Where does it even start? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know How can I tell each apart? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know Where does it even end? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know Why isn’t my body my friend? I don’t know, I don’t know,… Continue Reading ‘Growth?’, by @RoseClue, @ Advanced Wizards, @Watercolors,
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When the pain goes I half suppose my flesh marked, transformed. A growth of lichen, say, with its warm turmeric tint; a layer of cool, silvery fish-scales; traces of the glacial burn of chain-mail melting into skin. Best of all a delicate, graceful articulation of relief on the site of its worst excesses: once the… Continue Reading ‘Metamorphosis’, by Marion Michell
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We pay the cable from the reel in staggers, jerk the squiggly line between the bushes, wake the minor aches, the none too vicious graters in the knee that love to grab us. Nothing lightweight in the gear for this one: the Black and Decker like a struggling toddler; the squeaky derricks of our legs… Continue Reading ‘The Grinder’, by Alan Horne
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She asks if it’s raining outside while she takes my blood pressure. I ask if I should take my shoes off before I stand on the scales. Sharp scratch, she says before she slides in the needle. Four vials of blood, all with sticky labels. I take the foil plate into the cubicle, slip on… Continue Reading ‘She asks if it’s raining outside’, by Jane Hartshorn
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you sit in my throat like a stone in shoe eyes dry as bone. bones hurt. why cry? these days that feel different but all so same. little belly wrenches all the time as though to be freed from something tonsils i should rip them from my neck. daft neck neck forever stiff but why… Continue Reading ‘NIGHT SWEATS’, by Blair James
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by Miranda Cichy The year I grew tomatoes I had no understanding that my body was failing, how the plants needed more earth than I could give them, out in the yard on a concrete bed, hunkered in pots the size of my skull. I fed them too early, I forgot to… Continue Reading ‘Poor Growing Season’, by Miranda Cichy
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D is for Dysesthesia It’s also for dictionary. I’m very fond of mine. I was given it as a gift in 1993. Emblazoned on the front are the following statements: • The foremost dictionary of current English: now thoroughly revised and expanded • 120,000 entries and 190,000 definitions • Over 20,000… Continue Reading ‘D is for Dysesthesia’, by Gillian Shirreffs
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Waking up at 2am Neck locked again Tilt forward, searing pain Then snap, try to get back to sleep A morning spent studying Sat at a laptop, the pain spreads To my shoulders, I stretch Moving head and shoulders, crackle Late evening and writing is done I think I might be too I move and… Continue Reading ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop’, by Amanda Steel
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The difference between lowercase-p, pain, and uppercase-P, Pain, is huge. Bigger than just a shift-key should make it. The difference between “Yeah, let’s go on a hike today!” and “I can’t walk today.” The difference between pain that ends, and Pain that just backs off for a while. The difference between the morning pills and the afternoon… Continue Reading ‘pain and Pain’, by M-S-Y
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PAIN AND ITS KILLERS relief is an acceptable inevitable storm-head alarm that holds back its rain and mumbles thunder instead a hard-sell of cotton ignorance on the sofa that’s the world MOON the days hurt and the nights – well they’re a VHS video-nasty trembling on pause I only hope the the moon knows why… Continue Reading ‘A MEDLEY OF PAIN POPS’, by ford dagenham
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