Albert Pellicer

Named

Bird people human people ant people pebble people
latitude lost attitude loosening tongue lizard touch of dry sun
land of time skin granite gauge naked
cleavage undresses losing in sight speech tease leaves of thyme
herbs stem language words languageliquiditylanguage words
words of lips live
words of names noun
words of mouth
human being dog being monkey being legged quietness
tranquility liquid sand saliva equestrianequilibriumequinoxequation
equator
this is a word that is a word over here words
human being dog being turtle being ant being lizard being bird being
human being
moon with legs
named beings
named wings

Sophie Robinson

Bad Day 18/11/05

thighs bleed on the
tights to stick
or tights stick to the
bleed for thighs.
If only I was not
wearing the tights
from yester
day
(or was less dirty in
some other
way)
example: wish for a kiss and
receive a salt lick
later that afternoon:
cheeky little M
squeaks
and
creaks
me
sleepy.
Then:
DON'T stick me to your
rule I won't adhere to this
I n c e s t u I t y
(sickly promiscuity)
Even to foto copy my porno
Flik or ?
(foto verdikt -
gallik or fallik?)
even that hurts coz
you 'say' me my
place in you
(better: 'pay' me the
same as you)
START IMPRESSED
STOP REPRESSED
START INSISTING
STOP RESISTING
START ENLISTING
STOP DESISTING
& not you,
& not you
&

Slut Up Variation 1

fore)play with broke glass
small envelop utter submissive
lashes schoolgirl plunge video
tender bells drink holes

caught between contradictory systems
energise transgression viole(n)t dreams
hide behind clothe debase
consume undress (one small

error on her part)
trap within position inside
lost woman enchant Tokyo
much too crude under

tone of lesbian desire
sell self fifty fifty
lapse on mode of
thinking

bad boy button hole
septic sheets tell all
my own disgust appropriated
make fast excuse vacancy

mind still sea scope
Russian fur dissatisfy husband
proseitusedit for disposable underwear
m o m e n t o f d o w n f a l l

Severine severe serve persevere
service sever severed severing
seven selves sells cellar
seller sold cold kohl

Coexist co-exist coerce
purse purr perdition perdu
if only someone could –
sexed selves sink lower

lost to untouchable white
cheekbone and eyeline scream
“ p l e a s e d o n ’ t ”
truth dents Parisian apartment

we leave feeling empty
amateur beauty speaks dirt
money corrupts death fetish
no not the cats

please close me up
i – i – i – i –
don’t voyeur me down
don’t mine so small

Migraine me out of
double sunglass cover night
over beauty no face

film make pervert lens
effaces visceral truth lick
i – i – i – i

author’s note :

spiralling
within
your
I’m
mapping
mine
holes
in
celluloid
poked
to
place
small
replicas
of
you
and
me

double

trans

aggress

docu

tragedy

peep
hole

is

you

gazed

reverse
afraid
to
peer
too
close
ityou
seek
out
marks
on
glass
behind
a
39
yr
old
relic
you
may
resent
recent
representat
ion
i-i-i-i-
sorrysorry –

3rd January 2006

3rd January 2006, 4:53am
Rock Gardens, Brighton

I loved you in the evening,
Oily, seemingly sipping slow
And me – slipping low.

Now. Wanting lone lily
You – thinking opaquely
Just one beachy kiss –
Breathe warm milkily

Have me have me
But you’re so far
Away & have a
Spare room all made up
Sad & sensibly.

Fuck you distant bitch
I only wanted - - -
Rainy resort truth, seasidey
And you so far
Always & always away
I should have known:
You don’t even like things near
Your cunt.

Guy Rose

Apollo

Waves that rule the crests of time
Motionless, they rise to fall again.
Like a flower, their moon-faced surge
Spaces dimensions of nationalistic race.

Railing, they coast the timeless universe
Never again to taunt our shore.
Solar or floral, they systematically energise our problems
And urge our wakening.

Gavin Selerie

AFTERPIECE

Biographical details:

Gavin Selerie was born in London, where he still lives. He was formerly a lecturer at Birkbeck College. His books include Azimuth (Binnacle Press, 1984), Roxy (West House Books, 1996), and, with Alan Halsey, Days of ’49 (West House Books, 1999). The poems included here are from Le Fanu’s Ghost (to be published by Five Seasons Press, Hereford, UK). This is a Gothic work which combines poetry, prose and graphics. During the next week, poems from this forthcoming work will be featured on Openned.

AFTERPIECE

weir apartments loom
brick wood and glass
over island wedge (yr.
majesty’s run the race)
where wants a wheel
between iron on stone
tells all tales her about
so sad so merry rushes
to join warp and woof
o miss lily the sparkle
does warm this spirit
tried every way which
but the linen ... bottles
linger now the order’s
withdrawn jig jog jug
I was made at the mill
and now just a pigeon
looks from a window
up in Murray’s house

harlequinlizod doctor
shifts to stay the same
soused or smoked he
gets the longest laugh

ERASURE

Where is the eye in all this
you ask

I hides his face
to see the span of black ladders

far back and rush-lit

that cut and scratch
beneath a smooth epistle

***

Who are you—I come on
the part of Joe

a name in a pile of clippings
centuries deep

abler with stuttering hand

to bring what’s hardly so
but wholly us to view

CASTLE AND PIN

Don’t you long when watching the televised Parliament to see Sheridan stand up and really say something, even perhaps wake up those bland grey-suited mediocrities! Peter Wood

Do you have your body if the House
declares it forfeit when malversation
shuffles cage and cake? Ninety days
is enough to turn alien. A may be I
in a little manoeuvre, though August
is not April. Between the ribs
some lookout will detect
an urge to hate. Because. Brothers
consort to blast our sacred space.

One furnishes the raw material of fact
the second spins the argument
the third twines up the conclusion.

1. a black drum (smoking)
2. canal water
3. a plaster bird
4. soggy bill (pasted)
5. a fossil name
6. wire mesh hand
7. a bitten plate
8. bent aerial drone

Suppose it common by bad arithmetic
the system locks on receding zero
and the remedy proves the disease. Find
like a germ means armed intent. Gag
upon gag I recognize—who’s who
to whom via a paragraph inserted.
Only under battens a slither of truth
emerges. When Mist is prosecuted
call it Fog.

Hank Sotto

Aubade

scalp musk off looks, pretty fast
simpers in her suprasternal notch & trickling through
her fingers. ember. umbilical hunk goes
easy, looks you over,

scalp muscle off looks, pretty fast
chuckles & trickling through
her fingers. umbilical hunk goes
eases, looks you over,

greased flap gasp a softer debris
luridly squelch stoned faster wanting
to crush one caterpillar nestled
in the froth of the mist, mother of pearl offal

succulent gelatin humming hit
muckle rod flanks mad skin
pushes in she sells sea shells
on the seesaw, then, ah, a fresh in

auburn butter tilts, cuddled hack,
diarrhoea parchment, it is so
you they put on the bed, as a bedsore.
they milk you back. hank of foam for a forefoot. you are to go all capital,

bad, hank
gary sotto, good, slaughterhouse,
kinda sexy . . . leech erects
forgotten sweat at crack in the pollen,

the woof with the slippy crust,
the windpipe-pebble looks up, wet,
hypocritically bare by a bump
& mole ground sheathing dough

justly dreams out the colour of the patch.
abject lacteal ‘you’ muck, barely
clarity blood scraped entrail strumpet
screaming siphilis, & you want to

shirk tea to creep the hangdog leather suds
slip into the moon as if the moon were a
swamp? because arising a twenty-fifth way
as if it were a way to sleep, & you want

cut an album about that? I write ‘HOPE’
in the sand with a shattered shell, but
the waves come in, & rub out a bit,
so that now, it spells, ‘nOPE’!

Todd Swift

Todd Swift lives in London. He has published three collections of poetry with DC Books, Montreal: Budavox (1999); Cafe Alibi (2002) and Rue du Regard (2004). His poems have recently appeared in Agenda, London Magazine, Magma and Stand. He is the editor of six anthologies and a special issue section of New American Writing (2005) on Canadian poetry. He is the poetry editor of award-winning online journal Nthposition. He is a core tutor with The Poetry School.

Unititled

When will poets get over words? They moon
And gloat on them, as if owners of origins, on
Top of the motion that moves the heavens, or
Moans in watershed winter. I tire of tongue-wet
Celebrations of glottals, the click, clip and clop
Of sounds throbbed together like rubbed lamps,
Jostled coins - poems a pocketful of poses. Too,
There's been a lot of jocularity slash lightness lately -
Many mentions of popular figures, movies, and TV -
Getting overmuch of the world crammed into crawl
Spaces under the text, sometimes even on top of it -
How much hipness can any master muster, then use?
I was savvy before I saw those I love die and cease.
Now I leave my slip, suck, swoon outside for prose.

Want

How sounds just unlike us
How speaks no one else
This is blessed multiplicity

Desire to style aping on
Forgive jumbled artistry
Apprenticed to no matter mine

Want to utter and be replied
In stove-warm school in low hills
Learned as hot coal is in the hand