Yvonne Litschel is a writer from Cambridgeshire, England. Previously she has read as part of the European Poetry Festival. Her debut pamphlet Moth Dust was published January 2018 by Sampson Low. She has a forthcoming pamphlet entitled Immurement set for release in March 2019 with Broken Sleep Books. yvonnelitschel.com @yvlitschel
feature image: Bob Modem
Is it dirt or healing?
Here we are now, standing in generalised anxiety. Our buildings are losing breath at the aorta and feeling phantom pains in the basements and where the urapaa (grave) used to be. Your child has muddy hair and long hair and hair now bedraggled to the ground, calling for a reckoning and sounds, (not to be suppressed). We could have been a compost pile, giving up our bodies to grow healthy weeds as limbs. Instead, they pull the plastics out of whale stomachs while clutching our own.
Continue reading “Sol Marco Duncan: Is it dirt or healing? & Volatile Ground”
Passionflower Your Sleep Routine
I don’t get nearly enough cockroach. My issue is that all I do is smoke rancid butter and, of course, giggle. I tend to scuttle across the floor until my jaws ache. I’m interested in velvet and rotting orchids. Chalk dust – with its powerful antioxidant activity – is like a choir of creamy darkness. I can’t wait to try the endless lines of products, their mix of golden milk and human scalps. I warm a cup of charred wood to avoid feeling hairy, and instead of Youtubeing digestive health into the night, I go thunderous to bed.
You are a bagpipe of insanity*
Hiding in plain sight,
tribunes of global
warming gone
exotic appear
now spray
painted
scotching our earth
which reached
out to offer
us humans
2nd & 3rd
chances.
*Quoting the dad to Mr. Pickles (Jim Carrey) on HBO’s Kidding
Gerard Sarnat is a physician who’s built/staffed homeless clinics as well as a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO. He has been nominated for Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards and is widely published including Gargoyle, New Delta Review, MiPOesias, Blue Mountain Review, Danse Macabre, Canary Eco, San Francisco Magazine and Los Angeles Review. KADDISH FOR COUNTRY was selected for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day nationwide. Amber Of Memory was the single poem chosen for his 50th Harvard reunion Dylan symposium. Collections: Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), and Melting the Ice King (2016). More info at gerardsarnat.com
featured image: Bob Modem
In City Parks, In the Sour Void
I am seven skulls screaming
about seven smaller screaming skulls.
Please take my boney hand
& Celine Dion my sinking ship.
Near the capharnum of microplastics
an animal vigils a similar corpse.
By 25 I had figured out fire
but not much else: maybe anatomy Continue reading “Patrick Williams: In City Parks, In the Sour Void and New Age Downloads”
Douze, twelve stakes from these Dark Ages
1: At dawn, in the mist, Paola gathers porcini mushrooms, freshly-sprouted on the Landaise forest floor. Earthy clusters. Ash clay-colored caps. Undersides of bright yellow moss. Paola calls them cèpes.
2: In 2012, in a referendum, the British people voted for Brexit. Brexit is an abbreviation for “British exit,” referring to the UK’s decision, in a June 23 2016 referendum, to leave the European Union. The word ‘exit’ was first a C15th theatrical word, meaning a way of departure from the stage. Leave the network. Continue reading “Susanna Crossman: Douze, twelve stakes from these Dark Ages”
kamikaze grappa
(the day peace broke out)
it felt like love
the day peace
broke out
yet the painter
chagalls goat
still played a violin Continue reading “Neil Sparkes: kamikaze grappa (the day peace broke out)”
Sophie Essex is a softcore bunny existing 120ft above sea level where she promotes her adoration of poetry through Salò Press, lit-mag Fur-Lined Ghettos, & monthly poetry night Volta. Find her @capitanofelixio & @salopress
featured image: Bob Modem
Lucia is a poet, an environmental scientist and a quiet observer. She writes and makes video-poems. Her video-poems have been screened in the UK and internationally. Her latest poetry publication is The Quiet Life of Walls.
Bárbara Mesquita is an architect and an artist. Twitter: @barbararrm
DISCONNECTED
What fire hath wrought.
Melted wires, sparks. Cables
litter the machine-room floor.
A surfeit of color,
coded chaos strewn
over gunmetal grey concrete. Continue reading “Robert Beveridge: Disconnected”
FETISH FUTURIST
A man’s body is his currency
Burning life upon Facebook friend request
Tendency to burn all the wishes for likes
Or the likes for wishes we like
Are we on the rag?
A rug as the tag…
A fag swing song
In mediocritas thong. Continue reading “João Pinho: FETISH FUTURIST”
Bossa Nova for the Turchin Twenties
To the tune of “Para Machucar Meu Coração”;
after Peter Turchin.
Wouldn’t change a thing is what you said, habib,
to coffee as
you danced with your girl—
in dining rooms, Continue reading “Josh Lipson: Bossa Nova For The Turchin Twenties”
‘Página 28 de la Gramática General Española’, found file, 2018
Bruno Neiva is a text artist. This is a found, unaltered piece, a page Bruno took from a Spanish book on linguistics. It’s a piece on the (supposed) European solidarity towards refugees. Curiously, the original book was published a long time before the crisis. The author used the theme by accident just to illustrate an example of a basic syntactic structure. Website. Twitter: @umaestrutura
Turkeys for Christmas
The future is stupid,
The past is a bastard,
The present, coalescent.
So what’s left?
‘Bout 52%
Mark Coverdale is the Art School Mod Poet. Born in Darlington the year Elvis died. Now in London via Oldham writing and performing socially and politically observational poetry. Published by Penguin. Twitter: @cov_art
As guest-editor this month, I was fortunate to have published a small selection of stunning, future-facing poems from Astropolis (Haverthorn Press, 2018) by Astra Papachristodoulou earlier this month. I also asked Astra if she would write a small piece on Astropolis, which she has kindly done.
The methodology of Astropolis Continue reading “Astra Papachristodoulou: The methodology of Astropolis”
David Turner is the founding editor of the Lunar Poetry Podcasts series, has a City & Guilds certificate in Bench Joinery along with the accompanying scars, is known to the Bristol, Kristiansand and Southwark Community Mental Health Teams as a ‘service user’ and has represented Norway in snow sculpting competitions. Originally from London but now living in Bristol. No greater current ambition in life than to achieve Grade 1 in piano. Widely unpublished. Working-class. Picket line poet. @Silent_Tongue
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 