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Dissociation in a Museum Café by Belinda Rimmer

I can pinpoint the moment.

A sudden silence of traffic,

and voices

weaving a scary tale,

far away,

then further still.

 

Under the fluorescent lights,

I folded.

 

I didn’t catch anyone’s eye

but breathed deeply.

It didn’t help.

I’d ended up on the ceiling

looking down on myself.

 

My heavy blue beads

clunked and swung

with each swivel of my neck.

No one noticed.

 

Below, the other me had finished her tea

and was sorting change from her purse.

I called out. She didn’t glance up.

 

Rivulets of condensation

on the steamy window

seemed to tell me to follow, follow

as if droplets of water

could guide me home.

 

Continue reading “Dissociation in a Museum Café by Belinda Rimmer” →

The Boyfriend Pinch by Christopher John Eggett

It was a surprise to see the danger red, tango orange, white mottle. All the other shellfish she had seen that day in the rock pools had been dark browns, some black elegant creatures. This was a lobster that looked like it was half-cooked, but alive and well, a naturally appealing dinner invitation.

She felt like a child squatting down next to the rock pool. How had he got washed up here, so beautiful against the wrinkled rocks and sighing sand. The day, sunny but with a wind that ran through her ankles and up her skirt occasionally, should have been about observing. She thought she would spend some time looking at the rock pools, looking at the creatures in them, grey and black and brown—crabs moving amongst the husks and wrappers of their dead comrades. Never take a step back, pick up claw from a fallen brother.

She was going to be detached today, she’d promised. She wasn’t going to get involved with anything, she said the creative writing course was helping, but there needed to be more material, more distraction. She’d been told by the tutor that she was a natural journalist, scornfully. Always ready to get involved and meddle in someone else’s story, rather than secretly skimming off the best bits from a distance.

So she would observe today. It was a bit like when she had been dumped by her boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. The idea was to stay single for a while, to observe the others doing the dance and check she knew the steps.

But here, with this orange lobster in the black bowl of a Welsh rock pool, she decided to engage with it. She started by giving it a nudge with a stick to see how active it was. It was beautiful, so could be dead. It moved and whirled around to look at her, pointedly. She was surprised, and didn’t expect it to be so forward, it was a rare thing and therefore should be shy in her world. Continue reading “The Boyfriend Pinch by Christopher John Eggett” →

Interminatus by Cory Willingham

I

 

If I should die before I wake

I pray the lord my soul to take.

But if my dreams some wonder show

I ask him that he let me go.

 

Space wrecks hell on mortal minds.

 

 

II

 

Last night, I closed my eyes

around midnight

and slept for unknown eons.

I travelled up

and up and up

and made claws of my hands

to tear through the atmosphere.

I floated serene across silent spans

of violet shadow

dots of light seen mostly by night

expanding to fill my view—

and then I met the moon.

Continue reading “Interminatus by Cory Willingham” →

Two Poems by Kate Dlugosz

Cherry Pit

 

My mouth is a bowl full of pitted cherries. My stomach the bucket for all the swallowed bloody pits. Every word tastes sweet and dark and tart on my tongue, rolling against my blushing cheeks. And when I smile, red love dribbles down my chin.

When I speak, I am tempted to sing like the way the bright pink blossoms burst into bloom in the springtime. The air is fragrant with love and sweetness and honeybees. But at the lightest breeze, fragrant with daffodils and shadows, my flowers fall

in clusters trembling, and I remember the splinters in the black bark of the cherry tree, the amber sap dripping down the exposed inner rings. The long weeping, the unfurling of flowers. And while the axe is out of sight I fear for other trees, and my branches still shake hearing lightning Continue reading “Two Poems by Kate Dlugosz” →

Photographs of New Orleans by Julia Skop

Julia Skop 1

Julia Skop 2

Julia Skop 3 Continue reading “Photographs of New Orleans by Julia Skop” →

Bear off a Leash by Stephen Lightbown

I’m out with Bear on Victoria Street

who pads on all fours beside my wheelchair.

Slaloms his way through the soil rain that falls

from freshly watered hanging-baskets perched

like floral eagles on London’s lampposts.

Cranes observe from above as they deliver skips

to third floors without lifts and walls.

Wet nose to the ground, tension stretches

his sinews. His fur bristles. Always moments

from mayhem. The street is a treadmill in reverse,

every third door a Pret, repetition everywhere.

Step step Pret. Step step Pret. Step step Pret.

Tourists and commuters momentarily forget their handhelds.

It’s clear we don’t belong here.

I am wary of Bear. I want to get to the station

without incident. A wheelie suitcase here. Double pram there.

Sideways glances. Unseen fury from Bear.

Bubbles of rage fight for release.

Bear explodes. Chaos.

Now on two legs he claws at a man on a bike

for hire. Interloper on the pavement, briefcase

and Metro in the basket. He has spun too close

to our tension in his race

for AOB at 9am. Bear scratches

at the fact we are different. That in this city

of a million faces we stand out below eye level.

The commuter cyclist is collateral damage. An accident.

Like we once were.

Lava eyes ignore sense. He’s too strong for me.

I grasp at the space where moments ago he was.

Bear stop, what are you doing? Let it go. I plead.

Bear replies: Say he deserved it.

Bear is lost in the woods. Redwoods loom,

their branches retreat, unable to contain contempt.

You’re pathetic, stand up for yourself. Say I was right.

Bear is a dot. Lost to me.

No good ever comes when he is like this. I know what he thinks.

If people want to stare, give them a show.

Take me out from the trees, put me in a Big Top.

Silence and shame will deliver us to the station.

But Bear is right.

Can’t you control your bear? Pedals the victim. Continue reading “Bear off a Leash by Stephen Lightbown” →

A Catalogue of Small Shatterings by Makensi Ceriani

I have always had a fascination with transformation. With taking incongruent parts to make a whole. With cutting and stripping and building up from the bottom and the artist as self-portrait. I could easily be found in childhood obsessing over the arrangement of furniture and décor of my Laura Ashley doll house. Today this is a dining room with a red velvet tablecloth and a chandelier light that chimes a segment from the Four Seasons because my Polly Pocket is the queen and she’s having the tour group Bratz over for tea. Tomorrow it is a miniature of my family’s dining room with boxes and old paint chips and no tablecloth and striped walls that look like silk and show damage easily.

Most of my toys were dolls, the easiest to buy for a girl, the easiest to buy for a child who liked to imagine new worlds. I remember the Betty Spaghetti dolls with neon bodies and plastic hair whose arms and torsos and heads could pop out to be interchangeable. To be made anew. How many times did I snap and unshape the forms of girls to get the end result I wanted. How many times did I teach myself what is, is not always. I remember the What’s Her Face dolls with smooth, blank complexions I could stamp their expressions on. This one is surprised. This one is happy. This one has stars for eyes and an eye for a mouth. The stars were permanent marker, the eye easily removed. My mother did not buy me anymore of those dolls after that. She would tell me not to cut Barbie’s hair because it did not grow back; I could not understand her anger when I cut my own bangs with clunky construction paper scissors. I thought we both knew it would grow back. It must have been the shock, of my swift reveal from one face to another. She must not have recognized me. I was not allowed to cut my hair again. Continue reading “A Catalogue of Small Shatterings by Makensi Ceriani” →

Baroclinic Instability by katillac tweed

this song makes your kisses so wet

pull the moon out just to watch me win again

cover me in sleep and ticket stubs

and message sent

i was better when my haircut was so tom petty ‘89

i knew all i needed from open pages on your floor

remember sketchbook boy with the nice lips

when intentions only tried to find us

the overestimation that

we weren’t dumb enough to return

again & again & again

a cement truck tipped off on your street

centripetal forces and spells broken

 

i’m so loose after that fever left

pull the moon out to see my shower filled with wristbands and beer cans

this trajectory doesn’t promise much but when i glance up i receive enough vindication to continue

and enough light to see my name on endless married middle-aged women full of regret or curiosity or boredom or

 

sometimes i’m sitting in front of a horizon 5pm to 7pm lovingly watching a water skier all poised all shore to shore like it’s the most natural thing and i ask my soul if she would still know smoke signals even if neither she nor anyone else at a reasonable distance could possibly decipher them

 

Continue reading “Baroclinic Instability by katillac tweed” →

genesis by Clark Chatlain

out of the gray afternoon it might begin—the creation of the world. in the sound of a snow shovel scraping on ice and in the slush that remains a kind of ex nihilo is generated. from nothing. certainly from nothing. in the birthing of worlds there are no principles only the appearance of that which did not exist before and that now is. that now irrefutably is. where once the cosmos was simply gray expanse and the waters then below, or even the gathering of all things in one small, great magnitude, there is now the gray afternoon. no diving for worlds in the great sea. no trickster. nothing. a flock of dying geese crosses the new sky in a v that tapers to oblivion. a dog howls to no answer in the distance. his leg is broken and he is looking for a culvert to hide in. surely, they have come. in this world the names are stripped one by one and a first and last lonesome forked creature with twelve fingers and no face ticks off the forgotten. ah, yes. this swirling mass of creation, this pool of dim color that rises in the deep of the gray and seems to nod to the cracked moon above—this is genesis. the names fall off each and each wanders to their glory in a desert of rock and gray sun. a world. a new world.

 

Continue reading “genesis by Clark Chatlain” →

Two Pieces by Erin Calabria

Ten Sentences

 

I. Rowing

I am setting out on this water not to drift but to row, since this not loving you has drawn from me almost as much as loving you once did, and nothing is as full as a boat by itself in a sea that does not end.

 

II. Barn Ruin

We found it at the edge of the woods that August you wouldn’t touch me, just a skeleton of walls and poison ivy climbing all the way to the caved-in roof, triple leaves bigger than hands and glossed to the point of dripping, and it was almost pretty, all those edges hooked against each other, baring back a tessellated light, just as long as we didn’t come close.

 

III. Tide

I was not afraid you would hurt me, but that you never would, that you would never even peer between these ribs I’ve hinged apart for you, until the wind will do to me what it does to all soft creatures left behind by the tide, and the only sound my throat can make will be the sound of robin nests unraveled in a storm.

Continue reading “Two Pieces by Erin Calabria” →

Ash and Stardust iii: Reversed Readings

Ash and Stardust, a monthly column by artist and writer DHIYANAH HASSAN, explores the intersections of tarot with healing and creativity. These are personal essays and articles sharing experiences of growth as someone who has recently found a deep connection to tarot. You can read the rest of the pieces here.

Slow your breathing, get upside down. Go ahead. Find a comfortable seat, couch, or bed to lie on where you can dangle your head, shoulders, and half your torso upside down. Your arms over your head spilling to the floor. If this feel awkward, stay with that feeling.

Stay with it for a couple of minutes, the bowl of your skull filling up with blood. Then slowly, taking care of your back, rise. Close your eyes. Keep breathing. Feel the juices in your body waterfalling back into alignment.

You learn this in yoga, to let the blood flow in the opposite direction for release. Getting into positions that make you feel trapped in your own body, trembling from uncertainty – where the only instruction is to slow down, breathe. You learn to involve yourself with the situation rather than with the idea of escape. Make friends with the conundrum and that will give you the tools you need to return to yourself.

I do this – sit upside-down and breathe – to relieve headaches or migraines. It doesn’t always get rid of the pain but it helps me manage it better. This is how I view reversed readings in tarot spread.

Continue reading “Ash and Stardust iii: Reversed Readings” →

Jack by Gene Farmer

It was for Joanna Newsom that I left my wife and children, all of whom I adored more than anything in that world which I left behind and to which I will never go back. My defence is sound, you’ll see.

I’d checked myself into the hospital, just like they tell you to if you’re experiencing difficulties in breathing, have a tight chest and your head is spinning. I passed swiftly through triage and onto a bed where they wired me to an ECG, took blood and then abandoned me to crisp blue curtains and the metronomic beep of an ignored monitor. Continue reading “Jack by Gene Farmer” →

7yrs bad luck by Richard Biddle

this splintered

self, always

 

there and not

there—all ways

fragments

 

too close

to truth

 

his

portrait

 

ear-splitting

hairline cracks

 

eyes—iced-over

puddles

stepped

into, smashed

 

nose, broken

punched in

like a code

 

pupils;

dead flies

captured by

misshapen webs

 

frown thrown

off guard

 

skull-shatter

piece by piece

 

within his

lashes

 

a universe

on the blink
Continue reading “7yrs bad luck by Richard Biddle” →

Two Poems by Anna Wall

Of the sea

 

I was not formed from earth:

A dirty rib, used and scratching.

His name wasn’t on the birth certificate.

 

A womb of one’s own, forged in a locked room—

Nourished by sadness and

the shame they made her feel.

 

The sea always felt like home,

wind born waves held me.

Rocked me to sleep in a salted cradle.

 

Sometimes the monsters would come—

Emerging from beneath,

threatening to take my legs.

 

They never could, and I floated

eyes skyward.

Wishing I could row.

 

Continue reading “Two Poems by Anna Wall” →

When Food Goes Bad by Kelly Froh

My younger brother just scheduled bariatric surgery.

They will reduce his stomach to the size of a banana.

He said he can’t go another decade being heavy.

He asked me to remember when our parents got divorced, when he was 10 and I was 15 and I said, “See ya later!” as he filled time and loneliness with dry cereal and Swiss cake rolls.

I tried to commiserate, even though I knew I risked insulting him, since his weight issues have always been much greater than mine — said we both snacked way too much, and paired it with convenience eating:

Hamburger Helper on the countertop was mom telling us what’s for dinner

And award systems:

1 visit to church on Sunday = 1 sausage biscuit with egg at the drive-thru

We fell into negative routines: Dad yelled at me, I yelled at my brother, and then we nursed our wounds together with salt, sweet, repeat. Continue reading “When Food Goes Bad by Kelly Froh” →

Photographs of Bristol & a Poem by Jason Jackson

Jason Jackson 1

 

Someone is whispering

 

Someone, somewhere is whispering,

blue thoughts to the sharpened night,

leaving words born of the bottle

to shrivel under sleep’s new weight.

 

Thin syllables drip from bitten lips

moist with gin and clumsy kisses,

and a tongue lolls, slug-like, slurring,

while only the sliced moon listens

 

to the promises and prayers the night

drags from that full, unguarded heart.

There! Someone is whispering

and your new, cold day has yet to start.

Continue reading “Photographs of Bristol & a Poem by Jason Jackson” →

Sing a Song of Ever Changing Perception by Michelle Diaz

There was the time she posed as a proper person,

up at seven with organised eyes,

spinning the wheel of coffee heart and computer clack,

a life in neat multi-coloured folders.

 

An alarm went off in her pocket—

and now the world stank of Boots’ perfume and cigarettes

she spoke in fluent Bacardi Breezer

knew every bar in South East London

flew through the day to get to the pub on the other side

until life became a barman that would no longer serve her.

Men with magnet mouths waited for her to exceed her limit

found ways to climb inside.

 

Now she sits like a stale buttered scone

who nobody wants  to pick up or eat

or even look at that way.

 

She thinks this is delicious and funny at the same time.

Continue reading “Sing a Song of Ever Changing Perception by Michelle Diaz” →

Three Poems by Samuel J Fox

Bubble-Wrap Boy

 

I fall in love with every girl I float by next to on the street. I was born to die, and, though everyone is, God must hate me. My skin is made of the thinnest material. It resembles bubble-wrap. I’m bumpy: a translucent boy opaque, cloudy, with lust. I’ve been punctured before. All my hot air, all my inner workings, pour out like confessions. I’m absurd and yet I want what everyone else wants. I had a date the other night with a girl with eyes like needles. She probed my life and found nothing but wrinkles. She hasn’t called. If I ever feel the pressure of a pair of lips, the fingers dangerous along my malleable spine, the soft, rose quiet of pleasure and the death at its end, I think I might die anyway. I can’t hold scissors and run. I can’t hold anything too beautiful for too long because I know, if I trace its edges, I can die; then again, I feel this should be a common thing. People might consider the way it changes us, if more people were murdered by the sharpness of beauty.

Continue reading “Three Poems by Samuel J Fox” →

The Transformation by Emma McKervey

When I track the narrow paths which hide behind fences

where elder and trolleys and abandoned bins live

I know that this is cusp, this is a finding of a way for life

to rise from old potato peelings and discarded toys which gather there,

anticipate their transformation into something more,

but never quite catch the moment, though sometimes I glimpse

the heaving of a sigh beneath their own broken weight.

If a stag were to lose himself here he would turn golden,

summon me, and I would follow until he and I were one,

the hunter and the prey, follow where there are no fixed paths

through death, through grief.  I reminded my father of a time

a stag bounded in front of his car at dusk, but he wasn’t sure

if that had been my dream or if it had belonged to him.

 

Continue reading “The Transformation by Emma McKervey” →

Stealing Sleipnir by Alison Lock

In Nordic mythology Sleipnir is Odin’s steed, the foal of Loki and Svaðilfari

 

I am fastened to the skim-race of a sly night.

Shadows fall, tin pots clank, slab-roofs trill.

My eyelids stutter. A silhouette before me – equine-like,

up-folded wings, serrations of fine spine-feathers.

A shadow-foal, a rider with a ghost-drawn face, lines

ploughed by a brazen sun or a blistering frost.

 

There’s the fit-fickle thunder-hiss of a merciless wind: all clinker,

the slag of irradiated soil, metal shards, eyelets, pinions,

grease, the multifarious detritus of battle. Odin seeks his revenge.

 

I run from the ankle-snatch of tumbleweed. Weightless. Slipping

through a crack of light, I cross the threshold

in a screech, as if all nesting owls have been released.

Continue reading “Stealing Sleipnir by Alison Lock” →

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