The confrontational question ‘what advice would you give to your former self?’ is usually met with angst, an awkward laugh and regret. Perhaps this is just me, but the initial jerks of discomfort I feel when I think about my younger self is mostly down to how different I think I am. There is a strong dissociation between that person then and the person I am now, and the most prominent difference between the two is the way I view myself as an Indian person.
As a way to process the chaos and beauty of 2021, we asked the Clitbait community to share two photos of their past year, inspired by the prompts of ‘Movement’ and ‘Stillness’. Have a scroll through the beautiful photography submissions we received…
The years coming will challenge you in lots of ways but they will make you stronger and appreciate just how many people you have around you. The pandemic makes you sit back and look at who and what are important to you, you’ll howl with laughter despite everything and realise that your parents are actually pretty awesome to spend time with…
You are going to cut your hair. Because you will grow restless. You cannot go out and no-one comes in. even though you won’t be seen there is a mirror in the bathroom…
I read a whole novel this morning,
An hour before heading in.
I did all the dishes from breakfast,
You hoovered and I did the bin.
The walk from the meeting was freezing,
But I’d bought new gloves last time you came,
Two people who knew me from James Joyce alone,
Asked me about changing my name.
I’m finding it strange to be calm now,
My body’s not quite sure it’s true.
But books still surprise me and gloves are still warm,
There’s dry forks and filled forms, and you.
By Levi J. Richards (he/they)
This poem is inspired by ‘The Orange’ by Wendy Cope. To see more of Levi’s creative work, check out @doorajarcomics on instagram.
A young man walks across the snow,
Which creaks and breaks with every step.
Far off,
A grey-haired woman holds her face up
To a sun that drips gold;
A future, suddenly,
Which stretches out before him —
Complexity unravels
Into sun, and face, and cold;
And benches ringed with mud,
And time enough to grow old.
Reshuffling cards on the sitting room floor,
A precious vignette – 6 seconds, no more.
Captured by luck,
On an ordinary day,
I press play and press play and press play.
I’m fascinated, by the way you can hear,
Each one of our laughs – you can match us up clearly.
Like you can pick out
Individual joys,
A friend’s face in the crowd of the noise.
She said:
“It’s all gonna work out. D’you know how I know?’
‘Fate’s given me something too good to let go.’
So she’ll bring me back,
I know it for sure,
To the cards on the sitting room floor.
Cinnamon and saffron
A dash of cinnamon and one of saffron
What does blending the two leave you with?
I am not so sure
A hybrid not tasting like one or the other
I am a mixture
Rather pale but with olive undertones
Echoes of honey and of sweet rose syrup and mild summer nights by the Caspian sea
Meet echoes of winter sleigh rides and gingerbread dipped in hot mulled wine
They make sure to tell me that I am not one of them
Not pale enough, not dark enough
Too pale, too dark
Oh are you sure you’re from there?
Can you really speak the language?
Your accent is very good – how come?
I must grit my teeth and say what I always say
I belong here
I am you
Experiencing rejection from my own makes me restless
They are all I have
But I am made to choose
In the hope that I am chosen back
Can’t you see I’m one of you?
I dye my hair to make it less me – maybe now I can fit in?
I am uprooted and I uproot myself
I can never have enough
There is always something else for me to try
Some other soil to plant my yearning fingers into
I worry for my children
If I have any
Will they feel at peace? Will this be their norm?
Or will their discomfort be greater than mine?
A pinch of cinnamon and one of saffron
I must sometimes pull myself out of the whirlwind of sounds and smells and sensations
Take a moment to feel
To think
Of how I have the riches of the world within one heart
How cultures mix and mingle within my blood
How I may not belong to either one of them
But have claim to both
Linda
An Ode to the Slimy Things in my Sink
I wet my porridge pot, the king
Of slimy things, and relinquish the responsibility
Into the heaving sink.
The glutinous onion jam from last night’s soup
Stares me down with shiny eyes—
I cover it with disdain,
Creating a small volcano of sink water.
Insidious drips pervade,
Unnoticed but for the smell,
but then In a couple of hours, the floor
floods, Littered like a polluted
beach and
The pots and pans are floating an
inch, The ramen from two nights past,
Grabbing my ankles, like irate
seaweed. The salt spills into the mix
And I might as well be in a fetid
ocean, Now that the mackerel,
In various stages of decomposition
Begin to swim up the pipes.
A mighty gurgling is heard—
I scramble to the kitchen table for survival
As a slew of wet food spurts forth from the sink. The
water is a murky shade of brine,
The teabags are swimming in shoals,
And I am finding myself swiftly covered In the
reeking remains of last week’s dinner.
Flora Leask
3am, Listen
Perhaps silence is best
Ill-planned timing
No words
Crafted words fall on deaf ears
Only human
Like a breath
Instant heat immediately cooled
Here then gone
Leaving emptier words
Tune out the noise
Clarity [Perhaps silence is best]
Like a Breath of fresh air
Here
Softly unnoticed
Leaving as it came
Alone
Fiyin Fakunle
Unfiltered
I wonder what it would be like to truly see
Without the bias
Without the misconceptions and force fed perceptions
To breathe unfiltered
To speak unfiltered
Simply speaking
To be Honest
In our words
Our Actions
Our lives
I wonder why we all clamour for the past
Its dead and us with it
I chose Life
Terrifying but real
Maybe I am just a dreamer
A lost sheep
Or maybe
Some Fresh Air
Real Fresh Air
is what we all we need
Fiyin Fakunle
Last month there was a minor kerfuffle in the internet spaces when Boris Johnson said he would not support expanding the definition of hate crime to include misogyny. This was mildly controversial, with some protesting that it was a crucial step to aid women.
I want to talk about something that’s been on my mind for a while now. For many years now, it has been a staple rhetoric of the queer liberation that nobody ‘chooses’ to be gay: a backlash against those who call it a ‘lifestyle’, who try to push conversion therapy and deviant labels on us.
Meet the Clitbait Team: an interview with Peggy Mitchell, Graphic Designer
As my time at university comes to an end, I look back at moments that changed my education. From relative deprivation to conflict theory to homegrown vs lone wolf terrorism, the first year of university would hold lessons I’ll carry with me all my life as a politics enthusiast. But nothing could prepare me for the lessons of the summer of Roman*. This was my first brush with heartbreak and politics of the real world.
“weird girl with gross habits”
i pull, i bite, i stretch, i claw
at the insatiable itch
knawing at me for 14 years
my cuticles bleed
my swollen lips pulsate
i weave a rug with the hair from my scalp
i’m weary from holding the burden of my self-inflicted disgust
yet still, i pull and i bite and i scratch.
every pore on my face is an endlessly fascinating black hole
examining each follicle on my head makes me feel as if i were a scientist, quietly dissecting myself
my body is infinite
a whole universe exists underneath my skin
an endless garden of eden
until the spell is broken
and i’m left mourning
wondering why i willingly drink my own poison
i bathe my wounds, but i bathe them with salt.
if i make peace with the itch,
if i write a poem for her,
if i tell her she’s beautiful while i gently stroke her back
then, perhaps she will dissolve into sweet rosewater.
i bathe my wounds, but i bathe them with salt.
if i make peace with the itch,
if i write a poem for her,
if i tell her she’s beautiful while i gently stroke her back
then, perhaps she will dissolve into sweet rosewater.
Dara Minogue
Here in the UK, life appears to be returning to at least some semblance of normalcy. Pandemic restrictions in England are gone; in Scotland, whilst masks remain, there are no limits on gatherings. Nightclubs are opening up again. Students are going back to universities.
fire, burning
there’s a fire that makes up my very core; raging and thrumming, it constrains yet consumes, fueling my every reason and it is the life behind my every word. those words that can so easily be laid prettily onto paper. in speaking, it is that fire creates and nurtures the venom that drips from my teeth as my sharp tongue lets loose with a snarl.
and when i do, i snarl with due respect to that heat: a big “fuck you” to the guy-boy-imbicile that looked (looked, looked? peeked–examined–gaped–stared–scrutinized) my body up and down and asked how far my legs could spread.
it is the same fire that warms my body, and creates the heat my cool fingers slip into as they coax galaxies from my most intimate space. when walls (the sacred-divine-safe inviolable-heat) clench, i am certain it is only my fingers of which they are unwilling to let go.
and at the end of the day you can call my beautiful words ‘vulgar’ (and maybe they are (oh, they definitely are)), but i find no need to apologize for showing my power. i like the knowledge that when i move my hand between my thighs, it is i who has the ability to touch the universe; something you could never comprehend (nor will you ever learn to understand). the fire burning in my depths does not rage and rise with the purpose to scorn only for me to allow my voice to be meek. so in the inevitable turn of events where i cut you with my words, i will never not remind you that it is those very venom-laced words that are backed by sharp heat fueled by the fire that fuels the very wild- free, heat of my coveted divinity.
Caleb Sa
Have you ever told someone about a problem you’ve been having, and had the always-infuriating response, “Oh, that’s all just in your head”? Have you ever been told that by a doctor?
A couple of months ago I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw the same post come up again and again on people’s stories. Repeated posts are not unusual, but there was something about this one that deeply chimed with me.
Here I am again, I thought. Unanchored, unmoored.
Another break up and I felt lost. Where before there had been plans, dreams, ideas stretching ahead into the distance– a trip to Berlin, going to that new restaurant together, maybe a move abroad for our respective careers –there now was …nothing. Everything I’d envisioned and hoped for vanished overnight.
To Ovid’s Metamorphoses and back. ‘I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities.’ So starts the Roman poet Ovid’s canonical text about Greek and Roman myth, the Metamorphoses. An epic poem that informs most of what the western world views as ‘classical’ myth, the work is one of many fantastical transformations. It is often considered equally united by the theme of metamorphosing as it is by love.
One of the challenges that artists face is the expectation that their work must look a certain way. If they are lucky enough to find fame while they are alive, they are often constrained by the idea that only a certain style will get them money and recognition. As much as a starving artist is romanticised, no one wants to be one. Yet, must that come at the expense of their own creative metamorphosis?
Metamorphosis
Bloom serendipity in my hands
I’ll pretend it’s uncalled
My hands, worn out.
Today
I’ll try to sleep before midnight
Bloom before I wake up
Strike me in the path
where rainbow is a decorum
Spit me to the dimension,
in it, I could see time
accused with duplicity.
Bloom
into the night.
Into the night
which fail to surge my moan into a gender spectrum
I shall not see trees
painted black again
nor I wish to see my
breath lessen between my smokes
Bore me
if in melancholy, into the new space
before it’s too late.
Bloom serendipity
before my morning wakes.
Abhishek Arukuti
Pink Gouache
my orgasm is pink gouache,
dipped in water, bursting like a late sunset,
And it’s like fireworks,
the week I bleed,
earthy mud red.
this is a petition, for women,
to make the most of their ‘dirty’ blood days,
drink watermelon
and bleed,
and bleed,
coagulated pleasure,
pink, acidic,
vulgar.
fish, dipped in mustard.
sushi and rose water.
I can almost smell your disgust.
It turns me on.
this is a graph of pleasure,
a week long experiment,
a thesis, perhaps,
or a poem,
of fleeting sensations,
frantically bleeding unto paper,
blood, red,
pink pleasure,
oscillating this week,
between words and the clit.
a religious text for bodily dearth,
a pilgrimage site,
that smells like rust.
Bidisha Mahapatra
bidishamahapatra.squarespace.com