SPAM003
SPAM003
Accessible version of text-poems which appear here as images/screenshots.
- Verity Spott
- Rae Phillips Smith
- Maya Uppal
Rhiannon Auriol - Invocations to Charli XCX
Jane Hartshorn - from Partitions
Go Sing - Song I from Songs from the Grasslands
Nicks Walker - from Two Vapourwave Classics
Verity Spott - Poem - Orinsaigh, 12th July 2021
Jeremy Allan Hawkins - ars t(r)opica
Mai Ivfjäll - Halo II
- Gurlesque is Dead Long Live Goop
- Halo
Max Henninger - from DISAPPEARANCE ACT
Tawnya Selene Renelle - Nightmare Journal: Years Unknown
- Journal Notes: Varying Years
Keir Batchelor - Inspiration Mug Part III
Michael Black - Getting Drunk in the QR Codex
Azad Ashim Sharma - from Ergastulum
Rae Phillips Smith - #hyperbole#
Maya Uppal - Rupinder Bal
- butch seeks femme to hold hands and fantasise about other people with
- Mahasweta Devi
- a conversation with █████████ (deceased) in St. James Gardens (cemetery)
Julia Rose Lewis - from JADED DAYS (IV, V, IX, XXIV)
Asta Kinch - Re-flux
- Brine City
Charlotte Heather - Last of the sky pirates
Invocations to Charli XCX
Rhiannon Auriol
visions of apotheosis in the poetry factory
Charli wld u be my ketamine valentine?
somewhere in internet heaven i find
the WordArt Angel of un-insides snake_divine
high priestess of hyperpop glossy kinesis
i just wanna go to parties on Venus said Grimes
nft pretty young things pretty good at video game
production software at python
i'm interested in the simulation of devotion
intern at Art, Inc.
electrics flower here strange Medea
like yr style like yr hair
like god giving u a kiss then teasing u forever
rapturous synth-barbie i just wanna party
with jesus with SOPHIE x FKA Twigs
& cast a spell a hex a gigantic motherfucking hex,
feel the heat
from all the bodies.
thrive, rats. let's.
MOTH LUV
sad generations seeking texture
EDM excalibur
pulled from treacherous moss
oneiric lovecraft in the cryptoforest nail me
to your lovely cross
i'm frostine ecofetishist engage in
sacred sadism
the forbidden orgy of gethsemane
with outsider theologists of the astro
logical renaissance
unseelie psalm dweller
in wyrd situ
another week of my room with a view
over golgotha
listening to sigur rós
winona /// forever
winged beings idyll here where trauma unflocks
the mythic iceland moth ppl plzr
i luv them lots i
would hybridise i must
get up
ilysm
Public Sex
since i became a centaur
i’ve gone no-contact with poetry.
smite me. dominatrix
of the anti-ballad form. slapdash
orthography and the love-bomb
of Big Data. the summer
of love was meaner in Essex. so
was the ‘anthropause’.
we’re elite
in seven languages.
most vulnerable at five pm
& in the shower.
we boycott Starbucks,
Costa, Amazon,
white supremacy.
well done.
the algorithm is here for thee.
fake freckles were a cultural
reset &; now i’m actually lovely.
i radicalise. epic increase in knowledge. yeh we do
want to eat jeff bezos it turns out.
@ higher self say hi
to inner child. it’s okay
to write about the sparkling
of blingy flowers again. a party
in your eyes. is this what they call ‘healing’?
huge feelings everywhere.
& showing up is still hard. childhood
an orange smartie on the backseat
of an old car. i’m dreaming
for real this time. good shout.
i can’t wait to have another bowl of cereal,
for the slap of serotonin
as i sell another crop top
on depop. conversations like this
are what put us in the fast lane
of the infinite mob. surprise!
we are more alive than we’d hoped for.
the cuteness of
the avant-garde,
art by Mira Dancy
& this poem all have
the same energy. it’s going
rlly great thanks. soon i will come down
with another idea
to (dis)orientate me.
what’s that supposed to be
about baby.
Modesto
Alli Warren
every fall I think summer
has gone but it’s not yet come
butter melts in the time
it takes bread to turn
to toast to Grace I give
a swing for the fruitless
mulberry in high bloom
I place hops in the hole
my mother made me through
and tiny musicians
perform a symphony
to make a memory for me
an audible curtain
in the groaning grass
a whole town of crickets
obeys the moon
and I obey the animals
it’s a way to be among
a melody to cast the spirit
of work from me
I know wealth should flow
like water fill up
the lowest place
I yank the tide inside
to have and hold a glimpse
porous life in all its light
and form telling time
like the geese do
and these seedpods
are my kids
lately I’m just as is
Aster
Honor Grigson
Default
Left open, a cool shade resting under the onion
I make a mistake; I cross it out. I re-do it
I make the same mistake again.
I fuck a man,
I re-do it
Flourishing, my saviour turning the other way
(I lost my deity instantly, via the deity instant
Small but gluttonous octopus head on the end
Of my wand) my saviour under me
Suddenly feeling the humiliation of my burden
And astonishment at my strange manner
Of being carried, leaning upon instead of
Getting up on and with an elegance
That is embarrassingly overgrown.
Drapery laid over an invisible hump
…
I don’t make a mistake this time,
There is a very accurate thin glass tube
With a convexly bordered drop inside
A quadrilateral droplet that convinces you
To smash the tube then and there
As it seems worse than a stuck kite.
from 'Partitions'
Jane Hartshorn
'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. […] Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me.’
– Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
The past year has felt like traipsing through some kind of
expansive dreamscape, between partitions of glass.
Memories fold over and into one another. Places of
significance have warped, lost their shape. Houses appear
where once there was marshland, a thin burn threading
between them.
*
The hyacinths are pushing through the soil; closely packed
flower-heads like purple conifers. Planted to mark the
graves of guinea pigs, they were in bloom when I returned
to Ayr a year ago.
In March 2020, I wrote in my diary;
‘The rhododendron flowers open as the purple hyacinth
dies; its stalks lying bare on the ground like overcooked
spaghetti. It was only yesterday I saw the pale sherbet of a
bee clasped in its starfish mouth, fizzing apricot with
pleasure.’
I haven’t lived anywhere for more than a year for the past
6 years and the re-emergence of the hyacinths signals a
looping of time that is unfamiliar to me.
*
Everything has myriad memories attached to it. There are
places where time congeals, overlaps, becomes knotted.
Sticking points that hold multiple versions of myself. I
circle these places like I’m haunting my past, looking for
evidence that I once lived there.
The details of these memories are not always clear. If only
I could scratch at the soil, uncover layers of sediment,
watch the past materialise like charcoal leaf rubbings.
An altercation at the end of Dornoch Park. My sky-blue
corduroy jacket. A kirby-grip in my pocket.
*
A school friend once told me a man in a long coat flashed
her down by the river. Her house backed onto the river,
and there was a path that connected it to the school
playing fields.
On breaks between lessons, my friends and I would hang
about the concrete playground adjoining the car park. The
only thing that prevented us from walking towards the
river was fear.
*
On the short walk from the bus stop to my house, I used
to try to remember the grooves of the pavement, the
places where the tarmac had sizzled in the heat. I would
slide my feet across the oily bubbles, wonder if the
pavement recognised me.
*
I’ve returned to my childhood home 17 years after I first
left, which also happens to be half my lifetime. I'm finding
it difficult to connect the roads and paths of my present to
the places of the past, to re-place memories, and join the
dots between changed landscapes.
I wasn’t born here, and didn’t have a deep connection with
the town growing up; the site of so much teenage misery,
but this hasn’t prevented feelings of bewilderment and
disorientation from arising.
The air feels thinner, as though I can move between states
and periods of time. As I lie in bed at night, the smells of
my childhood come back to me: Sudafed, Calpol, Twist &
Squeeze, 10p mix-ups. Pink and violet light filters through
my curtains, waking me. I don’t know what year it is.
*
I remember once walking to the end of the cul-de-sac I
lived on. Even as a child, I had a feeling I shouldn’t be
there. At the end of the street, I wedged my toe in the gaps
between the stones in the wall, and peered over the top.
There was a diamond of grass, luscious and overgrown. It
was flanked on each side by a high wall, missing a gate or
door to admit entry.
I search for this diamond of grass on Google maps, but all
I can see are the striped rectangles of mown lawns.
*
I don’t drive and I am dependent upon my mother to take
me places.
We return to the site of the old campus. Up to our ankles
in mud, a fenced-off section, a playing field. Paths through
the grass that trail off to nothing. We walk alongside a
fence that seems to hold no function; behind the posts and
wire lies tufts of grass, hillocks, and brambles.
'Song I'
from Songs from the Grassland
Go Sing
i’m talking about the fading into
liquid wets
nothing seen I am an
ear witness
stroke the strings
of my timidness
clicking yes
clicking yes
lovers always shape me
watch me undress
look at her at her
she has the winning edge
the spike in her eye
stroke the strings
of my timidness
CLOSE UP
big lens
zooming in
you see
3 friends, making their move through a
lush green meadow
the plain foggy, slightly curved
under the weight of your love
hairy legs and ponytails bouncing on the
upper side of their crack
shapes flowing
all along the steepy slope getting
to the picnic site
voices erupting
from those translucent fleshes
yes yess
yesssblll
bluurr bllbl
urppp rp
bblllrrr rppp
ddd ooo ddd tt
stiff, carpet and gravity
spotting the lushest spot
average grass coverage but well hidden
flowers popping and smelling like
crisp fart
under their fingernails fresh grass and
fat petals, trapped
the 3 girls lying in the meadow forming a
circle
their soft bodies, adding to the hills
flowing around them
small droplets of sweat form a glistening
film
second skin
glowing faces, reflecting the light
a small bug crawling on a closed eyelid
[viewer]
they sit on grass and ride
heartless animals with long manes
sky floats like dead fishes
one sound
a high
pitch voice
guiding you all along
their plucked belly
lashes and diamonds
flickering
bodies moving
in a droning
pace grass cracking
they ask to be named
they won't be delivered
one sings
genitals
sounding like
glorious flower
she waits for signals,
simple tones
AAaaH
you like her hair?
OK
just bought it
STARFISH TIME
Brandon Brown
starfish have no sense of time at all
James Schuyler
there’s so much bad shit happening all of the time
maybe that’s what time is
a mayfly lives for what we call five minutes
in that span they swarm, fuck in the air, maybe flutter to the ground, lay four hundred thousand eggs
four hundred thousand eggs!
I hope the fuck feels good
let’s just agree it does
an octopus lays about a hundred thousand eggs
our joke is I will carry the baby
it is as much a wish as a joke
today went by so fast, I got a mayfly feeling climbing the stairs
I’m sure a starfish is just like me
just wants to wake up and give at least one other starfish pleasure
and to give Pasta pleasure, flattening fish in a bowl
how many species live in our house besides Alli and I, Pasta, and the bacteria our bodies are?
octopi are cunning changing colors, building shields
I want a cigarette so bad
I could have one I guess
in Half Moon Bay there are a lot of starfish
Parker was from Half Moon Bay
Aristotle did not know jack shit about dreams
no, really, he did not
not gonna be friends with anymore goddamn Christians sorry
Alana dreamt that I lived by a river and had a theory about fish
a theory about fish and time, that we all shared the same time but didn’t know it
I would never travel to outer space but I would definitely travel through time
I’ve been to Half Moon Bay three times and each time was on a date
big lighthouse out there, hella starfish
two of the dates were with Alli
tomorrow is our sixteenth anniversary
at 9:15 we’re going to watch an episode of The Flight Attendant
flirting with a starfish would be so annoying
there’s so much bad shit happening all of the time
also Alli and I go pinch plum blossoms for a relish
the last time I took psilocybin I remembered my own birth, jesus
now feel like a minor courtier bravely popping lion’s mane
fungi live at most a month
miner’s lettuce will grow until you eat it
a tick will sit in a tree for like literally one thousand years
one thousand years seems long to wait
but patience is not my forte
Pasta likes to pause before he leaps and claws
sometimes I get up in the middle of the night
sometimes in bed I can’t tell if it’s been five minutes or two hours
and Alli is an apostle for sleep
but not “apostle” in a Christian way fuck that shit
I told the party about Pasta capturing baby hummingbird, pinning it to the ground
I told the party I felt bad about the baby hummingbird in Pasta’s paws, but, then again, hummingbirds only live for one day
that’s not true the party said, confirmed on their phones
and there I was a geyser of fake news, about to watch Thelma and Louise and eat Cheeseboard
Sri Lankan fig 2,222 years at least
Patagonian cypress old as Stonehenge
Great Basin bristlecone pine in the White Mountains called Methuselah
clonal tree called Pando even older
mayfly eggs fat as one sixteenth a paddlefish
daydream the menus in line for the vaccine
those soldiers down the ramp will help you
pedestrian bridge formerly for the walk from the train to the dubs
over gross estuary, somebody’s backpack looks like actual back
I once sat next to Zack as they blew doja at the Oracle ducked into their shirt
bought a weed brownie from a guy on the street called Chaz
starfish time, years ago now
once really high on weed at the hot springs I wrote in my notebook that poems slow down time and make it strange
just like the tubs do
you should have seen me on LSD at the hot springs the other day
THE ANARCHIST LAKE
It has been two hundred sixty
days since I was in a pool
splayed astride double noodle
in the pool you want to break the law
a noodle can feel rigid on the groin
depending on how you mount it
anarchists are so great
lakes are fucking excellent
and bay leaves and strawberries and frothy cream
spread on something nice, like an English muffin
most people want to warm before they swim
I’ll go in room or sometimes chilly
that's not to brag I know some otters
who love to brace their backs in icy water
I love thinking about our neighbors
hearing Ariel and I read our poems to each other
Sara just learned nachbar is the German word for neighbor
swimming in the pool is a collaborative practice
but on the beach you can be an anarchist
at the beach it’s you and endlessness
the fools who misrecognize the ocean
are fucking fools I guarantee you
swimming in a river kind of depends
I like an anarchist like Courbet painting waves
those Courbet wave paintings are pretty tight
there’s one at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco
it’s called like A Wave
the Legion of Honor is pretty close to the water
but that’s not swimming water
I liked those boozy weekends at De Valle
before we learned about the feces
I don’t want to swim somewhere yucky
I want to break the law
then end the law
a lake is a good place to party
and I like partying with anarchists
nachbar literally means “next-dweller”
I liked this bar in Iceland called “Naeste Bar”
it just meant “next bar”
we stayed in this great big house full of Reykjavik anarchists
for three days they had poets in their attic
swimming in Iceland, I dunno
I love holding Alli’s body underneath the water, love feeling that
otherwise I fire back and forth and count
or float on back and watch the clouds through shades
or go out into the middle of the lake and looking back
try to figure out some way to break the law
from Two Vapourwave Classics
Nicks Walker
The saxophone is full of bubbles. I like eating bubbles.
They slip in and out of my mouth. Drooling on the hotel
sofa in plastic wrap. Me and you, latex fruits in heels
always one falling off, always one dangling on the ankle.
We will live forever in the liminal space before passing
out dead or high or waking up or. You taste of balloons
and party bag bottles of bubbles. You taste of
saxophone polish and metal. We’re here in this dream
and you’re in the chastity cage again. I am in the tights
that make ivy grow out of my pores. We hose them
down with the insecticide fungicide bottle with the nice
digital drawing of the strawberry, covered in ants and
you make love to me in the liquid latex pool. We drown.
♨
Bubbles in my saxophone please. I want tapioca vagina
and I want to give birth to a plastic egg. Can I have that
by Tuesday? I can’t lose money, it always appears
somewhere else. It doesn’t matter who has it so long as
it exists.
♨
Now we only have evenings and pineapple water. I
laugh at your statues and live in your tongues. The
airport will never come again. It was a vomit of history, a
tipping point. We live in the tip, in the rubbish, we drink
cocktails of lions and I wonder if the sun will ever go
down again.
I hold you.
One day you split open like a thousand flowers, invert
and all your not-mouth becomes mouth. I feel your
thousand mouths milkshake and stroke the spaces
between. So many teeth milking. It takes a lot of lion, a
lot of water.
You cannot see your statue garden any more so I
become eyes to look at it for you. One day my irises
turn inside out and you eat me whole. In double
darkness, there is the softest orange light.
Poem - Orinsaigh, 12th July 2021
Verity Spott
All Videos
ars t(r)opica
Jeremy Allan Hawkins
burn easily and I just never left
I guess my clients the bar
in the middle has free wifi
and massages
of the night I wake up
golfcart sandals my laptop
to work I live simply
if I need to to bed later
I have a client
in Paris in New York
I have a client understanding
everything fits in this
one bag quietly
to ask myself just
try this drink why kill
myself every morning look
at this view why
winter when a slower life
in the yogic mode
to the mainland
hospital by ferry
when else would I surf
the lessons in local
cuisine the daily torch
the chance to parasail
a client in Doha
with fewer material possessions
living my life outside
the sea giveth great
blockchain myself a scuba
shop waves left on my tide chart
always wanted to if I miss it
ask how the bar regular
beneath sunsets
consider going back
on the tax incentives
the bug bites itch though I
have a client in Mumbai
two minutes really dreaming
to the beach the life
in terms of commute
if ever I get lonely
at this hour can’t imagine
the metro there’s always
someone new passing
the world bumming through
seasons I don’t while
I’m young the loneliness
it’s always beautiful
out call it human driftwood
slower pace and beach
glass free of the grind
the weather could videochat
my parents if I’m twice a week
lonely on a boat
to the big island packages
and a dentist for its peace
flies do get into the sugar
so I meditate until
life carries me elsewhere
at home from worldly
myself I finally feel
things I’ll read sea
a murder mystery
on the bleached white
lifestyle could never
miss the city on a little boat
I take them small businesses
ask me how
I decided to sea caves
for a shack foreign fruit
sweet rice savings account
and leave it all behind
to sleep
with them opting
always new for an excursion
to swim
with local handicraft
hooks nets I tied
myself snares guided
where the tours
never end
up going without shell necklace
pig spit bongo scandal
and catch what I eat off
grid for the offshore
waves and breaking groundswell
over who could get
water this clear as lonely
as sunspots spreading
over my face as this sand
so white
Halo II
Mai Ivfjäll
to refuse the dawn
to fall out of time
into the taiga
into the reverb
to create intimacy in the void
to beget roses
a solitary
cutie
eternally entangled
with materia
Gurlesque is Dead Long Live Goop
all the bodies
you might have been
earthbound
dreaming
of all those dying bees
of all those angels
winter blossoms
as if it wasn’t a metaphor
the apocalypse is now
even if it’s avant-basic to admit
Halo
shedding this swan skin dreaming roses, writing roses
eating roses (death is a rose i carry in the pocket of my dress)
eating roses, writing roses, writhing roses (i want to trace the edges
of every petal with my tongue) call me persephone as i sink
down down down marry pain underneath snow & dirt
fuck pain slowly, quickly, not at all, let it linger
unravel it onto the hospital floor, let pain become my prayer
let my prayer become my incantation, my lullaby
my dirge — tender, porous, rare, wild, soft, sensitive — pain
becomes a bud, a leaf, a bird, is gone
that erotic feeling (i was never young but 4 you i will be ageless)
of being a body buying artificial snail venom
at sephora — the syncopated rhythm of every cell as my body binges
on desire until all that is left is the hollow hallow of healing exhaling
health until health wraps around this skin a raiment
we delete the past like browser histories
from DISAPPEARANCE ACT
Max Henninger
Keeps his lost tooth in a salt shaker. Relieves
himself in plain view of the neighbors. Yellow
ray warm as the Gulf Stream cold as the
Humboldt Current. That's Peru to you. Heard
myself coughing nextdoor the other night.
Walked on the ceiling flushed your toilet
trying to lead by example. The builders start
at eight by nine the noise is really. Talked to
your mother about. Just sleep it off. Saw
myself crying on a park bench middle-aged
back from my therapist. Legs heavy as lead
and I still haven't paid last year's taxes. Yes
that's the party I mean. Did we really screw in
the ball pit. Two days to discreetly reacquaint
yourself with your basic bodily functions. You
were a thin membrane quivering in an empty
room. Inhabited a high-pitched ringing noise
from inside the spiral canal of your inner ear.
A hundred hungry prisoners banging metal
mugs on a concrete floor. Hiding under a
hospital bed. I want my life back, I wrote on
your pocket mirror in my very own invisible
ink, part saliva part you don't want to know.
The problem with most parents is they lack
even the most elementary confidence in their
child's abilities. Though of course they will
always claim otherwise. Your mother's heart
for my dogs. Good morning.
______________________________________
Gnashing of teeth side one. Survived by his
sister. Weeks of rain. Severed wing plumed
apostrophe on wet cobbles. Children. A
schedule. Light is milk. Caught in their ABC
network trying to remember. Trying to repair
the damage. Lost parcels forgotten passwords.
A steady undertow. Just another way of
grieving. Pieces of sea glass. Feathers.
Gasoline. Gnashing of teeth side two. She
doesn't want to do this any more. Boringly
unquiet neighbors. Another government of
goons. Cities. Disappearing taking our stories.
Streets scarred with scarcely credible
postures. Talk won't cure a thing. The
vocabulary's been overstretched. Notorious
belt known as full day of nausea. We know
where to find each other.
______________________________________
Old midnight knows it's true. Becalmed and
drifting for weeks on end. Never knew when
to stop or how. Ragged dawn awful news.
Woodworms dry rot. Rancid taste. I need a
place makes me feel alright. Don't wait. The
night will be, you know, blanc et noir.
______________________________________
So maybe we should just drink ourselves to.
Not as sexy as your but what. Like the radio
deserves any better. Landlord tax man
sometime employer. Not much you've surely
noticed. They can choke on this sordid
remainder. Draw up blueprints discourse
poorly on nth power of absence. A loss they
failed to own. Our dead will teach them exile.
Nightmare Journal: Years Unknown
Tawnya Selene Renelle
9/7: A ferry boat becomes a spiraling vortex that sucks into itself
27/3: zombies and blunt instruments
7/4: gigantic wooden splinters digging under my nails
2/6: two spider houses attack one another
28/8: elevator dropping from the highest floor to the lowest over and over again
20/9: digging my own grave in unknown catacombs
24/9: broken glass all over and I am eating pieces, when I open my mouth blood pours
27/2: a man in a brown suit says I owe him something and slaps me across the face
6/3: a never-ending earthquake and melting maps
27/3: a ceaseless phone with only screaming on the other end
14/6: a giant spider bites and will not let go
15/7: locked in a fake world and I cannot escape that nothing is real
19/7: a bear is right behind me and as I run barefoot, splinters in my feet
10/9: I stare at the ceiling and in the corners of the room are fires
Journal Notes
Varying years
Dreams:
man with roses tattooed on his chest. We are skinny dipping at the beach. There are rickety stairs. Everyone else is wearing white robes. an abyss as a tourist attraction. People scattering ashes. Colourful and strange. Like Dr. Seuss. People on the ground look through holes. Some people are stacking furniture. a library themed restaurant. Something scary I can’t remember. an airplane upside down, spinning around. It lands. Crossing a river by jumping on red logs. I give up my ticket for an event I cannot remember. so many ladders. Christmas trees hang from the ceiling. Cobras. Volcano erupting all over the west coast and lava was coming slowly closer. The year is 2196.
Dream Searches:
Search Roses: affection and admiration. Search Naked: vulnerable. Search Stairs: moving
forward. Search White: innocence. Search Robes: portent. Search Abyss: emptiness. Search Ashes: disruptions. Search Holes: memory. Search Furniture: willing. Search Library: investigations. Search Airplane: fear. Search River: journey/flow. Search Red: courage. Search Ladders: influences. Search Tree: shiny. Search Cobra: harness. Search Volcano: explosion. Search Lava: transformation. Search 2: communication. Search 1: beginning. Search 9: finished. Search 6: intuition.
Interpretations:
Admire the vulnerable moving forward innocent. The portent emptiness and disruptions of memory. Willing investigations of fear and journey/flow of courage. Influence shiny and harness the explosion of transformation. Communication the beginning finished with intuition.
Inspiration Mug Part III
Keir Batchelor
Appear broken, wasted, and a laughter
only.
Professionals make you fail shots,
100% crayons only,
you've been it's sparkle.
That can happen, epic you. The built
titanic is afraid, if possible
amateurs will breathe, will remember:
dream the net be braver - don't.
You do. Days of keep stops
never matter,
vibes, everything,
something new leaps – ride’s you.
Life. Believe. Miss trying. Without
everything beautiful - you are this day:
take.
Plaque
builds
up in
the brain
and is
found
frequently in the CAT scans of Alzheimer
patients, tucked
between the nerve cells and the hippocampus
which is the
part of the brain involved in the preservation of
memory. I spend
Sundays threading floss up my nostrils until it
reaches that tender
lobe and I can clean away the muck that disturbs,
disrupts moments
I cherish dearly and reflect upon in the long
nights and bitter mornings
where I lose the difficult argument, Camus
posited with that gorgeous
smile and famous linguistic charm. Good
morning memory, you are
here again, and I tell you if we had not met
statistically you would
have met someone else and I would have met
someone else and we
would have fallen in love regardless –
statistically. I wheeze, can’t
breath – I am not well. I am happy when I am
running away, look
back at the object I run from and laugh. Let’s not
talk today. I’ll
write some poetry about my black dog period or
my other lost
weekend – pain is not an inspiration, it’s an itch.
Scratching ‘till
it bleeds. The ideas expressed by Mark Fischer in
Hauntology best
summarises the ironically numb sensation of
living through the lens
that only makes you sorry and wish you hadn’t
lived it in the first
place. Today I begin not beginning – this Is not a
new day, it is the
same banal Tesco meal-deal advert it was
yesterday – welcome to
Leverndale – I never really left did I, home is
where your pills
are. I must gain weight – if not I might spread
myself too thin.
Getting Drunk in the QR Codex
Michael Black
I
Winter space crept us dangling.
Each time Fredric Jameson talks
about a Whiggish girlfriend
I take a drink of whisky in Tesco
In a poverty sense
this is a posh country
in the extent that a country poses
supposes its knows the rosary bead
nicely precisely a rose disponible
compost to recycle my payslips
II
somatic IKEAS envelope lush persistent
pronouns to relieve not forthcoming
I am a coming over hey there curious
more than calming across to say
well, no time to chuckle facetious
or whisper proper finder’s foetus
for named objective spirits of UR Sonata.
It’s just your Schitt’s geek making curt noise
chiasmus as we spark a solipsist cake
hand baking narcissism forth and bread line
from Ergastulum
Azad Ashim Sharma
Dusty corduroy
perched ever so
slightly over
canvas hi-tops
The bass levelled us it was like a movie
or a journey or somewhere in between–
What we moved
as in the dance
was swooned interpretation
Reading aloud in each other’s ears
in the ensuing set of shade
/ it was so lit.
Erring on the side of upcoming brilliance to only
have been consumed by </panic.> it was a trance-
like state of </overcoming/> what went into us
to write is to exitenz as [of] and [in] at the otherwise
quantum-similitude of the long axes </to say is to subsist>
being part of our anguished ink-wishes as it was always.
Bear with me Lucretius we come [in] at the afterwards
singing our [qawwal] in cantos of guided vantage points
at the demi-verge of requisite remonstrata [we] desired
[out-of] remained in the foregoing of c̶o̶n̶c̶l̶u̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ for
faculties of deep dirt to find odd futures with fishy tones
how g̶r̶e̶y̶ could the sky actually get <?> maybe more so
From down [;] we made it <./through> a break w./ love
where care becomes enmeshed with the politic of it all
not to be able to integrate the notations with the d̶r̶a̶f̶t̶
There w/ each other it came to be that the chainz didn’t
hold much but a space we could exit into or from <!>
for they aren’t always already the same in the first place
No python will build a p̶a̶r̶t̶h̶e̶n̶o̶n̶ / no country for tuna
Finding ourselves toiled by the land we longed for oceans
we’re made of astrologers who lived [airless] on comets.
Re-/processual über-thought
a touch of bad circulation {blue fingers}
some parabiology of kinship that awoke in and around us
[choice exits where fate enters]
</ & history forgets what it needs to re-member>
deep faked rhododendron
came through all mean and slimy
the big questions like h̶o̶w̶ to live or w̶h̶a̶t̶ to stand by
seemed off when asked in conjunction t’ / how are you?
We stayed put / lingering–
#hyperbole#
Rae Phillips Smith
Rupinder Bal
Maya Uppal
Rupinder watches dating shows from the early 2000s
for fun. She likes that y2k had the potential to be an
apocalypse. She is not sure how she feels about our
current end-of-days…
butch seeks femme to hold hands and fantasize about other people with
After Pipilotti Rist, Ever is Over All, 1997.
they remind me of sugary mice on a
confectionary stand those little pink
and white / melt in your mouth /
dissolvable things with puffy red
eyes designed to gurgle in the
bellies of small children. they live
for dolly mix aesthetics / and purses
full of artificial sweeteners. they eat
palma violets that taste like
citalopram / flying saucers that
smell like zoloft / and paroxetine
that kills their sex drive. they like
the way faux fur feels on their skin
more than the feeling of wax on
their fingertips / something about
squiggling squelching sensations
makes them uneasy. they’re a
freelance director of porn on twitter
/ they get paid to write ad
Mahasweta Devi
campaigns for the over 50s market /
they’re the head of their department
which now I am editing, I realise,
cannot exist
they are the only one in the office /
they are eaten up in the first hour of
life but rebirthed from the baker’s
mould / they rub amla oil into their
scalp every night / comb it out
every evening / to sooth the dry
texture of their soul. they collect
knock off fabergé eggs / diamante
gemstones / and authentic knocked
out teeth. They don’t read poems,
but they do read lonely hearts.
They are searching for someone
else to be imagined. They too will
be written down soon.
Mahasweta has one more story to tell. It is full of
names she doesn’t recognise and platforms she has
never heard of, but she felt as compelled to write it
down, as you might feel to read it.
from Jaded Days
Julia Rose Lewis
IV
It will litter
glitter regulates themselves
crystal to crystal salt
indentation.
The lake will outline itself in white.
I send out this pastel dedication
down and out a salt deposit
almost half a mile underneath the bad desert.
Which bear is nearer—
the terrestrial bear or the polar bear?
V
The department of energy knows
without sediment particles less than silt
nitrates can ignite
billions.
Into the overheated day
it is only the silicates in clay working
to stabilize the nitrates transuranic or true waste.
The very organic dangers:
the overheated horse, the quartet of frogs, and wheat
they lead to pandemonium.
IX
Tacoform—
a little hoarse gives
beet sugar and salt to balance
a crow finger winter.
Vehement in the sense effecting to snow
very from beyond the oaken dresser
ripe is turning purple.
The light frog having a wavelength
that is less violent than the violent ending
and more than chrome amazes.
XXIV
Someone else has clams
I mean
my ankles might as well be sandcastles—
silica, water, and a little yellow
as if they were mostly grit.
Bitters that
install locals at the rose and crown
to recycle themselves
as magic calm from the heat of the day
so they say the must consume hot mollusks to stay.
Re-flux
Asta Kinch
is the regurgitation of gastric acid and digestive enzymes into the
pharyngeal area the spell in my throat stuttering futures by the licking of my
gums something pickled this way comes a long awakening through that sphincter
mingling with spit unpleasant water holes make sense like I am bitter in an open
throat partying in a close the tightness of a breast greatly desiring I lunge
into “love” once again finding this want this absence this hole that holding and
expelling are the same two sides of a hole world you gave me the word of your
body I give body and hold sour mouths in waiting “love” gurgs regurgs
so strictly like the never of a mouth cigarettes smoking the eat-brain to a
relaxed opening of a city acidity, winking my favourite café shut
my pores, clogged this lagging sack torso and down eating apples in ignorance
propped up to a 30 degree angle and feuding with Gord bleaching to the guilt of
lemon in flux ~
Brine City
Laila, the windows are dark
nothing changes but still
the night is eating
a mother not mothering
> windows
the day
the day
I try to remember everything on that side of the floor
the concept of the house alights
this message I’ve been pickling:
I arrive at
Intestine
city
full of
markings
roadwork
and amino
acids
liberated
into me
like the scabs I keep:
turned public garden
leaves, branches
solemn drops of rain like
I am really there
I am really there
to
touch!
When I die, I am alone
I wash my hair.
My skin is a silky pillowcase I hurry from
on a great night, with slices of lavender and thighs
I sleep,
dreams come true,
my heartache and hurt disappear,
but I want to eat like crazy:
cheek tissue
where the meanings are
stomach, spit.
Mustard to sling a stone.
It’s my choice. And the hollow
of my mouth is the dome
over the mountains, tight
from the earth. “He”
walks with me and stays
on the edges. His work
has cheated me,
I would prefer
the sun
working only to eat,
I have the dog in the hall and in my stomach I am numbers
waiting at
the edges
the house
Is leaking
my own
oesophagus climbing guide to the lips, the lips meaning
the shore
Last of the sky pirates
Charlotte Heather
This bed, this laptop
a sanctuary
or
a sky ship
plummeting groundward
swallowing clouds in gasps
or
a simple bed, laptop.
does it matter? (YES!)
they are what matters most
this is the truest matter
in a room condensed
with needs and fatigue
that swallow you in a gale
of amplified gravity
does it matter? (YES!)
you get by, you get into bed,
your ship your sanctuary,
you try to write and play on laptop
use it to steer you clear into forgetting
a flare, propel you into the sky,
free of gravity elbows floating
on pillow, you get by, you
just
do.