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[ issue 7 | poetry samples ] |
ARLENE ANG
A Driving Student Conceptualizes Rain
She flicks on the wipers.
There's a German grammar
among the clouds. She reads it, like a wine list,
a premonition of burning.
She starts the car. She imagines
amethyst elephants, eye sockets half-filled
with water, a wet paint sign.
Sick leaves taste the windshield.
It's sour, transparent. She turns a corner.
Left. On the rearview mirror, a basket case
of trees scuttling. She forgets
she has a foot. It's on the gas pedal,
a grenade of sorts, with floating
sailboat parts. She splashes
a tire into a puddle. She reads the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire
in the rain. The instructor moves
as if putting on his bathrobe
for the brakes. It's Friday the 13th.
She revs the motor
indirectly into a flapping red umbrella.
* * *
short-sightedness
interest in chess
mother
zeitgeist
character and personality
dramatic skills
Carlos
affinity with Dickens
repressed sexuality
car accident
second car accident
smoking
life in boarding-houses
Oblomovism
interest in cricket
interest in cinema
interest in Nietzsche
Nazism
amorous interludes
family ties
shyness
dislike of France and French
dislike of Germany and Germans
appearance
holiday in Margate
golf
taste in clothes
health
electro convulsive treatment
moralistic pose
Freud
death of several friends
misogyny
religion
snobbery
political opinion
attitude to homosexuality
attitude towards prostitution
wartime philosophy
mental deterioration
house-hunting holiday in Hunstanton
Hyde Park Gate
MGM
alcoholism
Paulette Goddard
Marxism
sadism
optimism
egotism
marital relations
depression
football
career problems
character changes
impossibility of domestic life
finances
walking
holiday in Greece
bounders relapse
cirrhosis of the liver
dream of a rhyming slang dictionary
* * *
LUCY HARVEST CLARKE
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home terror the journey a home two iron line long the sea in the blood bowl there must be intent yet attempt a terrible proxy she is like an X to the chest he a rose rope round the waist she can walk down a vacant train be pulled into a room and caressed we do not intend to hot open carriage in white or blue with eyes we do not suggest no better balsam than cuffed with light to drive the medics induce dreamlike state dream state like medication we do not attempt to tell the time but land on a clock in a station watch the craft melt matter and back must I alight to get myself off we attempt travel it feels like joy now we are alone with time we disgust ourselves with notes on travel we are alone with time sometimes narrative emerges as they walk to the edge of town a single dog barks at a dust spiral where A sun goes up and down we intend to board all trains out we work alone in our endevours still the beds in caverns and the nothingness touches but can never truly touch unbroken singulars under your silence will chaos this glass horizon undermade words are broken in a room where the room is an aerial diagram manifest in tents a scene investigates crime is our aspiration object removed subject known as blue now the colour of realisation Take your money out your mouth we approach the mountain toll take the bucket full of motions i’ll not fence like before night time is a schedule enough to live by things opiate like hammer i hold an arm out with a diamond of never from the murky green well of a song sing jack of nothing her negra crux is a palm on a hollow cheek i cross my heart no one said ivy as she unravels in a black boiling suit it was just a film those greased knees and elbows that wall run on a loop |
your random identity a list of odd one out sails of words at the corner of empty eye black mirror black mattress chaired in white reason we cannot intend to make the best of friends that language is pronounced like phosphorous
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