Category: Issue 6 / Autumn 2014

I SEE WHAT YOU MEAN translating Sign : violence & superfluity   CO: In the 1950s, that pinnacle locus of well-to-do Western nostalgia, the mentality pushed in Deaf schools was “don’t sign—people are watching” (Manning & Wolffram, 2006). This new kind of grotesquely physical communication was frowned upon by those (perhaps) well-meaning specialists who would… Continue reading Celeste Oram & Chris Holdaway

Gone Warmed bones/sticky face/dinner time Soft bread, salted gristle, limp lettuce Children chatter, louder than gulls/missing mother, therebutnotthere Girl with grey eyes, anemone hair, webbed toes Her greasy palms/her mother’s dress/leaves her mark Totters over burning grit/water’s edge/open my mouth/she dives     Untitled Imagine ships. Imagine journeys, arrivals, multi-coloured roofs and heavy air, the… Continue reading Lauren Strain

Parts They pulled her teeth out And the sky stayed blue We aren’t together But they’re sending in a robot   They hammered her jaw And the calves are thirsty You are not sure The blast knocked him over   Jowls puffing swollen Only briefly, to save water I cry in the shower I’ll go… Continue reading Darian Woods

Before, this (or researching lino before making prints) lino is flooring material lino is an assistant referee in football lino lakes is in Anoka county lino was a character in Mamma Roma lino was an Italian actor who starred in French movies lino was a Venezuelan musician in the Wars of Independence lino is/was patience,… Continue reading Elizabeth Welsh

Did All Voice Vanish With You? Just out of London a hundred-yard plank-road. They put dogs to death down there. Flat ground that’s as dirty as the rest of the footpath. Middle-class people generally shaking hands. Abandoned on the roundabout. A woman’s body in a magnificent pose. In my room a fold-up washstand and shaving-glass.… Continue reading Shane Jesse Christmass

Orpheus and Eurydice On the way home, vast kingdoms’ silences. dim light from the lakes below. A deal made with bare hands and no fabric. steep stairs, in grief and in wild hope suddenly, a madness – Forgetful, yielding in his will, looked back At his own Eurydice Darkness falls on my swimming eyes      ❖… Continue reading Erena Johnson

An Oyster Catcher And down by the sea I watch you watch the birds Never no more to hold you In a black lost space Waiting for the fever And down in the creviced rock I run through broken shells Think of the fast feast With my back to the sea The oyster catcher watches… Continue reading Rebecca Nash

BOUNDLESS INFORMANT for Aaron Swartz I. I open my computer and return to a bridge where the sky repeats. Below me, dogs are running through green water modeled in two shades. A third layer of darker brown provides the illusion of downstream motion. I start firing nails before I reach the other side. Their white… Continue reading Alex Mitcalfe Wilson

As I lay dying in the afternoons As I lay dying in the afternoons, and then for a short time in the mornings, I took to laughing almost inaudibly to myself. These outbursts were timed with Helios’ chariot. As dusk and dawn clattered overhead certain of my memories stuck fast in his wheels and went… Continue reading Rachel O’Neill

ONE HUNDRED ACRES (RE-ENTRANCE) fraction-clotted this re-read this pedigreed English double old serum surfeit new Who-Bear entered One Hundred Acres lawn-clotted, the green of am-bushes Aren’t gory Are tautegory am-bushes, these woods [I] knows, blistered AM something else, early like petals of mushroomed bullets extended chokes / trunks & palm-swell soft-recoiling One Hundred Acres leafy,… Continue reading Paul Cunningham

from Autobiography of a Marguerite   The doctor just said there was no cause and no81 cure, and if I didn’t take those drugs I would end up in a wheelchair82 I felt embarrassed when I had to buy food, The first time I wore my mother’s shoes, I broke my ankle My sister wanted… Continue reading Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

Deleuze To know the difference between an object and another object is to place long reeds of grass between your teeth. The value of simple tasks like decomposition become a complicated thing when viewed through this prism. A man sits in a chair by the window and waits. Another man leaves the hospital with one… Continue reading Craig Foltz

malady As our ancestors did before us we claw at ourselves and each other, we swell, seize up, snipe and bitch, hating each other for cytosines and thickenings, for the errors of general practitioners, for long nights awake without medicine. You scratch so hard you bruise yourself. I give away hours of night to the… Continue reading Hinemoana Baker