SPAM005

Hey old friend,
I just washed ashore to say
that things are how they’ve always been
and I’ve forgotten everything that came before

I worked in a kitchen
that wasn’t my own
snipping the tails
off long thin mushrooms

I’ve seen trains
crawling on their bellies
and birds that clapped their hands
as they circled overhead

today is a day
when the clouds scroll by
when the sky falls like rain
and I can’t tell the stars from the satellites

I wish everything could stand still
seagulls pecking pavements
I wish my life was different but
the problem is you don’t

when the hawks commute
across dual-carriageways
and the skyline wobbles
and all roads lead to roads

you don’t dragonfly don’t
close your eyes for a second
go extinct in a dream
eat the leaves as they fall

when the sky throws stones
and the buildings are unbuilt
a recording is in progress
and nothing is saved

good morning

calling my phone when
you get out the shower I’m
making you breakfast it’s
midday it’s breakfast
it all feels so
glamorous to think there’s
a part of you missing
me under the water
fall down and fall into
the sofa we breathe
the same air and we open
the same doors dislocate
our brains and a person
is standing outside
our front door and she’s
holding a parcel I get there
she’s gone and
the windows are open the
TV is listening to you on
the sofa the world
feels like spinning
and everything’s ringing
the morning is normal you
wake up you wake up

Spring Poem after the Voice of the Zoomcall

‘Fucking Lusty Blossom’, Rosie says.

Cecily Fasham

The stark audacity of spring. I mean, really. Imagine
seeing a field full of old stone graves and thinking
‘showtime!’ It’s like our local nightingale,
his sheer presumption, to flit about
trilling when everyone else is attempting
to sleep, and I’m hoping to write. The whole
vivacity thing. Oh, despicable spring. Don’t give me
flocks of roguish crocuses sashaying up
from the frostbitten soil. Alongside yon prim daffodils
I’ll disapproving shake my lemon-coloured head
to scorn you, Springtime, in a cyclical tradition, but
still I can’t not be amazed by the season,
elated or stunned, primed to sing.
O frail primrose, five petals emulating with
precision the shade of new butter, peep
your head out from the grass beside the ossuary,
plucking up the nerve to really bloom. O fragile violets,
your rare ungainly heads, your wiry bodies –
the nub of purple at the base of your white flowers
has my heart up in my throat. How fucking
dare you, when I only came to sit upon
a grave and call a college friend to talk about
the rubble I might, laughing, call my love life?

Double-Dutch Sonnet ‘The Domestic Goddess pauses in The Night Kitchen,’

For Lisa Robertson

Light emitting apricots refuse to hyphenate

Preserves decisions are not up to them the countertop

The light switch on inside the glassview jar and jarring

So ajar as sunshine in a bottle Californian O J

What's that scent I'm dreaming sometimes in the kitchen

At past two a m that feeling like a secret and the fridgelight

Beaming open-mouthed at me & luminescing effervescing noble

Hornlight here the apricots the summer heather honeyed

Hearthlight in the home its heart the stillwarm stove reminds you

Of the place you hold as splitpin to this household check

The kettle is turned off the switch & wavering my love

Before you wander back up stairs are hesitating by the cupboard

In the darkness of the early hours only the light of stonefruit

Here to read by in your kitschy kitchen shrine, missing the loop.

so SHE slips out of her household skin & hangs it up to dry

over the radiator with the teatowels It is dark at two a m

on SundayMonday morning silent She stands barefoot

here she lingers by the toaster In the bowl the apricots

aglow with peachlight – She|is in the house not of it

hushed & breathing in the space of early morning All

but she asleep allows some kind of momentary freedom

in this hesitating time & tremblant barefoot on the wood

toe-wriggling, a quiet space, a pause, a rose

something I won’t repeat, Softly I go

patchwork a moment, eerie, caught

up in the inbetween, snatching a second to yourself –

which you would never other get. Instants outside of time, translucent

finding women standing by themselves, and luminous, night-confluence.

Tell the Landlord

Henry Bell

Spritz spritz boat kiss
washing-line pastry fizz
walk cloud ferry boat
pasta pier palazzo smoke
book sun ice cream hands
prosecco alley drunk dance
pockets kissing keys
door wine sheets
bodies shoulders hips
more than a kiss
and cracking sounds
wrapped up around
disordered bottles
hands and thighs
on the floor
like the Braque
the day before
we’re laid out cubist
by the broken bed
you whisper
It will be me
who tells the landlord

aperol

Nasim Luczaj

in this mania of sun i see it –

the lazy orange of what i want

served across three quilts of ocean

i’ll roll down for it into the sea

using only the muscles of my tongue

you’ll find me on the beach a purple sleeping bag

a dogwrecked crocus

washed up on the infant grass

stranger

i thought the compacted xmas tree you were

carrying was a poached crocodile

and with horror looked at your standard winter

face, your normal navy coat; then, a split glance

past normal, looked away towards my own

open plan captivity, its trinkets

calling for adjustment. the cushion

had my back on the sofa but the shock kept

gnawing away, thrusting at me the recognition

of how miss-seeing has that umami

of sex, where we might inhabit

the dazed moment in which things,

other than they are, net us, hoist us up, carry us

home.

airborn

in some sense a

dusk is a moorland.

planes spike it up

like stags.

antlers drop

marking the spot

where something

became lighter.

we dig into the view,

and the view

is the beneathness

we call dark, the dark that calls

to the verge over which

our life leans.

Super Worm Moon,

Suki Hollywood

super sugar

when trees cry syrup

and blind worms come to the surface

toothless mouths open for rain.

The flame of the white candle grew tall

as I burned those things I’d be lighter without

your name, saved for last.

I can cry over it a little,

as a treat,

think of lamb’s skin days when

love was new

or at least interesting.

With knife’s flat edge I smear

oil on my arms in the places I

used to hurt and

burn,

for the last time.

in the country garden/the end of england

Jack Young

i.

in the country garden hemmed in by walls i enact my best thomas malory in my best bastard prose/ like malory i am searching for a new language searching for new forms but i am sick and rot-ridden over his england or anyone else’s england / i channel my inner-malory for his gay and erring knights and his sentences that refuse to

i enact these words in a bid to find the end

ii.

in the walled country garden malory notes the roses climbing the daylilies luscious tongues extracted from native soil the foxglove spires dazzling purple loosestrife all frisky in the flowerbeds the irises vigorously bloom for queen and for country and

(a pause)

iii.

a pause for the memory of plants taken from their soil/ do you not think/ do you not/ do you not notice how the plants have lost their capitals/ how the plants are losing their names in the garden and potions of hogweed mixed with oxlip and bladderwort and stinking goosefoot with scarlet pimpernel and round-leaved-sundew-redshank-rock-lettuce-red-tufted-vetch-prickly-pear-leaved-cistus-meadow have stopped soothing the whirring white mind/ have stopped providing lethargy

the deadly nightshade creeps

iii.

the deadly nightshade creeps as malory recedes and i give my body for a bean at the market where the exchange of pollen-cum-data-cum-money is worth more than the leaf-cum-precariat/ i know there is too little value prescribed no wait a minute for a second there and a minute and a second is time and time is money i thought i was saying the problem of prescribing value to the garden/ remember when every garden was a field/ do you remember/ remember when every garden was a field and really there was no need for a wall no distinction between inside and outside/ if we had our garden the horizon would be the border

if we had our garden the border would be the horizon

iv.

beyond the border i fantasise about ripping petals to shreds/ leaving the stems exposed/ a different language of flowers a different kind of garden/ sometimes i fantasise about murdering petals/ morder in spanish tongue means to bite

we morder the petals

v.

after morder the beech trees would shine all wild and silvery in communal bee-glade bliss and we’d make love hive-loud and dancing by the moon/ somewhere we might be free/ stone archways and walls would crumble in the acid-joy of our rebellion and i would be jack-in-the-green and green-fingered by love/ i would sense your tulipped kisses thronging red in the reddening sky and i know the sun is being swallowed by the moon at the very same moment that i am being swallowed by you/ we are spittle-thick in the hawthorns at the edge of the garden/ at the edge of the field/ where many a deserter/ where many an errant soldier of brutal civil war/ hath unbuckled their breeches for freedom

hath breached the walls of england

vi.

here in this field in england/ here on the edges of this field in england/ our backs turned on the lie that england always was/ the joke that just kept running/ in the garden beneath the walls/ in the market behind the freakshow/ in the curiosity cabinet beneath the museum/ in the factory next to the call centre/ in the industrial estate beside border control/ the joke that just kept running/ where I traded my body for a bean and found no beanstalk/ found no jack o’ the green dreams/ dreams just that/ distant and cloud-tipped and dissipating in mist/ the foot put in front of you guiding you no further in the field/ turning round in circles on the joke that was england that went on for far too long/ the mist of england/ the idea of england/ this rumour of state and england/ oh england/ see our crescent-mooned arses rise/ see them eclipsing your long dusk at long last/ your sun is being swallowed at the edges of the garden or field/ the names don’t matter anymore/ what matters is for a moment i have my body back from the market/ for a moment we are mandrake-chested rebellion/ screaming from the ground/ for a moment we are wandering green-fronded with moonshining joy/ for a moment we are bathing by the lambent light of our raucous and waxy moon/ plum-ripe at the back-end of nowhere and for a moment we have exposed the whisper/ the rumour/ the lie/ that was england

notes:

the line ‘if we had our garden the horizon would be the border’ is adapted from a journal entry by Derek Jarman in Modern Nature (Vintage: 2017)

Scenes

Vasiliki Albedo

Gun-shaped road sign and the usual
music. We don’t stop until it gets real.
Take a ride in a little black dress with a view,
blood hair and a headlight-face.
[Lights off!]

Welcome to Los Angeles, wow,
tree-ropes are scowling.
Sure great to have you!
[Cut to the hedge-faint trope.]
So nice travelling with you so nice!

Palm bombs by the potted gate in the glitter,
ten bucks says that’s Betty in the vine house.
One of the finest espressos that girl!
It’s all over her film-stare.
[Shut it down, lights off!]

Mindroom with an 80s haircut.
A: You look good bro making ends meet.
B: I-have-it-tough smoke.
Heterochromia with a silencer suicide,
ah man, health plus enzymes
and vacuum collateral
inside out on the fabulous leather couch.
[Lights off!]

Howdy from that nice hotel on your mind.
Lilies are probably upset.
Tell me where it hurts baby, don’t rush that line.
Nice-and-close action.
Payphone gaze,
maybe-that’s-my-name phonebook.
Clap, well that was humanistic, really very good really,
you’ve done your agent proud.
[Lights off!]

That’s it, the familiar birth canal.
Nothing to be or else wait.
Do it like someone else.
Narcissistic kiss have you ever done this?
Come with me somewhere apocalyptic,
to another film.
It’s all recorded in French romance.
Faint swan song.
This-is-for-you tremble.
[Lights off!]

What was that you were saying beautiful?
Don’t ever say what I’m getting at.
Clear the set girls.
No break, kill the lights sweetie.
Here’s to love, alter egos from deep river.
Coffee, what does it open?
[Dreamlight.]

A new planet

I was, as I am today, dedicated
to my poetry press despite paper proceeds
going to the tycoon who ate through the days
like a steam train burning on days
towards a west coast it never reached.
In fact the tycoon’s corporation
was just such a steam train of flattening
velocity, a fleet actually, of nano-trains like thoughts,
which executed dispatches faster than the speed
of light, consuming and inverting time-space.
And since he operated a monopoly,
and distance could no longer be crossed,
only communicated, it became an iron dream,
dictating experience in a trickster fashion
for which people bought tickets.
Everything was heading towards his HQ
on the private island of Calm Breach
from where the tycoon engined
ahead, and which was on its way
to becoming a black hole, attracting all
towards its event horizon, growing
into an ever-increasing now-here,
in which getting to the west coast stopped
carrying any meaning. The tycoon kept fattening
on this static journey he enlivened.
He grew so big he was becoming a planet,
a pinstriped cash-rich but desolate
planet with no vegetation and lots
of accumulated coal, his nails and teeth
fractalized mineral mountains.
He was this full now of material
that he could no longer see beyond
the horizon of his bloated body and only revolved
around himself in the void he’d created,
still devouring days like spaghettoni.
Soon his entire surface fossilised.
Nothing had ever happened there,
nor was there anywhere to go,
and everything he had gathered
into himself was a gassy, dark silence.

Pyre Land

Alex Marsh

A high-energy
seed mix for

dawn chorus,

& limescale chewables of
hard-water
deep dives into
the pop-up spring bin.
The night views I've
spent all year
depending on.

The dream was a long slow thought
the carnival needed the wind

At least the cloud-bank brought a calmer sadness

smiling out loud milling around

sometimes the way we move
means it creeps up on us,

the little false dawns
undersea

and to get cut by the pie filling
seems only fair in this economy.

Feel it out

as pelagic lubbers tot

the tallow

usufruct the barns of Barlow.

I heard a pin drop,

the sun must have passed me by.

In the rail replacement wilderness
a blissed out nugget of

underground disco.

It's a little alone

it's a little everywhere

the repair finally failing

Hey Day

Sweet dust billows on the juice train
the day surged through
riddles easy

sun on burn notice

overlapping moments
scores chalk on sidewalk
to get through

the lights are low because
of the fabric

Night failing already in Westfalia

& in the shutout
another bland miracle of British engineering,

a big drawing of ruin by the thrashers.

Off into the blue
building traces at every port
cos every poet likes a red shift
/is partial to a blurt
/is digging a very big hole.

Avoid rush hour and see you
in the double darkness

at the shrine to pigs past

I still really really want you
but you're not there when it matters
and it matters

So fly straight with perfection
into the big yellow

Next time will be our time
when we uncalm the 350 miles
to burb slop

Weekend is cheap life,
10 rivers make a lake,
stream is lane long and lame,
every poem is a comeback poem!

Pupills (Brand Yourself)

Fintan Dineen

make it/already done

Kashif Sharma-Patel

paralytic subject exhuming browned face, elegant

and intolerable. The sound of words, difficult and

deferent. I looked down the loch, past dark woods,

seismic caves, gleaming surf, ‘ there’s a queue ’

[the mineral gulf] gallimaufry [sic]

pedantic, duration, release

superfluous larynx, foregoable and irritant

spent down mountain

neurotic packaging

south-facing menagerie

entrusted in far-out per-chance

programmatic [new words for summation]

my rhotic [aerotic] languor, sleeping and turbulent

dream, we inflate coupledom

sense particularity, sudetendeutsch, and ‘79 escapes

sporadic meaning, the last stretch, the last

breaths, make it/already done, kebab mahal,

glasgow plans, speak against voice,

spiel and spore, arepa con queso vegano

der kater, the mortified past, a film in repose

developing sense and time at crux of

sound-warp / play / the ambient effulgence

material formation, shudder autobiographical conceit,

ekphrastic waste, spring’s fatuous beams halcyon

moorings, coarse but copper wire, kazakh crypto,

nur-sultan, blue yonder, chechen heavies, kavkaz

fags, category phalanx, hardy semblance

of cathartic elegance suspended in motion

that thought a lyrical touch away, the

sanctified pur-view, organic time kept –

read wrong, inordinate false more bobby

fisher sergeant yobbo common place ¬¬¬

up the hill, chips n gravy, down pub way

west indian cricket club, tickle fancy, imitable

lot

fragrantly done the generalised kerfuffle

Common Air

Caleb Beckwith

If I die tell all my friends I hate them

less than yall are either from here or

against here and there’s not a soul

searching thing anyone can do about it

except come around to the realization

that we are all worth about as much

as each other adds up to very little

under present theories of value.

It’s fine, actually, an imminently

relatable problem, just a fundamental

lack that’s positively alienating, but

you have to have some clarity of vision

if you’re ever going to make a decision,

and, save a full tilt dental phase or two,

none of us even knew what we were

doing outside the hinterland of dreams,

where even you and I somehow manage

to speak in coherent paragraphs and our

collective failings don’t quite emerge

from long memories to become a vector

that just won’t let anything go except

an impossible yearning to be managed,

which probably means we’ll keep getting

dragged, even in our thoughts. Life could

be better, yet isn’t, as love’s labor rides

the waves of liquid interest, still missing

out on another kind of particular.

English Off the Glass

Go ahead and just try to assume another

perspective without imposing your will or lapsing

into absent reflection. It takes a critical mind

to ride the waves of productive circuits and

not end up mad eyed stating the obvious til

you’re past out of breath, reduced to a sincere

belief that one must read more theory as if

the presumed adults in the room knew the first thing

about convincing. Cheap nature may laugh as you

hover over the carbon sink looking for real abstractions

capable of sustaining a moderately successful house series

for two, maybe even three years if you’re lucky, but social

credit is always already the domain of microcosmos, and,

due to the last half-century of supposed plenty, there’s nowhere

else for us to simply be. When your spirit’s backed against

the wall about to be cancelled by god on high, the only move

left is to wait until nobody’s looking and hit them with your

serenity creed like it’s the revenge game you’ve been waiting

for since christmas. If all else fails, grift aside, you might try

imitating more successful peers by raising your vibration to the

contemporary. But don’t say I didn’t warn you. It takes years to

grow a bomber, and come time to pop the cork it might already

be too late.

If The Matrix Could Get Its Act Together and Tell Me

Tomorrow Will be a Bright Gold Egg

Caspar Bryant

I’d smile and scramble it

With a little love and Linda McCartney.

Even this shell, this home, Linda,

reminds me of code, the quaint ivy twines

falling Matrix-green. In the 90s

somebody wowed by fluorescence

envisioned a future to outlast all

strains of ocular damage, where we’d grow

accustomed to LCD exuberance.

Your images aren’t so far from the shock of

that brightness, Linda, between the

possession charge in ‘84 and those portraits

of Paul and John which, despite it

all, are the faces of love, even if simply because

you saw them as their childhood,

in love and earlier when I went to cook, oil met

the fresh fluorescence of twins,

this morning’s double yolky miracle.

transitional

Hayley McGaw

like dry moss

i won’t respond

to summer or

name species

only backward glance

the berry a detrimental flirt

like palliative earthcare

makes unpalatable growth

in the slaughterhouse

by degrees we burn

dna and leaf

the smell of garden

centres pass

blame as a comet

ripping atmosphere

too hot to touch

i’m just not ready

haven’t got my fat to

mitigate the long night

my sight will get worse

this winter

lapsuns fizz the brain

like these love

fragments

from you

disem

body of salt

morphed by warm

winds gorging

the remnants

of summer

i didn’t notice

winter envelop so

ludically like grape teeth

fermenting in yeast like

dust in untouched places

i’ve been mourning you

since the first diagnosis

you’ve been dying and

dying is a process

traces of childhood

unvarnished

where the ash fell

on the deathscape

on the riverbed

Climbing onto my soapbox I fail to meet your eye

Jack Emsden

Let me set the scene:

imagine a great big empty car park,

the irrigation trench of another public apology

on a handwritten billboard reads

have you noticed how we sweat

gelatin in the new sun? I’m sorry

for wearing this delicious new poison proudly.

Can you taste how the lights have been left on

in the shop windows overnight? I’m sorry

I retired the dark, the mysterious dark to the icebox

so when I speak my throat is sharp

and clean as an almond. Rest assured, I still count the bins

outside the large houses to understand

how they are separated

into angular living patterns, acute cohabitations.

There’s so little space and the space we have

is segmented into smaller air ducts, into pocketknives

and plug sockets. It is hard to forget about dying. I’m sorry

I asked for new far-reaching luxuries: to defrost

my loaf of bread under the skylight, to loaf around

like a committee hearing committing to nothing

except the arrogance of speech. When I speak

I say little. When I say sorry I mean I would like to live better,

not like progress which is yesterday’s disease, or exposure

which is vast and devastating as a theme park, or hard work

which is a frozen pond in the empty estate of the 19th century.

In this new creaking century I am gristle suspended

in the web of communication. Whenever we talk I become sticky

and complicit in the hoarding

of fresh particles. Like you I am waiting

to be consumed. I’ve changed my mind

about desire. It’s nothing

but a lobster boiled alive and freshly

screaming. Let me set the table:

forget what I said about pain.

Testament

it arrived like an egg

spoiled from the sky like a river

collapsed by the trainline geometric

silos held in the windows

of the fields like a trampled picnic

a construction deadline

for the latest luxury flats

a slovenly wind lonely spa

I don’t need to explain myself

I just need to gesture

at the diagrams sometimes

the day is beautiful

and my feet are very clean

sometimes the air is sticky

as granola woops

there it goes again

like an abandoned cornershop

a motorway diversion

like a stomach

like dust on the monitor

an oft-revised history

of badness like propagation

I know you’ve heard it

growing itchy on the elbows

of every pylon

a great signal dispersing

through the tight chest

of the afternoon

it has been called

a black sparrow

chewing the wires

it has been called

a long-term

development strategy

a managerial distraction

while the PowerPoint

revealed our common afflictions

the exits gossamered

and the meeting room

collapsed like a prayer

A Visit to the Warp Room

Adam Heardman

I walk as though with greater purpose, here,

surrounded by the Warp Room Theme.

I’m beginning to meet people all day

beneath a sky that’s patched in layers like vegetable

inks. It really is a canopy

of unimaginable gradients, an exquisite crush

of hex-codes, which I feel I almost breathe,

staining its colours to my teeth.

A guide of sorts is greeting me with words like

We must imagine Dingodile as happy, push

him through a recrudescent furniture of trials,

and gesturing towards a creature which I literally

can’t describe. The music is, unexpectedly,

extremely moving and good. Everyone

is taking giant, jogging steps. Too long

and many are these strides to justify

the slower pace of our actual motion,

the closed loop by which we nevertheless regress,

bunking off that ridiculous gridding of light, our days.

I have deep, stabbing memories of this place.

O, if you’d only come to more completely

know the temples’ lush accord, love,

my guide murmurs, the bandicoot’s cushy brows.

He gifts me a viridian gem and a ripe rouged

fruit, and I know within my secret chest

I’ll keep them as they age, wrinkle, start

to reek, and lessen the pulse with which they seem

to put their energy to the energy of my heart.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cKVfuQFGU0)

Dazzle Camo

The more horizons break and thread themselves

in ruptured blocks like Richter charts, the more

you see you

never stood a snowflake’s chance

of finding rest, here, among a grave of hulls.

You hide yourself by showing yourself at this

and other distances, awash in buckled ‘dazzle

camo’, baffling

the evening’s flock

of bright torpedoes. In a space between us which

I hadn’t seen until it was traversed, peels of

starlings whorl and twist like gifs of smoke,

repeating every flex

as dust, disturbed

with ardent purpose, mingles onto tongues.

Our eyes retreat until they reach a distance

which allows for sight, leave behind the shadow

-static blur of being

too close. We’re finding

focus falls like snow into our fields of view

and time’s a drift like changing lenses. Frames

relax and trade their stuff across a bridge

of noses. Abandon

ship, and I shall too.

The world exposes love like camouflage.

socket & thread

Hannah George

presence of stainless apprehension

drapes itself in indecorous layers

across the undrained laundry caught in

ripped jeans rip tide up with nylon &

seaweed on the translucent threshold

between solitude & confinement

where captive(ated) clouds wait silent

-ly the sullen roundabout inter

-venes petrochemically fuelled

the autonomous jam stitches stick

-y tricky fragments into wholes am

bivalently the molten sultry

sun folds the day away beneath its

cool & violent gaze furnacing the

body is a glass perplexity

catalysing the rich stabili

-ty of uncertainty into pre

sumptuous action unaware a

{hyper}vigilant wheel hits the curb

un(contain)ably painful e-tern

-al moments colliding in this cho

sen time frozen present wishing

I could full stop. this endless defer

ral of frantic oncoming days

inevitable in their expect

-ed unexpectedness crum-bl-ing

through agitated fingers that thumb

pages cages of words rustling

to be consumed turning&tighten

-ing the hinges of composition

compost is a highly productive

endeavour so is heartbreak </3 gorging

ourselves on bodies briefly diffuse

s chinked silence the lukewarm fibres

of liminal comfort that melt through

the curtain illuminating the

gap between you&me briefly un

settling the order of things fall

-ing into this aleatory

state di lat ing delicate desires

as we curlicue wrist & neck like

socket & thread oblivious to

external antipathy I map

myself slowly impermanently

a crystal fallacy charmed by the

pavement puddle inconsistently

inhabited by baroque pigeons

that creak & screen at water shapes by

the traffic exhausting perception

filtered through the imported cloth my

favourite socks are conscious of their deg

radation into patterned flakes my

toes feel the weight of disconnection

from the frequent floor that shivers as

a lorry rolls by denim dries calm

-ly in the rafters where voices bridge

& splice like needles in the peach lamp

light that grins from shining leaves trapped be

tween extremes / I drift / my thoughts dripping

slipping down down like solifluction

acutely vivid dreams devour

the distant horizon marked by cut

out squares & scattered with sugar that

diminishes the boundary here

& there I resolve to wake up with

clarity but midnight debris int

erupts me shaking the velvet vaults

of sleep that spill and rise in the hall

way itching & blue compelled by the

mirror momentary ritual

re/forms the chipped evening into the

glistening sheen of adverts singing

electric beads of sweet nothing sign

-alling clipped hollowness & shutting

out the breeze I begin as if to

leave this place but knowing there is no

exit my elbows touch sun split knees

& palms examine the curvature

of my jaw probing it tenderly

hungrily disguising desire

for something more

RE: CHERRIES THAT HAVE GONE WRONG

Natalie Stypa

the ice crystals look like

decaying butterflies

content looms as grey

clouds on the horizon

the suicide of the

maraschino cherry king

leaves us

questioning the future

FAUXGRAS

your dormant double

awakes

got the wrong heart

to ache. got

fake veins. i drink

your plastic blood

maraschino cherries

& paper cups

our deluge

a delusion

THE WORLD WE THINK

i remember the war. i remember

things falling when nothing was

supposed to fall. melon blossoms

guava trees and pressure.

crystalline creatures of

oppression, of not knowing where

to store all the limbs in.

torn bruised boiled spots like

purple granadilla. something

run over pressed into

the tarmac tight.

last culture’s embrace

melting in the sun or

ice cold drop down snow. which

war do i remember? know

i’m old. centuries

are like crowded

catalogues from online

department shops. 10,638 dresses

in red. 5,771 desert boots

in black. is that single or

pairs? exactly as many

deaths to choose from. don’t

run. don’t be

spectacularly free from

like modified corn starch in chocolate

milkshakes (drink

from my belly button or veins. all

the same to me now).

where is language? here? you’re joking.

goddesses. bangladesh.

capital. eros devouring

xenia. death wish.

bataille. women

harvesting tea leaves, harvesting

organs from their designated lovers. open

veins of whoever.

porn of various kinds

(poverty / food / fashion / intellectual)

get on my carousel, get your

desert boots on and out-source

that part of your old-fashioned brain-

this very moment the sun is rising somewhere this very

moment approximately xxxx people are dying this

very moment has never existed. for you maybe. not for me.

symbiosis or ass & lichen for Sol Lewitt

declan wiffen

is the asshole a lichen thallus | a bright new dream | to make-with, that’s what didn’t happen. it was the garden—his garden | i want to slather myself in that | which day do i want to climb inside with him, with her, with you? | dear everything that makes this good and legible and cool… | i read eileen myles backwards | i don’t think my own thoughts. you do | don’t rush. | a gateway to my own camp | line drawing: a vision that up to the end of my life i would do one-a-day | i am often ass to ass with a lichen | Just back in the south so will send your keys tomorrow | thinks he can charm anyone into having sex | An essay where i imagine my grandmother was a lesbian | Dad doesn’t like ruby wax. Rambling | There is a crack right through reciprocity and it’s callous | Cut it up. Cut it up | In April i opened my bill | There is meaning even if we seek it | Some messages take time to detonate. | A story | Setting fire to faggot ecology | don’t wanna be your personal jesus | how can the government lie and me so enjoy hearing from you at the same time | didn’t want a designated square metre of soil but to dig in together | i hate men who seek attention. And i hate myself. i seek attention by being quiet | editorial note: “more aesthetic descriptions of lichen, please” | can’t and won’t | stop, LeWitt says just DO IT | a man cycles past and his butt is wrapped in black Lycra so you can see the shape of two cheeks and a crevice in between. It’s beautiful. i think—you couldn’t have an ass with only one cheek. | A beautiful lichen ass | go back to Jean Genet, he can help with this | T is obscene, but joyously | queer pleasure has often been seen as a death drive | this is one of the things christianity got right, we’re fucking assholes | there is a gape in the weave | more than one less than two | Benjamin—“even the distracted person can form habits.” | i’d never experienced rain like in New York. D said we need to run and i thought naaah, and then it came and it was like the most living thing i have ever experienced | a sheet of texture—a page of sensation | obligate or mutual? | couldn’t afford the restaurant but paid for it | the first time they have sex he says, afterwards, you knew what you wanted and you took it. by which think he means turned him over and ate his ass. a new experience | not radical | neither monstrous nor pastoral | i need to listen to other people more | not into dirty assholes in the same way not into clean prose. somewhere in the middle is fine. if you like ass hole you’re gonna eat shit | i felt the fever & i knew it was mine | not speaking for everyone | one guy wouldn’t kiss after rimming him and that ended things. thought, i’ve licked your hole but you won’t kiss me? | 12 assholes and a dirty lichen—new John Waters | Mama always told me it would be alright | AIDS is natural—so fuck nature | just something you do or don’t | the word nature, let’s just clear it up—nonsense—can we move on to the other stuff now? | like "yoke" or "imbricate" or "corollary" | gay guys just like to have as many cocks about as possible | tired | fingering rocks and moss over here | i loved the smell of the 4, like rubber and armpits and piss, and when i crossed into it from another line i felt safe | i couldn’t read books because i would be too interested. Too engulfed. might destroy me. And that’s what happened when i read Giovanni’s Room | she said “tulips can co-exist with the highway” | do i really feel the way i feel | separation is knitted into connection but i can’t knit | trying to meditate, mainly crying | want it to pour | you can’t plant lichens | we felt it didn’t completely hold together | like, yeah, what does? | can turn into an evolutionary trap or dead end | but you engaged & i didn’t put it in a little box called secrets | his writing is getting better & makes me think about my complicity in walls | horny for tenderness, screaming for meaning | Things often began by vomiting | The end was kinda the same | optimum range between the bionts can be a mismatch | sometimes “good” & sometimes “evil” | no lichen garden, sorry darlings | no one ever told me how to live but what not to do—

THINGS TO DO IN ARCADIA

Chuck Stebelton

for Cedar Sigo

1/1 - 2/1/2022

Orient north. Atlantic turbine.

Straighten line five. Drop anchor.

Drag bottom. Leave a seed to bait
the marsh. Flush bittern.

Extract scent from mosses,
memory from olfactory sense.

Double down on the source.
Whiten red cedar pink. Paper birch.

Initial beeches for “cheap immortality.”

Forest. Forest. Forest monotones.

Not monotonous.

Name the rowan Mountain ash.

Count the counter transfiguration.

Name the Basswood valentine.

Inscribe address.

Analyze every single winter gull.

Lease the dredging equipment

Mend the ice, burn the snow.

Sabotage the dredging gear

Equip the ant lions with sand.

Count the bricks, the glass bottle house.

Set your watch at the ring of bells.

Locate RKD. Kern the surname
Akerman and locate mechanic.

Scan the sand flats for dune grass.

Parse the insect buzz
for Grasshopper sparrow.

Expose only the legs of beachcombers
as they move spectrally above the line of surf

the beach of antiquity.

Make turgid the interior

make turbid.

Liquefy the rearing ponds.

Emancipate poor Jerry of the Islands.

Abolish the limberlost.

Purple east. Sandpiper ease. In ice cleats.

Wolf whistle. Go upland.

Miss music. Sew books. Enclose
all cicada wasps. Picket fence.

Discover honey. Black tupelo.
Lumbering bee.

Discuss wind turbines.

Trumpet flower. Hornet glower.

Calibrate dune grass. Press sumac.

Plea seasonal.

Mend the courses off the bluff.
Sink the nine hole green.

Give up. Try legalese.

AREA STUDIES

Rob Kiely

This is the greatest poem in the world.

I don’t wanna hear one second more about “scenes”

who the fuck are you talking to where you

say it to my face

AN SELECTED POEMS

If I was a submarine I’d wish I could fly.

These spoons are no good

but porous and dissolve in my tea.

You look confused.

Why don’t you get out the kitchen

(my kitchen is outside).

And while we’re on the subject, how many of ye here can say

I too am the spinach delving rod.

Don’t throw up unless nonetheless wiser sideways goes drop

in the town of my enormous fluorescent upbringing

an ice-cap breaks free to fuck off.

SLUG LEOPARD

Some slugs think they are caterpillars. Some caterpillars

think they are slugs.

Don’t be so afraid of hurting others.

A dog sheds. A tree barks.

We align ourselves downstream, dreamily.

LONG WINDED

There was a time I thought I suffered.

who is it taught us

that suffering is private

Tom told me

everyone should have a large head wound

to improve politics.

I wanted to write a song interspersed with wallets.

I wanted to write about the trees but they kept wriggling and rustling

To count is to feel texture. To measure something you have to ask

it to lie down or stay still, place carefully amorphous units

of measurement on top until you can’t see it.

it is hard to make films,

harder to stop

Moodbored

Maria Hardin

the secret language
of flowers
is like
the secret language
of girls taking selfies
all the things we do
because we don’t trust
that we are real
i wanted this to be a nature poem
but i never go outside
touch my hand to the wall
press my face against it
imagine sinking in
as molecules will
if given enough time
i’ll never have enough time
checking off the names
of writers
i grow older than
sylvia plath
edith södergran
simone weil
when will i be a name
on another girl’s list

Bisexual Lighting

my tendency
to become fluid
whatever
that means
all the marias
i can no longer be

Stardust Cowgirl

i don’t want to die
i just want to delete myself forever

Handcrafted Villanelle

Fiamma Curti

Box up those vibes
in recyclable packaging
Sell them on Etsy

Gather the gratitude
of being glad you're alive
Box up those vibes

Make ocean shaped pendants
filled with your mother's wrath
Sell them on Etsy

Paint the world on a blade of grass
cut open the sky
Box up those vibes

Shape your lover's midnight whispers
into animal balloons
Sell them on Etsy

When you're having a spring beach BBQ
and it start snowing on you
Box up those vibes
Sell them on Etsy

we were only waiting

Anne-Laure Coxam

the sound of water passing through
the moon and the jugs and the flowers
the sound of silence singing silence to itself

and that is all you said
you’re not playing guitar anymore

and this rain what is this rain?
is the storm approaching or tailing off?

we used to sing so much
and dance and read poetry

but nobody is singing next to me
nobody is singing anymore
just the radio night and day
this longing for you

oh ! I found a buzzard badge for you!
cool!

the storm is getting closer or fading away?

Happy Days are gone
are they? are we living through
Oh! Les Beaux Jours but we can’t see it
yet see them for what they are

welcome to Scotland haha only us
laughed in the cinema
Skyfall is [indeed] where we start
again! this is home and days are dark

[did you walk Beckett btw?]

the end is in the beginning
and vice versa they say
on the radio

I got myself a blackbird badge
what did you get?
a blackbird
are you singing in the dead of night?
for years I’ve been singing in the dead of night!

the lightning struck my gimcrack rocky crown

sparks fell all over the wet grassy land
my crown fell my skin flaked
keep your pity family and friends
keep your pity away

we’ll stand tall and face it all

see the beginning is in the end
and vice versa but what do I know?
I’m just the fool the jester

SPAM005

Lead Editor ~ Mau Baiocco

Assistant editors ~ Kirsty Dunlop, Maria Sledmere and Loll Jung

Art ~ Ian Macartney

Audio ~ Max Parnell

SPAM

zine&Press

a post internet poetry endeavour

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Dan Power

Cecily Fasham

Henry Bell

Nasim Luczaj

Suki Hollywood

Jack Young

Vasiliki Albedo

Alex Marsh

Fintan Dineen

Kashif Sharma-Patel

Common Air

Caleb Beckwith

English Off the Glass

Caspar Bryant

Hayley McGaw

Jack Emsden

Adam Heardman

Hannah George

Natalie Stypa

declan wiffen

Chuck Stebelton

Rob Kiely

Maria Hardin

Fiamma Curti

Anne-Laure Coxam