but a couple of encrypted bars of code on a long forgotten

part of the internet 1 day a scavenger searching through the space of the internet for

lost media will come across this and experience what we all feel listening to this

And all of us will look down from the purple heavens and gather once more and

share our memories 1 last time

I think when i die i want this played at my funeral
Not to signify what i was But only what i wanted to be
Everyone in the comments is so much smarter and more philosophical than me

Cute
Love these grindr vids
Fyi Hook-ups will catch up to you and eat your soul

I’m a truck driver and i listen to her
She cracks me up and makes me smile
My daughter turned me on to her She is a good soul

It’s currently 2:40am and i am having a party by myself
This is what i drink to at 3am and cry and dance in my room
Happy 3:42am I am shaking my ass to this all over my apartment I have to be up in 4 hours 

I just didn’t expect me A 15 year old To relate to a 30 year old It’s wild
I used to think about death a lot when I was a kid 8 9 years old I would lay awake in bed and

it would frighten me so much i would cry

You’re not alone

My best friend caught me his shirt for me on that day : ) Smelling the shirt as we speak
I’m still jealous that you guys got it 
Hey you :D Fancy seeing you here on youtube Come here often Hahahha I miss you bro

 

Professional Yes Yes Yes My friend joy Maybe that’s not the right word But want to write 
Heard this song at a starbucks in seoul South korea
I’m korean Live in seoul How was your trip I wish you had a good time^^

The song that prevents my early morning suicide I’m deadly serious :) 
Do what makes you happy Get through it Right before i killed myself from malnutrition i

vowed to get better and here i am Free Doing yoga daily Devoted and alive Please

do whatever it takes to be happy

Lol Cringe 

I have only slept with women i have had a long-term relationship with
Hey Bro Are you okay Like I saw the thing about you killing yourself and Like I’m glad you

didn’t But for real Do you need Like An internet hug or something

I’m graduating today and i know i won’t talk or see her or them again and i’m fine with that

I am not a troll
I work
I Personally Would not want to go to heaven if i can’t bring my porns with me And can you

imagine being in a place where at least 10 other people like you preaching all the

goddamn time I would beg for death

This is brilliant
and i say that as an eclectic pagan myself who works with dionysus 
I’d love to see more

I met some dudes on chatroulette and they told me to listen to this 
They were right
He’s hot :3

Despite everything that happened I truly hope you're healthy At peace And even in love again 

You'll almost certainly never read this But i wish you all the best

I actually really disliked them Like low-key hated them And thought they were too ugly in a

weird way But i don’t know what happened because now i’m obsessed and i feel i

should apologise to them personally Though they probably don’t give a shit what

anyone thinks of them And i want to be friends with her real bad

The sports channel is showing the tampa bay bandits and the houston gamblers of the

usfl playing on march 3 1985 Houston won 50 to 28

Hi :(
Hi
Hi

 

Sam Weselowski

from COMBINED & UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT

Sam Weselowski

Madonna says Canada is boring. Let’s hear it
for the quitters. You’re making our city look bad.

That’s why they call it “fucking with you.”
Nothing like barbed wire to break your fall.

“I’m something of a cultural export myself.”
Use me for: books, CDs and DVDs, heavy items, tinned food

and breakables. Surplus for the nonplussed. Then
what are we waiting for? Indulge me or ignore me.

“Canadian” in a bad way. Don’t be scared of debt.
Economists suggest that, objectively, “some people are poor.”

Let’s kill some time at the collective. Give me money,
give me sexy. I keep waking to the word “textual.”

Whatever desires. The half-circle of memory.
Spit in the lock and the knob turns. The difference

between having a stable boss, and them having you.
Strike a historic deal to normalize relations. No don’t.

“It was instant trouble melting.” Happy birthday
to Fidel Castro. Now it is all moving. The scrim of mountains

shagged with ice, peel back the frozen lake’s skin
for fish. Fresh water wars. A line graph to heaven

or a pie chart to hell. A list of names, therefore an increase in cases.
Spikes. “That most sensitive of social barometers

the middle class.” I have visited the suburbs
of several countries. Productively yours. Periphery.

 

Caitlyn Main

FLATTERY (extended)

Caitlyn Main

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but 

compliments are the most efficient and 

gold is the heaviest and 

a grope in the dark is the most direct. 

I’ll meet you in the library; 

I’ll take one of each. 

Darling it takes a great deal of flattery 

to furnish such a grand house.

 

There was a tiger skin rug and martini glasses,

there was a teleprompter, tasteful cufflinks 

and a baby swan. 

No one had fed the snake for days, for time seemed foggy,

illusive, 

something that had once concerned us but no longer held value. 

I declared that we had everything we needed - the dinner party couldn’t possibly fail! 

We drank firstly from the good crystal and then 

from the men’s leather brogues and a milk jug shaped like a cow. 

Eventually we drank straight from bottles, 

and then

afterwards 

from each other’s open palms, messily lapping the bourbon and champagne and pinot noir

and vermouth. There was a low hum of satisfaction beneath the caterwauling and

showboating. A hedonistic current, a sustained murmur of encouragement to us all. Someone

knocked over the last coupe and the glass spoiled the second it struck marble. We felt at peace

we felt in pieces, at least for a while, at least until the booze ran dry and stale, just like the

untouched dinner, a table heavily laden with roasted birds, wilted herbs. 

 

The satisfaction gave way to routine: the repetition of this evening that had hazily occurred

five thousand times before, the only variation to be found in the variety of liquor, or the

particularity of the scandal. We mixed things up by having a screaming competition by the

pool - but this solved nothing as a winner was never determined, despite one of us being a

clear banshee. 

 

I lived as far away from you as possible, given the circumstances: we shared the same

mattress after all. We staked our territories viciously, we prowled the boundaries. By now it

was just you and I, the guests stumbled away from the front lawn and the snake had starved to

death. I feel sorry for the coldest blooded animal pacing in this house.

Naomi Morris

Communion

Naomi Morris

a palm appears from nowhere / a collar bone / apparition of a thin silver chain / life and love lines / appear 

chapped / appear damn’d moisturiser / appear sanitiser / my closeness to a crow / to a pigeon /

consecration / palm glows in the dark / appear tongue / appear cheek / Christ used spittle to cure the blind   

/ to reach / to pressure / to palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss / appear on cue / appear after loading screen  

/ appear propagation / saved covers of Hustler mag / our words upon words / stacked in blue / in black

affectless joy / trembling pock-marked in our shared terrain / flat / I miss MSN nudges / I miss / I miss / I

miss / I miss my footing / trip over a hole in the ground / find supposed degradation / find erotics as the

opposite of pornography / at least a desire / want / worrying / my intellect is a stone / appear rubber ring /

appear sensual dolphin / appear woman who had sex with dolphin / ask her why / through fear / ask her /

what holiness was found / here / and here / and here / in this wetted blanket of newly formed spring leaves

/ appear blossom as pom-poms / appear Tess / appear nature as whore / appear crystal bell / sheathed in

jean / remembering finding porno in the hollow of a tree / my bedroom curtained by branches / the prairie

dress / the pill / the baby tie your hair back in a long white bow / appear teenage diary / bible glow

Anchor 2
A grid-like assemblage of lines on grey 'noise' background

Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 2

Raian Oliveira

finally introducing myself after 5 years on youtube

Raian Oliveira

 

I

i mean that's information

scattered all over my two hundred

three hundred live streams 

 

i'm pretty proud to say in general

by the way my channel that is for studying and working

live streaming while studying

they are studying and watching youtube

i've a procrastination habit

i've been a perfectionist

i've been signing for exams

 

and that lowered my self-esteem

i didn't like myself in the past

i didn't like that

somehow it worked

 

that's how i invented study vibes

i still will continue to do this

but as you know i don't have a job

i genuinely enjoy studying

it makes me feel good

i just enjoy gathering information

 

sometimes you just don't enjoy the things you used to like before

and that can be too ‘cause of poor mental health

and that was basically what i was going on in the past months

 

so this journal turned a little bit into a talking video more than like

an introduction video what the point really was i just want to

upload this video edited a little bit

 

maybe there is something else i wanna talk about like for two minutes

give me two more minutes, ok?

 

 II

 i've been promising you that i would make a certain video

 like how you study for eight hours straight

 how you stay focused

 how you study for math

 how you study for chemistry

 

 all these questions

 all these videos

 that i was promising to make

 and never made

 it's not a "procrastination”

 basically i'm so hard with myself

 when i was thought omg

 i already have so many subscribers

 my videos have to be flawless

 and perfect

 i have to have a good meaning

 and a good research done before them

 

 i was always faced with me not capable

 to make a video properly

 or at least in my eyes it wasn't proper

 and now i'm getting to a point in my life

 where i'm starting to feel like it's ok not be

 immediatley good at something

 and that's also what i wanna do with this video

 is just upload it

 and see what happens

 and maybe next time i have another video idea

 and i'll see what's just gonna happen

 but yeah

 that's what i wanted to say

 in the last two minutes

Emer McGinnity

Poverty Alliance Webinar, 84 words

Emer McGinnity

➢   I don’t have control

   I’m using my Chrome book I should have used my 

   other book 

   stark, and even more worrying

➢   on screen is two blue and rashy

➢   maps of the UK, disembodied,

➢   one with darker splodges

➢   disproportionately affect

   Northern Ireland 

   we’ll be looking more like 

   the eighties 

   or even the thirties

   ha ha

   dialling down the conditionality 

   a COBRA for jobs

   never wasting a good crisis

   baked into employment practice 

   if you could just switch to the next slide... 

   that would be great 

William Gee

good day

William Gee

terrible things have happened, and are

not allowed aloud.

to carry trauma and not sleep,

or to be held.

fresh sheets, happy

to be here,

at a healthy capacity and nothing smacks

of beauty quite as much.

lovely day

pieces of ugly morning turning

in your hand. your hand. and sure, the sun,

throbbing as it does at the backs of my eyes

is something. the careful injection of breakfast.

how my skin burns when you touch me,

but you do. 

you touch me and it's everything

to go nowhere at all. 

Kushal Poddar

A List About My Father

Kushal Poddar

Perchance my knowledge

about my father

has the length of his shorts

especially those he used for

his ever lengthening gym times,

then I smell sweat and think of him;

may be I am not ignorant;

his ebony pipe and sailors cut

tobacco he ceased to smoke when

I, a child, tried to device some good time;

his constant rambling about

my mother's health and mine;

his notebooks filled with detailed

price of vegetables, meat and fish;

the table he broke with his bare fist

angered over something I must

have done; his typewriter,

the one he used to prepare briefs;

his penchant for sports and my failures;

Old Spice, of course; the tales of his adventures

when he escorted his leftist brother

to another state

snaking between policing and policies;

his flipping through my book of poetry not reading really;

his flipping through the same again not reading again.

Rachel Clevely

A Good Age to Go

Rachel Cleverly

Sorry I’ve been not getting used to any of this.

I stay inside and tell my plants I’m proud of them.

I’ve been slipping into my *telephone voice*, especially in person.

 

I found a fingernail in my laptop the size of a pistachio shell

wedged diagonally between ‘O’ and ‘L’ so my emails begin

‘I hpe this finds yu we’. I can type so fast now it sounds like applause.

 

Work meetings are on webcam; when my face is a chess move

away from the fit administrator I screenshot, crop out my line manager.

This is the most intimate I’ve been with anyone in months.

 

It does feel a bit jarring to use the same webcam to call Grandad on his 79th.

It takes him a while to recognise me, but he hasn’t learnt to look at the screen

and I’m disguised in *telephone voice*. He keeps telling me to turn round so I’m like

Oh no, I’m not in the, 

I’m not in the same room, Grampy.

And he’s talking about the birds:

 

 

I’m watching myself reacting to a massacre 

of elderly people I can’t see, residents lost 

like unsaved documents. Grampy’s friends

 

carried off like cursors beyond the screen. He points, 

says how Bertie’d been got by the spine, 

Scaley bugger but I did like him.

 

He starts to laugh when my pixelated body squirms, 

but the movement brings him back to me. 

Only fishes in the pond, he says.

 

l-l-look the birds they’re pulling they’re

apart they’re pulling he bodies apart they’ve

got them by the spines and they’re pulling the

bodies apart and they’ve got them they’re

pulling the bodies apart they’re pulling pulling

spine and bodies apart they’ve got spines and

them pulling the bodies apart they’ve got them

Anchor 3
Dense black line drawing on grey noise background

Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 3

Ollie Tong

from CAUSTIC NETWORKS

Ollie Tong

1.3

 

how could I keep ~ the places ~ the piano, its sound ~ the player ~ her fluency ~ a kind of ~ particular person ~ but

swerving ~ slightly away ~ from an outline ~ floating before the treeline ~ bending ~ into digits ~ consistently ~

impressions along ~ the edges ~ of a cracked wall

 

---

 

2.10

 

In the 

afternoon the familiar

ring of light belonging

to no language, no alphabet.

 

---

 

2.20

 

I see

my friends as

what remains when 

I subtract familiarity away.

 

---

 

3.5

 

first of all

do not react

surely consequences follow

 

the sun that

moves by gestures

its threatening knife

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

 

5.13

 

Whistling is not one of the arts.

 

Health, art

Business, art

Problems, art

Shallow art

Broad and flat art

Ignorance, art

Trivial art

Factual art

 

One cannot get into the same bath twice.

 

---

 

5.20

 

The smell of a flower vanishes.

The corners of a mouth abate.

 

Yes, if you are happy.

You are really happy.

 

---

 

6.7

 

+ Been having opinions again:

 

- Naturally we're interested in getting reports. Analysis. We are important to us.

 

- I am fit for work: unwell, depressed and prone to psychological manifestations of greatness. An endowed human being.

 

- I get good results. I want to enslave.

 

---

 

6.12

 

+ Woke up uncertain if the falling shape in the sky was beautiful. The behaviour of the local stray dogs has begun to

mirror my confession. I am arrived at the frontier between real and simulated thoughts. 

Alex McDonald

Until Then, The Balcony Is Closed

Alex MacDonald

After Siskel & Ebert videos on Youtube

 

Let’s begin with our regrets: it is cruel

when an aunt is in agony, that’s my complaint.

Whenever I see him, he’s only himself

with other derived airs and thin oils. People are 

sitting in front of meals but not eating, 

they act with empty cups, yet they need coffee

and somewhere along the hallway,

a focus group wonders if they too should die

of homesickness for forlorn puddings.

What a crummy exit, a waste of good energy

and bad guys’ girlfriends. Here’s a dud

you can smell from down the street. Were we

meant to believe the story of the wind? 

I remember horses behind clouds, a lone flute 

whistling, genuine waterfall stunts,

all pasted together with paste and images ran

into the field of vision like streakers,

all held with bad editing. And although I liked it,

it’ll turn some off, but that’s fashion,

after a fashion. Until then, the balcony is closed.

a man in a tux stares with frowning expression; text reads 'LOVE AT FIRST BITE'
Long haired person tenderly touches the face of crowned robot apparently wearing a wig
Some kind of armchair or box is thrown from a high-storey window

All stills are taken from Siskel & Ebert videos

gentian rhosa meikleham

underpinning

gentian rhosa meikleham

women died for this      their voices

& women also died for the right      to choose

 

to render the outlines

vague

 

to let the omissions

sing

 

 

i am tired (she said)

pulling apart the fabric of her mantle

 

 

my girl

show them that our silence is a foundation

that strengthens           with our construction

 

come into silence

like coming to a clearing        in the forest

 

the pure and stubborn power of the root—

the light coming in

(originally published in speakerspeaker journal)

Tom Betteridge

EXPERIENTIAL GROUP

Tom Betteridge

infant embargo 

in the face of yous

me bully beef tin 

in the face of yous 

now you

also of tin

a jam tin you

a bully beef tin me contained by a jam tin you

caught dead in the air

between launch 

and impact

under fear of explosive

influence

yous still

pomegranate-molasses

chatty

NURSERY

at dawn you skirt the range

of liquid storage solutions

 

and peer through gaunt hedgerows

at the amassed pillow tanks

 

that corpse into far millet

you drag the lamped hare near dead

 

along by its twitching feet

that meets your eye before the keeper slaps it

 

easy to drag now silent across 

fuel farm repositories

Anchor 4
Score like lines zigzag across a page in black in across a textured grey background

Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 4

Imogen Free

Tuesday Afternoon

Imogen Free

She was not afraid of knives.
No, that melon was eating

out of the palm of her hand!

 

But the dried ham tasted
of iron and she considered
for several moments
the possibility of cannibalism
as posthumanist ecology.

 

For dinner, her peels of potato
stand as simple dues
to her maternal blood line,
and calls to say good night
and good morning too.

 

Tired of never going out,
she moves in, ‘digs deep’,
& you wouldn’t believe
the treasures under her pile
of unopened reviews:


dusty waves, yellow dogears,
teen diaries, postcards she kept
for herself, in shame and secret faith.

For what matters most
on this suddenly radiant Tuesday
are these recollections

 

such sweet self-storage units!
Even that 2 year old pregnancy test
seems some kind of salvage

 

its dehydrated pee,
fingerprints for brushing,
traces for the file she’ll never have,

are narrative comforts -
touchstones for wives’ tales.

 

If only someone would gossip again,
bite, give something to salivate over,
something more salacious
than miniature histories

 

but no, conspiracy theories of the self
are all that she can muster.

 

Before sleep, she thanks god for the aliens

because surely she could not
have done this herself.

 

etaïnn zwer

this particular dyke life (living/recording)

etaïnn zwer

3 poems _ etaïnn zwer _ 1 SPAM 2020.jpg
3 poems _ etaïnn zwer _ SPAM 2020.jpg
3 poems _ etaïnn zwer _  3 SPAM 2020.jp
Alex Noble

birds

night broke over the city like a black yolk 

while Australians flirted 

with other Australians deep underground  

 

as the keenest birds begin their lullaby

filling the room with the unbearable  

lightness of being without a backpack 

 

something wicked comes to me

as tar-feathered memories 

float in and leave the air to crackle

 

our Sims are getting married

that cat is still in the bins

will someone let that cat out of the bins

 

and say someone’s let the cat out the bin

and what about all the dead cats 

on the internet, and our Sims’ funerals

 

now what rough beast slouches at the window waiting

to curl its talons round my fingers

like the last McDonald’s receipt

 

 

 

 

 

 

at Christmas time

Alex Noble

when i am becoming essentially   

a bin

filled out with the year’s rubbish and refuse to see

this is as anything

 

i remember then

the little best to know is this 

of which

i remain certain:

 

            crocodiles will try to eat you

            far less than you’ve been led to believe

            and even kangaroos

            can sometimes eat a little snow

 

            and listen if goats can climb trees

            what more do we need

            and did you know i repeat

            did you know the banana-iest part of the banana is the worst part

            of the banana, really 

 

all i can do

is hold up a spoon to the world and say

look at my spoon  

 

all i can do

is hope

i am always on my last legs

 

and soon my engine starts again

my laugh sticking out

like a car door in a bike lane

Caitlin Stobie

Video Games

Caitlin Stobie

Up late at night wrapped in telephone wires – remember what

desire seemed like?;

Up close in a screen of black we met, that first real-life night,           

sneaking out &

Down by the dam; in a friend’s two-man tent our four hands

turned one &

Down was the little bend I showed you how to press (deep in the

boy inside me)

 

Left to figure girls alone with no cheat codes, I liked how you             

never said princess;

Right or not, even the mean things were left unsaved, erased; like

that evening a

Left turn led to flat tyres & for three hours in your dad’s car we

lay unmapped together

Right beneath stars, legs wrapped like broken VCRs (all lips &

fingers willingly lost)

 

Be it legal or wrong, we played consent by taking turns, being             

genderless & free;

A decade later no man matches that game concentration; in my

movie-memory still you

Start clamping close, close, thighs closed, & don’t stop (least not

till I ask)

Anchor 5
Federici - FFT5.jpg

Federico Federici, Fast Found Texture 5

Meredith Grace Thompson

the hammer

Meredith Grace Thompson

there is a hammer on the floor

next to the blue scarf

I have used

to cover the television

 

soon

 

I will pick it up

and put it back on the shelf above the coats

at the back door of the house

 

and I won’t think of it

until I need it again

Fred Carter

from ‘notes for presenteeism and sleep’ 

Fred Carter

i can’t hold more than one thought in the body

long enough to be analogous i can’t

transfer

enough to send

  

Investing fists of B12 in your health,

                     Restart

 

cultivate affections

for palm readers and loan sharks

 

 

refilling your tank,

you touch its aching hull

                                        

                what is an Elsewhere 

                                                      

‘who will index all the reeking foam’

 

 

                 wait up for me, be patient yeah

 

 

relentlessly i’m telegraphing

all these feints against the structure

 

catching hands as self-abasing iterative practice

 

insist on the asymmetry of every space we make                          

to every edifice that we oppose

 

& still, even last year,

you voted in it

 

 

                        all these settlements, these whips

'      of our devotions

 

by which the songs become

less non-compliance more

complaint procedure

 

 

                if it’s not a form of workerism, tell me

                                         how it’s more than just

                                                   doxxing yourself

                                                               for credit                                               

 

 

               what is an actual transverse tactic like

 

beyond these temporary breaks 

 

 

 

         in the outside of,

 

getting thrown, preferring not  

 

                         jilted and untethered as a mode

 

 

utterly overcome, you overran

speech spilling out denial in

a momentary negation of

 

becoming dissolute

or resolute which

is it

 

                              unable to kick into that auto

                                   interpellative torque slow

                                               spreading varicose

 

                                                           like marble

 

 

like another sinew in the diaphragm

 

 

 like liquorice Rizla

 

 

 

‘anyone who says they’re “in it”

but not “of it” is a scam artist’

 

 

                                                    yet here we are

       

 

                                                        

all these line managers, correctional poetics, or

entropic rackets tending

to exhaustion, only

 

you keep practicing the moves,                                           

sleepless refusalism’s flaw

less underhanded form

 

 

wait up late for you to come bed

 

 

i keep up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘i love you!! oh,

      say it with paving stones!!!’

 

    write another day off

 

in the final hours of screen light

                                        

unfiltered water / infiltrated

produce, all

              

the heavy objectivity of

    everyday that reproduces

 

everything we say

against the work

conditions as

nostalgia for

the work          

 

 

just say a couple of fuckwords

feel a little

 

   better,

       moved to text 

 

hammering tiny shards

off kerbs and slabs

for artless joy

                          

                        

        it militates,

   it weeps

 

 

                  citations that foment & that

the pronoun i means such                                                     

 

that starting anyway so

poorly, i apologise

to alice notley

in my sleep

 

i really am

 

it is

where the need for surplus value contradicts the need for life, the symptom becomes the most palpable expression of this contradiction.

 

oscillating between pitches of efficiency and rest, recovery takes longer every time and slowly

unconceals itself as such. like somehow reproducing 100%

 

of life on 80% pay.

all these lines and tendencies, these tiny barricades, they pretty much just talk among themselves now. lauren says

 

make friends with the non-sovereign. ask yourself how it is

you really gel with non-coherence.

 

cass says i’m not quite as amoebic as i’d like to think.

Note

 

‘who will index all the reeking foam’ is from How To Dress Well’s ‘Vacant Boat,’ The Anteroom, 2018 / ‘anyone who says they’re “in it” …’ is Fred Moten, speaking at Fuck You, Pay Us, July 2020 / ‘the symptom’ is partly in reference to the Socialist Patients’ Collective text Turn Fatigue into a Weapon, 1972 / ‘i love you!! oh, …’ was written on the walls of the occupation of Hall A1, Paris Nanterre University, reproduced in Boredom Weeps: Graffiti, Curses, Inscriptions of May 1968, 2018, p. 35 / ‘heavy objectivity’ is in reference to Alfredo M. Bonanno’s ‘Armed Joy,’ 1977 / the Alice Notley poem referenced is ‘Lady Poverty,’ from Mysteries of Small Houses, 1998, pp. 138-9.

Natalie Cortez-Klossner

STILL LIFE

Natalie Cortez-Klossner

One.

 

Freedom may be

a moody gift

of acting & creating

out of void.

 

If you don’t fit

into a category

you roam free

as you please

openly smirking

at the mock boundaries.

 

As I did circa 2006

free of limits

on my dell 6400

scheming club penguin.

 

Two.

 

Aching soul & cheerful character

crammed into a persona

overflowing,

tickling with stoic vibrancy.

Three.

 

I will fight

Until

Dignity

Is not avant-garde

 

I will fight

Until

Silence

Is not lost time

 

I will fight

Until

Desire

Is not excess

 

I will fight

Until

Idiosyncrasy

Is not censured

 

I will fight

Until

Opinion

Is not heresy

 

I will fight

Until

Complexity

Is not condensed

 

I will fight

Until

Drive

Is not liability

 

I will fight

Until

Revolution

Is tasted on his lips!

Cassandra Troyan

Untitled, Port Ref: TN2/5336432 (For Fred)

Cassandra Troyan

         If you let the border take you

 

         that’s    the fucking end

                                   

         I promise you             but

                                   

         I don’t mean detention

                                   

         I mean everything    that comes out on

                                   

         the other side  of    the holding cell wall

                                               

          when I tell you          I love you

                         

our bodies outside of care+custody

         

         a juice pouch or 10 pound phone call    

                                   

         beyond the auctioneer’s block

                       

40 pounds, 75, 115, 300 pounds in the hole

                       

offering up our limbs       our children to make bail

                       

another rack to get stretched across

                                   

            “Yes Ma’am,                      Yes Sir”

                       

No I mean everything that they can’t take from you

                       

can’t get stated        interviewed               or self-snitched

                                   

          I mean this fucking vitality

                                               

                      the impossible logic  of   non-logic

                       

a circuitous regime              an erupted    colony        

              

these tears are only for me             a decoy

                                                   

                                 until the next burden of doubt

                                               

                       another cold pasta or porridge

                                               

                       from the janitors of the border

                                               

                       sweeping up the hallway

                                               

                       bureaucrats   slitting their wrists

                                                           

                                            with paperwork        as

                                                           

                                            the light’s gone out

                                                           

                                            the clocks erased

                                               

                                  mechanics outsourced and replaced

                                               

                                  with maintenance the greatest con of it all

                                               

                                   so I’m left with this phone call

                                                           

                                              and my mentality     that

                                   

               when I said   I would do anything for you           

                                                           

                                     I meant it

                                                             

                                        and mean it still    

                                               

                          as the measure of our lives

                                               

                          against a violence

                                   

                 less powerful   than our collective grief and joy

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