Punch views images from the lead-lined room of hunched, misshaped bones. Punch dances round the room – head on a pole, chest iron-maiden bound with extra spikes, hips a claggy crucible, wooden knees. Mismatched red socks sneak past frozen feet, up past stiffened ankles. Punch plays St Sebastian. Punch is put to the rack —… Continue Reading ‘Punch Views His (A/S) Body’, by Phil Hawtin
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morphine tastes nasty, ive called it ‘the devil’s cough syrup’ before. it’s sickly sweet and cloying, but you know what’s Weird? when you first take that spoonful into your mouth, it’s not that bad. not great, it’s still medicine, but it’s tolerable. only when you attempt to swallow it does it make its true terribleness… Continue Reading ‘there’s a metaphor here but im too tired to find it…’ by socks
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It’s 2am and my body is on fire. Every cell is boiling. Sweat creeps from my pores. It only takes a moment to soak through my favourite t-shirt, then through the sheets and mattress covered in yellow imprints. I can’t get any fucking sleep. This happens to me every night, up to ten times. Then… Continue Reading ‘Premature Ovarian Failure’, by S. L. Shuter
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hospital gown a flap in the back lights flickering tra la la obsessive screaming sounds of machines dissolving matter situated between two beds rupture of bodies declared missing delivered in close up by Jane Joritz-Nakagawa Japan Jane Joritz-Nakagawa’s most recent book is Poems: New and Selected (Isobar, 2018) on sale at Amazon
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Our minds latch to narrative, it’s how we learn, remember, interpret. I went to hospital to have a baby, I should’ve returned more, not less. Subtracted: my ability to rise, walk, move; In my pelvis, broken bone. What is the premise? What is the character’s motivation? What is the hook? That feeling: ochre, electric, waist… Continue Reading ‘The hook’, by Sarah Sasson
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she is in the sauna drinking coke and eating salted peanuts one knee resting against the hot wood, silvery hair damp and sticking to her shoulders we discuss midwifery and the what it’s like to catch a slippery baby in your palms she is standing in seal skin coat with white fur collar beside the… Continue Reading ‘hail mary’, by Nicole Schafenacker
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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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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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Worst days pain ricochets like shooting stars with pinball crushes. Oh the love! Releases fiery goo when ramming rib, tooth, bone. Skull reels alone; body razed by frequent flyer flares, flags pushed here there, declaring consternation zones. Each smart begets another, emulates, and brass bands march in new-laid grooves, playing their loudest, most discordant tunes.… Continue Reading ‘Shooting stars’, by Marion Michell
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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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