My most violent act: once ironing a spider. She had climbed between sheets on the ironing board And was resting in the pastel scent of laundry: A large spider, slightly prim, self-assured. I can’t abide violence. I can’t even swat a fly. The death of this meaty widow left a creeping stain And a horror … Continue reading ‘Ironing the Spider’ by Sasha Dugdale
Category: Poetry
Two poems by Rhiannon Auriol
Pink Cream he baked pink cream pies, down in Cornwall, summer of ’05 with the brushed milk sky and their shouts in my eyes. this was the last year, the last of all time, and he made a batch of nine while I burned on the side: the fruit came apart like a … Continue reading Two poems by Rhiannon Auriol
Two poems by Alasdair Paterson
Two poems from Silent Years Bleak House Dickens was in the house. Bleak to me, we’d say, jostling for bed space, warming up, while fog roiled off the monotype. Bleak to me. Whose turn is it anyway? I think it might be yours. I’d thought the sound of you hardly existed now, except … Continue reading Two poems by Alasdair Paterson
‘The Mermaid Aquarium’ by Cheryl Pearson
A month or two at most, I told myself; a place to catch my breath. The long, dry haul of my body’s bulk along the shingle, up the beach, the dragged slug of my tail a mess of scrapes. A wake of salt and scale all the way to the waterline. I can’t complain; it’s … Continue reading ‘The Mermaid Aquarium’ by Cheryl Pearson
Two poems by Alice Miller
Fourteen Mistakes ‘You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes’ Razumikhin, drunk in Crime and Punishment How we learned to create a thunderclap in a lab with dust and mirrors How we designed a clap to blast away every echo How we moved to new cities and wrote our addresses in loose font on … Continue reading Two poems by Alice Miller
Two poems by Christina Thatcher
Etching Even now she says the family moved because of me: my plump young needs, the better schools. I had to learn to read. She left Palisades the year they started selling horse meat in the cafeteria. I would have made the honor roll, she says, if it weren’t for that, and if I hadn’t … Continue reading Two poems by Christina Thatcher
Two poems by Khairani Barokka
medusozoa, neuropathic pain in kalimantan, a lake so inland in exile that jellyfish there have no sense of sting; divers swim at ease, brushing legs against ghosts. evolving out of our sense of poisoning tentacles is possibility; breathe this. the world is dying, yet holds both my enduring corpus and animals whose limbs have wept … Continue reading Two poems by Khairani Barokka
‘Changing Room’ by Rebecca Parfitt
At the photo-automat, I exchanged 24 selves for 24 frames. It started with a beret, then sunglasses, then I thought, what-the-hell, and started shedding. At the Saigon Street cafe I sat on someone else’s table and peeled the skin off a summer roll. Inside an abandoned margarine factory in Kreuzberg I pondered the face of … Continue reading ‘Changing Room’ by Rebecca Parfitt
‘Bloom’ by Harry Giles
Oh God, for you the feral beauty of punching a fascist in the face. For you the bruise as unfolding orgasm, the humiliation as scented whips. If when you watch you want to cum, that's OK, God: touch yourself! With your hand, God. Vow to learn to land that touch with the merciless precision … Continue reading ‘Bloom’ by Harry Giles
Two Poems by Marc Brightside
Still Wait for 2 a.m. and count to three. Listen for the waveform pulse, a dripping tap, bodies curdling metallic juices. Take a shot. Imagine thunder, jazzmen pounding, horseshoes running into drum kits, every ripple flicking beads away from skin. Wait until it slows. Allow the image to kaleidoscope: steam trains chugging, ancient metronomes, … Continue reading Two Poems by Marc Brightside
andotherpoems.com 