maybe they look down
at their bodies as they left them
in neat rows, heads of wheat
crackling green and gold
essays | fiction | poetry | photography | art
maybe they look down
at their bodies as they left them
in neat rows, heads of wheat
crackling green and gold
She arms herself with the metal pipe of the Electrolux
with the precision of a marksman
(coffee, pastry,
food-words,
unfettered time)
Words words words black as a cat.
I just saw you in the periphery of
Manet’s Olympia — or maybe Cézanne’s
…across the bitter world, a sweet gift from Pachamama
like my father who taught me to feel
and press its skin: a map of lost worlds
For the good of the country we claimed their land & property. It was necessary for the people.
In the southern heat,
giddiness spread in a slick of sweat.
A stale and sweet smell embraced the girls
as they danced and danced
and would not stop dancing.
They rose up overnight
like a hallucination—
misshapen, pock-marked, deformed
littering the lawn in the dozens.
and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth
we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton