BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Serpent is truth, and so despised. No flattery, no eyelashes, no need, take what you will.

it’s a party, within
Line Stockford

The serpent will climb, but only so far. Reminder of bellyearth, embracedust and slander, lean,
even when ingesting gazelle, defyer. Low is not low, but slower. Serpent is truth, and so despised.
No flattery, no eyelashes, no need, take what you will. Free climb, into your life. Balance the fire
on the pit, shape the water that goes in. Mirror sorrow but do not amplify it. A broken mirror is
unlucky for its sheer deadliness, sheer shards, each a murder, steer wide of such. Pluck the string
of your own, song. You have listened, now, for long enough.

*

Where is the border between within and without?
Line Stockford

And the two doors to how that’s said? Where are they? Pull the curtain across the stage.
What the writer has to say can be likened to the Vaudeville distractor in the interval – its
function is keeping all in their seats, while behind the diameter the writer practices new lines,
inspect all scripts, for an aster. There’s no-one to rehearse with, just the ceremony of practices,
signals from the playground, denser lessons of graduation, elevated diploma in deceit.

Believe me! precedes each statement from within to without; getting fainter, written
bolder. Every screen word a feint scrawl, less than lemon ink. Blink and a message passes the
border of armed-guards and onto paper curiosity, a mapped terrain that will change before the
ink dries. We are not not the same, the spread after this. We were going astray on a train of
forward facing depravity. Living within, surviving without, I do not signal through the flames I
am the fire, dining on the atmosphere, sucking up the oxygen. Consuming the evident.
Conveying back. Leaving ash. Do not rely.

To abstain in the amber tongues that do not burn (the burnt is hot and not the flame).
The writer remains the same, ever changed. Water doused, sitting wet and shut up, their mind is
within, their face is without me. And yes, I too am a repository for dead poetry. Let it rise up like
a cloud of blue and amber dust. Letter me a letter in your scent. Musk and sours, days and
hours. How long have you lived? Without me?

surahs for slovens
Küçük İskender (translated from Turkish by Line Stockford)

in the flood tide of the first sound the full moon grew
we were dreaming as we passed through the flaming snake-mouth
in the fat eye was that look, dragging its capilliaries along
dark rage of innerwords, that utter oubliette
that unheard sabotage, inferno, that last blazingblame
we knew it was wrong to be scared
of the graveyard overhead – – segregation
the smile we winnowed from passions: deep dismay,
and that incidental paleness. what happened to: my lover!
i got lost, yeah, that night inside the secret passage,
the secret passage that opened onto your soul, flesh candle
in one hand, in the other my enzyme bracelets.. lips’ curls..

i know, that sometimes this city doesn’t exist
it’s not the ones who left I miss,
but the era I didn’t witness. how can you do this?
you, who say my shoulders are like copper,
my hairs like golden grass, how can you do this?
(all sons are strung on crucifixes raised by their mothers,
our failings bought on credit, paid for over years,
most of our misdeeds are childhood heists)

i know, that sometimes this city doesn’t exist
hauling, bearing, carrying
like a solitary, backward-growing tumour of dust
love is a stream of allusion
love, causing the glut of you to overflow in my face
the sprite fell out, i am the fairy of the fullmoons, waning famously,
you petal are feral. take / me. he kisses the foal on the head
and kills it in the secret passage!

or according to one hypothesis
i am the decomposing houseguest
in the place where the moon touches
the beach as seen from his bedroom window
– at that particular time. my legs are plastic
and if you glimpse a letter drawn by a scalpel
on what can be seen of my chest
through the open collar of my shirt –
if the blood brimming from this letter’s opened wound
is salty and a little mushy.. then take / me.
armageddon is pregnant with betrayal.

***

Line Stockford is a translator, poet, essayist, editor and human rights campaigner for freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial and Kurdish linguistic rights in Turkey. She is west-Welsh and practices bardic druidry with the aim of reinhabiting the poetic forms of Taliesin, Mechain and ap Gwilym.

Bluesky: @linecaro

Küçük İskender (1964-2019) was a Turkish poet, actor & critic. Author of 28 books of poetry, several novels, diaries, essays and articles on film. İskender was an openly gay man in an all-too conservative poetry scene in Istanbul who wrote in a Burroughsian-gothic style. Winner of five major poetry prizes, he would say, “Don’t read too much Dostoyevski, it will spoil the Burroughs.”