Clitbait

get out of my skin please

I want my crannies to nook for you
But you don’t even look 
Look;
I want my biomap fingerprints to interlock with yours 
Inexplicably the maze patterns slot in harmony
written for the other, waited two lifetimes for this chance meeting

Racing to the maze middle
I am discouraged
By your disinterest
Cheers or jeers would be preferable to this silence
I find myself the lone contender 
You are unfit to adjudicate;
Trusting the leaves on the left
They lead me out
Heart lead
Guide me to the end of desire

The heartstrings that make up my right ventricle 
You appear to have turned into a hammock
Summer months approaching
The sway pulling strings in all the wrong directions 
Transcending my corp-Reality into a grotesque puppet mimicry
More and more it swings and stings and disrupts the flow from my head
unto my toe
And it isn’t red within, there’s translucence for dinner
This I know
Because a slice of me is cut for the prizewinner 
The ones who made it to the middle grossly engorged
Their fingers ragged and wrecked from dragging through unforgiving foliage 
bloated, bursting, not seen to be sightly
Unseen in safety, for he has forgotten me
And our fingertips never even touched

But the incessant twitch that makes me dream of itching the scratch right out of my chest 
Is treated in waking like a Victorian asylum patient: tightjacket escape artists
My little lost mazerunners bravely perform their Sisyphean trope 
and I traipse about too, comfort-grasping the lighter in my pocket closer to these wistful fingerprints.

Leah De Mey (she/her)

You almost ruined my favourite song 

I listened to the Wombats today
Only to be taken back 
To the dimly lit parking lot behind your flat in Cowgate
Pushing me against the wall and whispering into my ear 
You say I am the best thing that you’ve ever seen 
My bare back digging into the wall but 
I could have stayed there forever 
My very own New Jerusalem

The chorus of the song I sing to day and night 
echoes from inside 
So do cheers of people playing beer pong 
They awaken us from our trance 
There’s nowhere to hide 
1,2,3, time to dance

When we enter everyone takes out their flashlights pointing them at us 
My head is in the clouds and my Converse in the gravel of the parking lot
You on the contrary 

You 
are on one knee 

I
can hear my heart breaking 

Everyone 
is cheering
 
This is all that I used to want 
And now all I can think of is
You just ruined my favourite song

The greek tragedy of all of this is 
You thought you were buying tickets 
To see a romantic comedy 
But I turned out to be your Antigone

Flash-forward and I’m walking through the all too familiar streets
As a prisoner sentenced to live my life 
On the land from which you’ve been exiled 
The smell of smoke 
From when we burned with bad intentions 
Still fills my nose 

On days like these
I write you endless poems you will 
never see

My headphones blasting that one song by the Wombats 
On repeat 
On repeat 
On repeat 

If you ever see this 
Please let me know
When you hear that song 
Do you still sing along? 

Veronika

The Curator

The scene has been set: museum opening,
The artist: Chinese, come to London last spring,
The decor’s exquisite, all gold and Art Deco,
Trays of canapés, tall-stemmed flutes of Prosecco,
At the room’s centre, she’s not hard to spy
With her red ruby mouth and her bright topaz eye
Head thrown back and laughing, with her hand at her neck, 
Hair a tight bob, hands with gold rings bedecked
In a fur coat and brocade (all vintage – all thrift)
Wrists jangle with bangles (Tracy Emin’s – a gift)
She’ll glide through a room like she’s riding a breeze,
Kiss and cry “My, I’ve not seen you since Frieze!”
She’ll hug and address you with “darling” and “dear”,
But don’t flatter yourself: she knows everyone here. 

She’s up at Tate or she’s down at the Met,
At Cornelia Parker’s, smoking french cigarettes,
Or out in South London, where that new Dutch film’s showing, 
Or a night out in Hackney – if Grayson Perry is going. 
Hostesses and hosts supplicate at her feet,
Beg her presence at this show or that meet-and-greet,
With her social grace, though, this isn’t so shocking,
Her sparkling wit keeps enchanted mobs flocking. 
She’ll check the black book where her diary’s kept, 
Ignore it, smile archly, then warmly accept. 

A crowd is a challenge, but she fears not the test:
For these are her people; this is what she does best.

By Levi J. Richards (he/they)
Instagram: @levijrichards and @doorajarcomics

We are all beating

Walking is an something I return to a lot
I once read we walk at the rate our heart beats
And create a cacophony with the ground
That matches the organ keeping us alive
Imagine if we all would walk in step
The earth would be one huge heart
Vibrating with the beating of billions 

On walks I see a lot of leaves
Always in winter and I want to imagine
each leaf inside has a tiny heart
That pumps water and nutrients and juice
Through each capillary 

I see squirrels and pigeons and gulls
I think of their beating hearts
The continuous rhythm
That propels one squirrel on her circuitous round.

A heartbeat moves in a cycle of seasons
Offering hope when all has gone awry and
the next day is so far away
Our hearts beat steady under our skin
Invite a beginning with the end of each step
A terrible chance
To liberate the me
from my four walled room
And flex my toes and think of gravel paths
That my feet can wander.
I like to begin
fresh from the next beat
Consider
And follow each route
my heart wants me
to feel and to see
the million hearts beat
the leaves and the trees
Tug me on a thin thread
Trembling.

Hannah Udall

when you’re feeling down

and don’t know how to take care

of yourself, go to where they sell plants.

quiet your heart. let the smell

of their freshness fill you.

reach out and touch their leaves.

one will find you.

don’t force it to, just

let it commune with the hurt inside you.

take it home. find it a spot in the sun.

water it, feed it, nurture it, let it grow.

let it take care of you as much as you

take care of it.

by august (in the wake of) dawn