Réplica is stunning. It is fresh, endlessly surprising, and lyrically exhilarating. The power of its invention produces an excitement for the listener and reader akin to uncovering a world of possibility in language and images. These are such powerful poems: controlled yet white-hot with verbal energy.
—David Morley
Buy from Canal
Winner of the 2017 Melita Hume Prize
chosen by Anthony Vahni Capildeo
This is a distinctive, urban voice, which holds on to speaking and feeling throughout states of fragmentariness. Through the fractures in its language, perceptions, and experiences, things still truly matter. This is evidenced in the habit of thorough delicate observation that translates into the ability suddenly, and aptly, to evoke a pastel dianthus or a satellite signal, or to draw unexpectedly on earlier, traditional forms without falling under their yoke. It is evidenced, too, in the engagement with ‘secondary worlds’ of film and other visual art, not ekphrastically, but as part of processing everything: the various figures, situations, scenes and would-be-meanings cracking with violent variety, unassimilable chasms in friendship, unnameable proximities, and tender moments of weird connexion. Even if you have not lived lives resembling those depicted here, whether their worlds of work or experimentation, you know that these lives are aspects of yours. As the Melita Hume Prize is for a first full-length collection, it seems good to award it to a book which made reading feel like a fresh adventure.
—Anthony Vahni Capildeo
Buy from Eyewear
A conversation with Madeleine StackMontez Press Radio
and Fer Boyd on
Canal tour readings atHorse Hospital, London
Canal tour 2022Various
An audio reading forBath magg Issue 10
A poetry workshop on 'time, temporality and timing'Glasgow Women's Library
using archival poems from Sappho Magazine (1972-1980) at
A writing workshop on 'Tongues: A Riot!Eastside Projects, Birmingham
A Mayhem! A Rampage! An Ecstasy!' at
Canal readings atMe siento extraña,
A talk on the headless man, the acephalicInstitute of Impossible Subjects
and how to de-face a sonnet,
A reading for Jack Underwood'slockdown series
In Ludd Gang, Issue 20 (2024)
Liquid detergent in the laundromat. Again, but in a new way. Off with the shirt bright shirt now dry. What poltergeists this time? A sock up there, demonic sock stuck to the bowl the metal ceiling sways, sky of apertures. The water drains in June, my shirt is saved. A digital ad outside competes with its content’s bloody nose decommissioned from the face of a digital woman whole & round apart from her nosebleed that glitches & spills down Parallel Avenue in rainbow colours. The gas station has replaced its usual signage with rainbow colours. Though not in reference to the Cusco flag associated with the Tahuantinsuyo territories or to express gratitude to the province of Guayas where this Anglo company stole land in 1919 but for cheering gay oil gay oil for Barcelona’s Pride.
It’s evening here between 5 & 6
Junk calendar decorum help
The breathing billiard balls
Knocking apart I feel like nothing
My empty body’s pathway magnetised
Organise from the quality garden up
You can sort it in a sec
Misstep uplifting
The spider’s pose its face the circuit
the hay bales are getting packed
I try to learn your pace follow you
walk at your speed it’s so awkward
to learn
I used to feel embarrassed emphasising
the accents of stressed syllables in castellano
I might trip better to stay quick
& wrong
I give advice to everyone
the definition of a narcissist
he who is attached to an image of themselves
as complete the narcissist gives
not because they are generous
but because they need totality reflected back
at regular intervals like a scientist
of a certain tradition a novelist of a certain tradition
to refuse
the only thing you need while
rip-offs continue speeding light into the future
is to love your own ear
it is your anti-speed medicine
I put my ear to your ear
poets are so extractive their ear so desiring
los fardos de heno se embalan
intento aprender tu ritmo seguirte
caminar a tu velocidad es tan incómodo
aprender
antes me daba vergüenza enfatizar
los acentos de las sílabas acentuadas en castellano
podría tropezar mejor voy rápido
y equivocade
doy consejos a todo el mundo
la definición de un narcisista
el que está apegado a una imagen de sí mismo
como completa el narcisista da
no porque es generoso
sino porque necesita una totalidad reflejada
a intervalos regulares como un científico
de cierta tradición un novelista de cierta tradición
para rechazar
lo único que necesitas mientras
las estafas continúan a velocidad del rayo hacia el futuro
es amar tu propio oído
es tu medicina anti-velocidad
pongo mi oreja en tu oreja
las poetas son tan extractivas su oído tan deseante
Remember Gay Sundays?
We’d watch gay porn & use up
all our lube. The news trundles on.
Is this a day or some kind of
artistic medium? Silence:
nothing left of it. But here you are
reproducing hotly inside
my building where industry lives on,
by which I mean you could want me
but DO you want me?
You must answer very quickly
we have absolutely no time
to articulate why or why not.
The day explodes in all directions
when we suck up the backs of each other
when we blow each other back
to the beginning when we up-price life.
¿Recuerdas los domingos gais?
Veíamos porno gay y agotábamos
todo nuestro lubricante. Las noticias avanzan.
¿Es este un día o algún tipo de
medio artístico? Silencio:
no queda nada de eso. Pero aquí estás
reproduciéndote acaloradamente por dentro
de mi edificio donde la industria sigue viva,
con lo que quiero decir podrías quererme.
Pero, ¿ ME QUIERES?
Debes responder rápido.
No tenemos absolutamente nada de tiempo
para articular por qué o por qué no.
El día estalla en todas direcciones
cuando nos chupamos la espalda la una a la otra
cuando nos devolvemos al principio de golpe,
cuando logramos subir de repente el precio de la vida.
The faces of dykes you know can change
according to the season. Or depending on
the work we’re accessing, or how often
we’ve moved flats this year –whether we own
our own houses, are our own bosses or work
for violent assholes. And how are they doing
the children in our lives? Did they issue your
housing certificate? Did everyone get a visa?
If you see a dyke’s face in March you might find
a walk in the park, a bright daffodil or a house
on fire. O how the age we look flickers in the wind!
Some of us are slick and some of us are sick,
and most of us have been both and will be all our
changing faces.
Las caras de las bolleras ¿sabes?
cambian según la temporada. O dependiendo de
los trabajos a los que accedemos o
de la frecuencia con que nos hemos mudado de casa este año.
De si somos dueñas de nuestras casas
de si somos nuestras propias jefas o si trabajamos
para tipos violentos. ¿Y cómo les va? ¿A los niños en nuestras vidas?
¿Consiguieron empadronarse? ¿Todos obtuvieron visas?
Si ves la cara de una bollera en marzo es posible que encuentres
un narciso brillante, un paseo por el parque o una casa
en llamas ¡O cómo la edad que aparentamos parpadea en el viento!
Algunas somos astutas y algunas estamos enfermas
y la mayoría de nosotres hemos sido ambas y seremos todas
nuestras caras cambiantes.
In Ambit, Issue 229 (2017)
Size (the realm of the present).
Content (the territory around which we are x).
Colour (blue).
Bring up the lagoon we walked around.
Memory: I can’t remember what time of year it was.
Epistemic territory: water trapped in a basin.
We were in excess of it, climbing cliffs.
I thought we were going to die.
Love:
something you walk around.
The blue lagoon.
Frame rate: 4000 (so fast we can’t see it’s not a movie).
Holiday pics:
upload them in an array;
a folder marked ‘location data’.
The seasons
are not the universe
they are in the universe.
Find spring as (x), where ‘x’ is being born.
Find summer (growing); autumn (ageing);
winter (dying).
A revolution: the seasons trapped in a basin.
Take them out of poetry.
Put them in a museum.
The volcano shakes.
Background becomes foreground.
Time rises
as steam; an ellipse.
I lifted up my eyes and looked
– behold, queer plankton on YouTube.
The sea angel crawls and glides,
moving at the mercy of the changing currents.
(Now I’m ready to close my eyes)
It dodges the lines of predators,
knows where the edge of the collection jar is.
(Now I’m ready to close my eyes C’mon)
Its body is a beryl,
its face a strike of lightening.
(I want you here)
Its limbs gleam burning bronze,
its limbs are fused as a wing
(Now I’m ready to close my mind.
Now I’m ready to feel your hand.)
Its delicate encasing is tightly coiled –
(I lose my heart on the burning sands)
when the chemistry shifts it lets its body go.
(C’mon)
It swims still
Am I a type?
Can you find me in the smell of the sea?
In the forming sediments? Am I a common shape?
I try to relate to this conversation
but directly observing
the dead arm means touching it.
monsieur bayard invented the camera before monsieur daguerre
but failed to get funding from the government.
One of the earliest photographs is his
Self-portrait of the Photographer as a Drowning Man (1840).
I do not think I am a symptom
though the eye has tried to kill me,
I fight with him in bed. I am only interested
in my emotions in as much as I can find them online
in thesauruses. The places to be
disappointed or euphoric. But no one likes to be reminded
or surprised. Things spill
from your pocket, arrive
in the room before you do.
People stoop over
for fear of contamination. Chains of associations:
self-portrait of a drowning man; ophelia; hair.
I saw an exhibition about the history of the asylum.
Fell on my knees, demanded there were more labels.
It was such a mess. If there is a man
he operates as a cleaning agent.
You get more money. But what is a man?
The skeleton that prays.
The skeleton that says
sorry
for knowing what you know through touching. A word
touching you is an arm. Don’t try to read the invisible
through the visible. Don’t turn on the nose.
What frames the eyebrow but the actual eye? david beckham’s haircut
gets up on stage to apologise to all haircuts that came before it.
Someone was disappointed
by family then euphorically made a new one,
this is how we do it. kurt cobain’s hair
his distribution of lesbian looks. Properly citing
Italian men from the movies,
I put hair gel in my hair.
My wife loved it. Strands of hair
seen through a microscope
turn up tiny passports to illness.
sylvia plath proved she was a man
when she killed her wife. But she was the wife.
usa, britain, argentina. Divided.
Right now, a mouse punches a cat.
That’s how unnerving haircuts can be.
The secret of success is always working with the same people.
And I’ve tried.
I bring a photograph to the hairdressers.
my
here / yes /
my behaving luck /
my legally blinding / hanging on
to its job / thus department meetings and /
this is not a matter of choice / Donna, Marshall & Roy
has been / attempted merger of Ana / all the stuff in her desk is gone / today
suits feelings / and I’ve got some / I’ve veered & aggressed / when I learnt how / I’m
gonna / O / my team were subjected to downsizing / our personalities are children
/ who know for sure now / when he slammed the car door / that Dad is mad
In Magma, Issue 68 (2017)
A lumberjack shirt dries on the clothesline between houses in the good neighbourhood. My body is the good neighbourhood. Brother, don’t jump. Mum’s coming, I’m calling her. Come down from the edge of chemical transfusions of the exteriorising particle. We push our firm bodies up against theirs to get firmer. We go down to the kebab shop to watch the fight in my mouth. In my mouth we are the last people up and we live here. A hand touches the sun through a skylight, brushing a wind chime of weathered glass. Whose house, whose h-ou-se is this? It’s Thursday. I put on a lumberjack shirt. Take it off. Hang it up. Take it down. Put it on. It’s raining worlds. What words? What us? The sea is drunk with his green beard. There is salt in the sea, salt on my lips. I drink salty tea. Whose party is this? Being here or not being here takes such imperium over us. The effectiveness of the campaign is in making us think blood is water and water is blood. The importance of the road is the density of traffic in search of gardens. Brother, we are blooming into something in a garden, bordered by hedges that meet in lines that make a grid that the searchlights show up at night. A healthy mind is a body in transit, wading through provincial swamps, skyscraper fogs, sparkling sandwiches, looking for proof.
Package tape taping barrel edge. Head touches lid. Soggy packing tape doesn’t stick the lid down. Messages decanted into envelopes. Lick the edge down to send it. Spit swelling, spurting over microphone, through the tape. One in every home. Towel dripping speech shaping audience. The most complicated organ is the audience. Three parts: rural, suburb, inner. Licking, beep beep in my hands. Kissing you in the street. Traffic of saliva through the town transforms the width of ducts: tear, tube, auditory. Hands in my water tank, sealing it. Love’s a dangerous word. The electrical variation of what I’m trying to say: three small bones. Everything drilling in the city. Couldn’t get back to the flat in time, police were there. Door boarded up with wooden planks. ‘Timing’ says cockroach on the curb. Rain comes unplanned, in patterns.
In Datableedzine, Issue 8 (2018)
little red ball of taste accompanies espresso callous raspberry served, it’s fake please dip for taste are you kidding me I kick the stirrups gallop through the rococo style restaurant giving diners the finger, stealing lemons from their toothpicks for my sippy cup it began when we found the shale tooth I can’t tell you exactly where definitely at the curve of the road where we uncovered the clue dusted off the earth with our little dig brush proof we would need wigs proof oil is moving backwards (first time then being) we picked out blue dresses to baffle the surveillance system stumbled down la rambla spreading rumours about our barrenness and how we were depressed (we sort of were) we plucked our old jeans off found something new a coin in my equestrian boot a pussy in my shoe little eyes like twenty-five imbued in the wallpaper we’re watching you with our fifty limbs we’re coming for your air miles your furniture will fund our movement (we had wigs on, which enabled us to ascend to positions of great power) I don’t know compost from art but I know what money is and what the weather feels like I bite hard on my mouth guard, start spinning I don’t want to wait by working I don’t want work to be wanting I want to get paid for everything every time I move towards this paranormal radio sound like waaaaaaaaaaaa wuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh whooooooooooo it is me who is delivering your cucumber by drone, delivering your cucumber by self-driving car I want to get paid for that searching for the address of where you are on maps you find a list of things you have done since 2009 written by you it’s only 30% true when we speak on skype our bodies are our voices a person is a number of sparkles going out quicker or slower, you are everywhere green, red, gold blue fading into dark I am holding you colours of the evening colours of Christmas on TV our souls are the TV no one watches anymore and Christmas is the art sometimes the news is on sometimes you watch and watch and watch me
Rebecca’s poems come from a place of excitement. Not the peppy, enthusiastic kind. I mean exciting at an atomic level, electrons vibrating and knocking. Her poems often have to stop themselves, ‘hey’ or ‘no way’, ‘are you kidding me’. The poem is something hotwired, hijacked, it’s kind of like an action movie but the action is thought and feeling. As a reader you duck and cover and go along with it. You have to let yourself lose your sense of location at times and keep up but that’s just where the poems are, as moving objects. I like to focus on that feeling of movement, or of being moved when reading them, and in doing so I find I am moved, I find the poems moving.
—Jack Underwood
sitting at a table
waiting for the flogging
what is the difference
between remaining calm
and functioning at a basic
level
can take most of it
from gunshots to dialogue have no sense
of volume
but a thousand eyes
for classifying
how intensely I feel things
sweet
scared
these are things that can be measured also the timbre
textures that are familiar or unknown
In Deleuzine, The She Dogs Anthology (2023)
I read an article about elderly people in care homes in the UK being bulliedwannagotothetoilettogetherlessiesyouapooftaa memory from school my father’s voice just a joke sometimes the lines in ice are cracks from air rising up from below such that the surface resembles skin sometimes the lines are rings retired & scolded in a heart made of iron do I know any of these people? most are famous activists I check the article again, their names don’t ring a bell their faces seem familiar they are folded like mine creased with ink when I was born everyone loved me so I smiled or was it that when I smiled everyone begins to love me that baby’s old they say sometimes the wrinkles are veins such that the skin resembles marble or electric wires spilling from a building in a mad hot city or the lines are unbendable ideas twisted faces & feelings caught ice freezes in two styles you see you look like a Pollock painting no no a Rauschenberg the surface is not any kind of window to the world but a grid across which the line moves self-assured also afraid of its own contingency the lines do not point to anything least of all a person in that way we are all protected from the tiresome activities of explaining who we are a character has that tension like ice a deepening towards the bottom & a thrusting up the microscope is useless because nothing moves when frozen look freeze look freeze look freeze you’re moving
In Stickfingers FDBNHLLLTTFPARODY (2022)
Humbled we are to your hands skilled in raising a storm on Lower Belgrave Street your networks your inventiveness your style bars a thousand harms and lengthens life. We hold your genius at the centre of our Fleet Street culture, merely cultural is our love. Do not be distracted by television eating away at our market share, the persistence of our financial struggles, how the nation loves pictures but pays less every day. The Ordinary Voter will identify with you as your children are taken away leaving us free in the double sense to suckle for our lives are in danger too. Your struggles are the mirror we hold up to the lovely torrid changes in our own sexualities, things we feel but cannot name. The sweet beauty of your face secures our switch from broadsheet to tabloid. The placing of your sex in our hearts permits our assisted reproduction of Maureen the Mouth and something called the Ordinary Voter. You are our breathing feeling nut and bolt queer. We paint you even as the waning sedges play in the wind you beguilèd and surprised. We fetch you straight as an Echo by a running brook a Circe in purple robes or a Diana roaming thorny woods scratched legs one that bleeds. Curst will your mortal ears be to endure the din of our living situations the real voice of this exposé.
Your face flashes up I practically faint Cherrie fanning me, my brow the screen across which your charm flickers, my brain a balloon twisted in the form of your buff jerkin. I want it pressed to my thigh as I stoop to ordain Noel Gallagher’s parker jacket. Last night I dreamt that free speech advocates petitioned to fly a balloon of the mayor in a bikini over the city. The dream mayor said ‘yes’ as in my dream free speech meant ‘the right to circulate metalized plastics’. In my dream the rubber and latex that once belonged to queers, who know all about the plasticity of sex and what it means to parody the patina of plunder, all those glitters now belonged to the far right. In my dream ‘queerness’ meant the same as ‘democracy’: the good government of being governed as the sea is by micro-plastics under whose countenance pillage continues. In my dream ‘democracy’ meant the right of the far right to fly inflatables over the city; the right of the left to dive deflated into a car park; the right of the people to pick up scraps of fallen polychloroprene to make our own fuck dolls. I get enough together to make two, one of me and one of you. Me in a helmet holding a trident my Britannia heart screams you in a cape a cigar in your mouth pinstripes down run my town if not two have you been to Southampton, both my towns stand up for you the little hairs around them shivering.
In Canal, Issue 2 (2019)
because it was a full-throated ease
omitting no opportunity to present
just because it has been
the folds of the way
a four nookèd track
you have to say ‘snap’
at the right time
study and contention
harmonious inflections
time repeated its four qualities:
attention, erasure, drainage, the breath
a hare writhed, a horse flung, a crocodile licked
emptiness dulled the opiates dry
what divides each note that way?
what song of shorter faster ones?
the fifth quality: the word from which we get ‘consent’
sentire meaning ‘a feeling’
body be my teacher
body teach me
so ashamed how the body might do it better
we must learn from the body
the body is ancient news
so beautiful and desperate everyone writing to the body
I sat with my body
made fun of it
no body has written as good as me
I don’t care if you like it
(I could care for you)
I don’t give a shit what is commended
(you could care for me)
the poem accumulating sweetness answered me:
thousands of people in the English speaking world
had read hundreds of poems about nightingales
but had never actually heard one sing before
they began to evoke poems
buying vinyl records of birdsong
the human the human
how it chirps on the moon
that we might find it by a bird
with the code for its own demise
beauty and desperation (the errors of genre)
send this on or die (chain letters)
people love watching cooking programs
programs about redecorating your living room
how to get the best mortgage
we want to know about process
how is it done? we want to see change
cooking programs as the successful bending of the system
to the creative will of the people
I enjoyed cooking programs during the most alienated period of my life
I’d watch the instruments laid out
the sounds they make the clarity of use
the blender the fork the knife
the garlic sliced
the fire taking up combustible gas
the butter melting the spices pinched
their powers
so powerful
zhummmmm pitter pitter shpahhhhhhh
zzzzzz I turned to the screen
darkling I listened
totally surprised by this change
my delight in the cooking program
‘You are quite aware of the distance between
the cooking program and feeling something.
You nonetheless insist on the cooking program’
a name
that witching face
unbidden from the wood
like encountering an interface so exquisite you can’t believe it’s not real
although you also know on some deep level
it is the realest thing you’ve seen in a while
I placed the locket on the desk
the desk on the wall the wall on the house the house on the floor
each object rose from its location
the biggest moon in eight long years
the warmest February ever recorded
skills multiplied
my face fell apart my hands were left
I pushed them against the shore
smoothed the edges died to think
all the chatter left my mind
I didn’t even notice it leave
I remembered parts of me
behind the knee below the sun
the fingertip
the mouth of a slender glass water bottle
light fidgeted
summer crawled under a rock
bubbles winked at the stream’s brim
the river’s mouth stained white
energy cracked through the chimney
Sant Adrià’s thermal energy plant
sounds like a man banging an anvil close to me
when people are not being brave
when the fragmented day
when work inflames
when a lack of work looms
when the cleaning the cleaning
I whisper lines of poems to get to sleep
bring summer in
I was in a heavy mood
worrying about how to get everyone I love
a visa
confusing that with what I want
and I was alone
which is really a form of social isolation
I talked to friends
their advice was good like ‘ask for concrete things that can be accomplished
bearing in mind time’
rocks bowed down to the sand
the ramble of clouds the tram ride
shadows urged the sea to roll
an outlook cracked
the books on the bookshelf were fine
the sounds of the kitchen were kind
the kids in the classroom wondered
the mujeres, lesbianas y trans did kung fu
the institutions held meetings
where all the words were attentive
all attention was desired
all touch was petitioned
all obligations were respectful of our time
if this poem’s not that good it’s not my fault
it is the films of Barbara Hammer’s fault
or John Clare’s The Progress of Rhyme’s fault
it is the iron in the clay’s fault
the chalk the water the humidity
if this poem is weak you can’t blame me
in the middle of the night I replied to a member of the audience
who left the cinema angrily in the middle of Barbara Hammer’s
A Horse is Not a Metaphor
the artist was sick with ovarian cancer
her horse got sick at the same time also cancer I think
the footage suggests they accompanied each other
through treatment and recovery
the horse’s eye
they get better together to ominous cello music
close ups galloping hospital beds bracelets
stroking wading in the river
the strength of their muscles
the conditions of life of a domesticated horse
parallel the human experience of sickness
of being at the mercy of an infinite number of checks
illness and health are blurred
a horse is not a metaphor
because the artist asks herself:
what am I going through?
which becomes what are you going through?
but not what are ‘we’ going through
which is why it is not a metaphor
nothing is transferred over to anywhere else
the man had muttered ‘amateur’
the next day in the protest my banner read:
‘I have learnt the way of looking by heart
but I can also read the films of Barbara Hammer (thank you goodnight etc.)’
I am connected to an infinite number of things
in anger, constraint, fear and movement
surfaces are the essence of what I’m talking about
without words
I made all the surfaces mine
got into the logic of the surface and started organising
a recycling bin here a desk there
moved all my loose files into one folder
I took off my top
I like being alone
when I cried on my route many times
when I have tried to cry but tears don’t come
I say is this crying a connector or a blocker?
sometimes crying has the function of avoiding something you need to get on with
(a blocker)
suddenly I was behind the cry
in a room called bedsit
before I was born
my question frozen out to sea
my question escaped me
surrounded by silence small bits of work
we’ll help you
really? I have always wanted a teacher
I don’t have a style or it isn’t independent
I don’t have a single skill defined
it doesn’t matter you can have fame now
like setting out to tick off jobs
but finding the whole day lost
so my poem was distributed
despite the lack of garden care
stories of family where no-one was
I found my way back to poetry
hope turned on zoooooommmm dahhhhhh
there it is
still mine
I had a few friends to guide me through ambition
at first I would hide
thinking I had to choose between poetry and life
but there were books inside my house
my mum liked to read
so much she read a book a week
she was always chatting to me
she wanted to know what I thought about things
everything else was cordoned off
the rights of poets and nothing to me
a title I still feel ambivalent about
I have regretted showing it around
where pictures promised of the future’s powers
and the past’s magic
I felt excluded from this image
I went on a march and thought again
in spite of everything I still do this
sound poured into every shallow
deep winds organised the sea’s greens
an attitude flooded the stretch
no matter what these words sound like
they come from my chest
my heart totally plugged in right now
talent swelled
it was our ancestors who listened and who we loved
and who we deleted when they became
anthem, courtship or group password
let them push and push while I push on yours
you have to assume this poem exists
because of all the parents I have parented
and all the parents I’ve had
the number is finite (the body’s duration)
the possibility is infinite (the body’s durability)
not consuming exactly
but among its stuff and channels
I laid around lazily
without a sense of loyalty
loving partners, friends and strangers
pulling the network close to me
committed to its confidence
knowledge moved to the centre of my stare
visible in my stormy mood
how I’d look just beyond you
even my enemies couldn’t distract me
I still worshipped this stuff
fighting for indifference to be discontinued
that was my fight when I was young
I was just being born when I was aggregated
the curse of unfeeling
who was that who turned its eye and replied
it was warm when it was cold
I was creating it
I felt so much love for all devices
I was reckoning with every letter on my keyboard
I really loved each one
now everything that is happening online
behind every family a locket
beneath every face a frozen lake
a loved one’s eye a child’s eye
painted on the surface of an elephant’s tusk
after Albert died Queen Victoria wore
a locket around her neck
a photograph of him on one side
a lock of his hair on the other
on her wrist she wore eight lockets
a lock of hair from the heads
of each of her eight living children
lockets were also given to women
forced to leave their children
at foundling hospitals one half used
to identify the child the other half used
to identify the mother who’d have to present it
to get her child back sentiment
is for some people identification for others
I still have the right to feel
I can still speak as well as the greatest men
the elephant begat your royalty
I feel much better every time I say that
thank god for electricity
I created my own electricity for my thoughts and I kept going
it’s like when you turn your phone on I get ready
zzzzoooom dahhhhhh
by morning things get difficult
updates yourself yourself the audience
I started to get more work
that’s when I really appreciated friends
as I needed less I needed them
when unburnt feelings stood before me
the heaviest rain a hail storm
I felt like the roof
beauty smiled at me
friendship the paycheck
as soon as I thought it there she was I even loved her name
I wrote poems for her
my ambition turned to her
the only opinion that existed was hers
but obsession tried to hoist from love
something
all the qualities I liked I couldn’t pick for me
it took a long time to get
that love has nothing to do
with knowing everything
I left her alone so many people have
mistaken love for fame
but they were wrong about the economy
every self-cohering line
all narration love afforded
every act of centering we’re listening
the economy
so sadistically dressed-up
as your ideal parents
exclamations many faces
I basically know everything
desperation I hummed the sound
blazing beauty cruised through
a sweet location fell on me
a falling winter on my face
rest made of sheep’s wool
one thought took me
neat
I mostly married poetry
check on me
be my parent’s voice
it happened not at work but of its scarcity
help me poetry
the way in this town people talk about work
In Datableedzine, Issue 14 THE SONNET ISSUE (2022)
I awoke with curb in my mouth acrimony effigy I said
to my dove who was sleeping but I was feeling culled
fiction slide down my ratchet what it’d be like to pelt
from the inside out. these tinned goods, are they mine?
I can spree. it is relevant that rectangles filled my mouth
at the threshold of sleep & waking that I recalled their faces
as I came back up. is everything under the gun effable?
Cabins! the world is divided but the categories are inverted
pregnancies go inward spite pours in from flat packs
brought up from the well. the way is not warring but struck
in an age of content, a long win which is not the edge
of something but a loop back to essence when the names of
supermarkets sounded like freedom, I’m going to ALECEPHA
do you want anything? because they were in public space
SEE IT FORK IT WAY TO
BUNSON RYE & HEDGES
FUN DAY MONDAY RUINS
BE IT EVER MEAL DEAL
TIME’S A WINDY WAILZONE
CHRIS I DO NOT WANT TO
GOT TO HIDE YOUR CLEVER
AT THE LEISURE CENTRE
MEET U AT THE BUTTER
DOUBLE DROP IT STEP IT
LOST MY RING & SLAPPED HIM
HAD TO GET THE BUS BACK
WHEN I MISS I DIE WHEN I SEE I CRY
MUST BE ACEPHACING MUST BE ACEPHAILING
1. the sea unexpectedly parts as you greet it
2. the face as Southend peer
3. the face as the seals watching quietly at the end of the peer
4. a face unexpectedly expels your body
the face as capital the face as I don’t care
5. our happy faces (Dunya is pretending to be my dad
she takes me out on a fun day to the arcades
and I’m pretending to be her dad we do not know this at the time
it is only on reflection as we drive to the cinema to watch the new matrix sequel
after singing man I feel like a woman that we are reminded of our capacity to father each other)
6. if a face comes over for dinner you feel happy as you have done the work
7. the arcade is a place without faces only fun
8. a face gets up in the morning &
it doesn’t get up! you know this!
9. a face takes note of everything interested in it & blends into the background
10. a face once loved once ate once bred
11. a hairdresser ponders the incapacity of the face to fit the do
12. your mother turns to you as a sunflower faces the sun
13. what kind of sonnet does your lover write when your face is a wasteland?
14. you accuse me of being of the generation that takes things seriously
y a la vez virtually