Jack on the 18:33

slither on silver
clench claws metallic
brace bodice tied tight
Beelzeboy out
a city’s own undoing
sincevillains now go Virgin

edible lattice in
strip lace up neon
cut river in ribbons
scissor South Parkway
hopscotch on hedges

schottische through tea shops
brow of backwater
In scarlet eyeline
over the mystery
leap and leer left

you see spike after spike
after light after light
onto pink sky amber grey
turning ambergris in the
stomach of a sea monster

that spat out a Port that
sings in rolled Rorschach
sub sound you catch your blue
flamed breath to pause and
revel in its grace.

Sarah-Lou Crewe

Becoming Primitive

It begins with ramming a flayed umbrella 
   down the throat of a street corner dustbin, 
with knowing the cost of a camel hair coat
   and the taste of an afternoon spent in the salon.
It begins with a flayed umbrella.

It begins with rendering your last goodbye
   into binary code, spitting it down an empty ear,
then hurling your oh-so-smartphone at the sky
   where stars are wriggling free of constellations.
It begins with a last goodbye.

It begins with breaking an ankle bone connected
   to the tibia, fibula and an aversion to prayer,
connected to two flat feet and a long-torn tendon,
   a future wheel-chaired into dawn’s rugged rise.
It begins with a broken bone.

It begins with peeking up a skirt of mist
   lifting its tattered hem and finding a lost tributary;
then building a fire that fills the air with signs 
   declaring: Today I feed my lion.
It begins with a skirt of mist.

It begins with dreaming you are blind,
   left to bruise and demolish the nest in which
your own dreams hatched and were duly clubbed; 
   waking in a field and yelling Ye soft pipes, play on.
It begins with blindness.

It begins with lifting your eyes as a rosefinch
   alights from a maple branch; with hearing
the rupture of frost in your hollowed-out skull 
   as a certain light folds the edges of a face.
It begins, and ends, with seeing.

Brian Edwards

Absence

(Chile, 2008)

the car crashed into him
head on at a red light
Francisco held onto his life
for a few minutes
surprised at his curiosity
to see whether now
he’d finally meet his dad
he knew him from photos:
Tall, long-haired, sloe-eyed
he also died at twenty-six :
Suicide
the police called it
but in those days
people disappeared
their absence still fills
the streets
empty chairs
living rooms
beds no longer slept in

they’re haunting
subways and bars
where the torturers
wash down the blood
with chicha

Claudia Emmingham

Mothers’ Day 2010

Mother, this is your sonnet. I give you
Words. You gave me the precious gift of life
Over half a century ago. To
Think that these words suffice, my father’s wife,
Shows, perhaps, the power we think they own –
As if mere sounds made with lips, tongue and teeth
Could replicate or reveal or make known
The feelings’ rich seams lying underneath.

Some dig for diamonds. There are mines for gold.
Black coal is hacked out of the earth’s hot heart.
Hewing at the language, so deep, so old,
Do these sounds from my heart turn into art?

No words can work on this most special day:
No precious metals from this man of clay.

David Wheeler