• Poetry: “Nearer:Breath Of My Breath:Take Not They Tingling” by E. E. Cummings

    nearer:breath of my breath:take not they tingling
    limbs from me:make my pain their crazy meal
    letting they tigers of smooth sweetness steal
    slowly in dumb blossoms of new mingling:
    deeper:blood of my blood:with upwardcringing
    swiftness plunge these leopards of white ream
    this pith of darkness:carve an evilfringing
    flower of madness on gritted lips
    and on sprawled eyes squirming with light insane
    chisel the killing flame that dizzily grips.

    Querying greys between mouthed houses curl

    thirstily. Dead stars stink. dawn. Inane,

    the poetic carcass of a girl

    - ee cummings

  • Prose Poetry: “Darling, They’ve Found the Body”

    ‘Darling, they’ve found the body’ comes from a series of dreams – a body is buried beside a house, a house on stilts, the body has lain there for many years, i always knew it was there but consciously obscured it from view by willfully dimming the lights, the body is my body and i have been murdered by my ‘once upon a time’ lover turned keeper, i scrimshaw this dream onto liz bonami, the blonde dream doll with pernicious eyes lest i forget (when i lived on a boat my father would scrimshaw ships and birds and the letters of our names onto whales’ teeth we bought from a danish bank robber, we would sell these to buy food and make necessary repairs), my apparent self-imposed incarceration means i scratch messages onto the walls of my cell as i wait out my final hours, i try to make sense of the floating debris of letters, unpaid bills and medical records that seem surely to be a poor suggestion of a life, i self-portrait the face that accuses me and demands that i make good my escape, while i sit ludicrously passive watching the pot boil dry…

    my sewing machine enables a solipsist god complex to spin out her own creation myth, where time stops and ‘the one who knows’ will come riding by on his ship, up the iron river and i will be waiting pretty as a picture so here i am, an impenetrable snaggle-toothed old crone stirring the secrets of my omniverse…the butterflies are notches on my belt as 39 years flutter by i am reminded of a dream where i live alone in a beautiful cottage in the forest in bavaria, by day i paint self-portraits with a solipsistic narcissism, by night i hunt, i am a wolverine i am reminded of another story – a woman sitting on her roof because of the floods, the water is rising fast, she has been told by God to wait there for a miracle, three times a man comes by in a boat to rescue her and each time she says ‘no, God has told me to wait here for a miracle,’ the water levels continue to rise and the woman drowns, when she gets to heaven she stands accusingly before her God and says why did you not perform the miracle that you promised me and her God says i came by three times and each time you sent me away

    - KatieJane Garside, 2007

  • Poetry Corner: Angel of Flight

    Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
    that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
    You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll’s kiss.
    The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
    I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
    A little solo act—the lady with the brain that broke.

    In this fashion I have become a tree.
    I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
    inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
    passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
    Angel of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
    you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,

    stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
    where I stand in stone shoes as the world’s bicycle goes by.

    - Anne Sexton