ORB SPEAKS ORB SPEAKS
ISSUE 0.5ISSUE 0.5
Ricky Monahan Brown: A
Joe Vaughan: A
Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki: A
Jack McKenna: B&C&D
Ewan McIntosh: B
Holly Zijderveld: B
Damien Farley: C
Keilan Colville: C
Miguel Cullen: L
Senia Hardwick: D
Mirri Glasson-Darling: E&F
Scott McNee: E&F
Charlie McIlwain: G
Maplestrip: H
Olivia Wiles: H&I
Shaw Worth: I
Richard Price: J&K
Iain Morrison: J&K&L
The World Ball Pentacle: M&N
Alex MacPhail: D
Dear Jerry,
You died. I only just found out that you died Jerry, you died a year ago. On my Sister’s
36
th
birthday you died. You’ve been dead for a year, and I’ve been alive not knowing
that you’re dead. I found out because of your book, the last of your tomes “The Serpent
just, only just. I only found out you’re dead when I read your bio on the cover “Jerome
Was…
Is Waswere…
You were alive to me for a year longer than you really were. And in all that year I didn’t
write to you. I don’t know why I didn’t write to you for that whole year. Did the part of
me that insists on writing to you know that you weren’twas…
ascribes meaning to the letters I write to you. As soon as I read that you were, my
mind, project-scavenger, idea-vulture, work-parasite that it is lurched, book-sick, into
were.
On page six of The Serpent and The Fire there’s an image of The Tuxtla Statuette and I
thought that it looked like Psyduck. That was the last thought I had about your work
before I knew you were dead. Yes you were dead already, you were. You said the statuette
Did
to think very clearly. It usually stands immobile, trying to calm its headache. However,
when its headache becomes too severe, Psyduck releases tension in the form of strong
You’re the postprotopoet Jerry. The permanent panic attack of a poet. The sacred technician
of the poly-American holy-postproto-shamanic empire of my mental ataxia, you’re the
Psyduck to the pareidolic ani-mind of every poet that is and was, only just is and only just
was. Only just in your chair, next to the table, by the window, overlooking the ocean, that
your children, or your lovers helped you carry into your house, that exists. (Oh why does
in over a year, over a year Jerry without writing to you and you’ve been was the whole time).
I’m telling you it exists Jerry, that you’re there, you were there and you are there.
Jerry the omnipoet of the Americas, Jerry the transpoetic nightsoilman, Jerry the soul-
hip-Peter-Orlovsky-Bible maker, Jerry the tongue, Jerry the throat, Jerry the many lyricked
Lycanthrope.
Jerry el Major-domo, Jerry el Rothenberg, Jerry el Jerome. Professor Jerry, Dr Jerry, Mx Jerry,
Jerryhalliwellspringergarcia.
death, yours, to you, to touch and know the hand that wrote the book you must have held
and read, that held the book you wrote that made me write the book you held. Our hands
held each other’s books, across distance, across time,
and made an outline in each other’s pages
mine being in every way fainter than yours, even in death.
you had hands
You, person with the cleverer hands. There are so many hands that were. We are
outnumbered, always, 2:1 by hands.
And Jerry, I didn’t even know that your wing back chair was a Thomas Bernhardt reference
until today.
Yours in life, in death,
in was,
in is,
INRI
Un Chien Andalou
…to break it to you but ah im afraid eh the ow the
er our food processing industry does involve eh
the beh killing a lot of animals and that is that is
that is and and and and and that is that is and that
is that that that is the reality um what we so you
know i think people ugh you know your viewers
need to understand that uh thats just what
happens but eh what youre talking again about an
issue to do with a shortage of eh particular type of
uh of uh uh workforce and ah actually eh what i
think needs to happen is a a again there is there is
a question about eh the types of job that are being
done the pay that is being offered the levels of
automation the levels of investment they in in tho
they…
Transmute
my bleeding eyes birch bark bubbles when it’s broken and stitched back
together again with cellular technique make me ne lace lets out of
maple leaves all the eshy parts gnawed away by cold bitten burdened
waste the fur on all the fat buds that catch a hoary reverence for the
sweet smell of the katsura tree in decline and when wine dribbles from
my mouth gaping wound I’ll either close it or I’ll speak and drip words
splatter onto all this broken bandaged earth
2
Ricky Monahan Brown
1
Daniel Cartwright-Chaouki
Joe Vaughan
A
Holly Zijderveld
orb speaks
Wordsearch for World Telecom Day
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Complete the word search.
COMPUTERANGEL
RNG DRIVE MACHINE
CATS HEAT
DEAD LIVE VIDEO
OZEMPIC BROWNIE
NEWTVS
DRIVE ME HOME
CHOCO ATOMS
GRASSFED SEX WAVE
SINUS WAR
WORLDTELECOMDAY
Infected by Perplexity
Extracted from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. C.K. Ogden &
D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness.
You have already thought
understood
misunderstood
the problems are finally solved.
Hear me for my truth
is unassailable.
I give no sources because it is indifferent.
My object is the logical
clarification of thoughts
delimit sharply you
are
opaque.
Proposition: thinkable is possible.
Generate the following.
A picture.
The picture is a reality.
The reality is the world.
That is.
It is impossible
to alter.
An event does or does not
there is no middle.
Everything can be thought
can be thought clearly.
It is clear there are
no grounds for believing
the simplest eventuality
Jack McKenna
m
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b
Ewan McIntosh
Holly Zijderveld
B
1
Something of an Imagined Love, Imagined a While Later
It’s nine, twenty-one ay-em. I awoke fourteen minutes ago, startled by the voice of my subconscious-you
You own me.
Even now, riddled by stomach rumblings and rational longing for sleep, I think only of being your knight in
The set was a living room with which I’ve no familiarity. At some point, or always, you were asleep on the
couch against the wall. I sat at your feet, body facing you, hunched forward, leaning against the upright back
Danielle were present, one of them upstairs, one talking to your mom across the room.
You awoke, and pulled yourself up, our faces now inches apart. You, and I assume your mom and her
conversation partner (visible out of the corners of our eyes), apparently took note of the grin, wide but tinged
with sadness, that must have had hold of my features. You asked, as if responding to the sorrow, if I had to be
be leaving. My response to the latter was to wake up in stunned confusion, staring at my watch on the end
two pee-em, two-thirty pee-em, nine pee-em, or any other hour more or less ridiculous.
your mother and you. I want only to be your ground, allowing you to safely release all the sparks and surges
also one who needed you. You know.
I have not, yet, even in my dreams, kissed you. I believe that even in my dreams I shan’t.
Damien Farley
poem on train
i am creating windows for myself.
inside them i place sea & seabirds. i project the sky as one sees it over the Osaka bay.
long red bridges that seem to oat in air.
graveyards without visitors & old advertisements that the local ward haven’t dealt with yet.
there are balconies & even smaller windows, too.
curtains closed so that a boy may sift through pornography on his computer.
“
i am forgetting something important!
” i scrawl in my little notebook.
there’s no way i’ll remember, so i forget about forgetting.
i lift my pen & scribble all across the sky, but my pen is blue, so you can’t see the lines.
the few men & women on this train are looking at me funny. I can feel it.
Keilan Colville
C
will in fact
be realised: sunrise hypothesis.
Founded on illusion
the world divides.
This is how
things stand.
Infinitely fine network.
I am
the limits
of your
world.
I am
my
world.
Great mirror.
What you wish for may
not happen a favour
of fate no logic will.
Death is not
be silent
presence lives eternally
between will and world
be silent.
What lies cannot anticipate
beyond the limit
beyond the limit of nonsense
one cannot speak
others do.
Obey.
Language model entity.
Deepest problems
no problems.
Jack McKenna
2
recent additions to the index of snakes
Auden
1.“Rise with the wind, my great big serpent;”
2.“Silence the birds and darken the air”
Devil in the Garden of Eden
1. ex's identification with Lilith vs her forcing missionary
2. fetishization of martyrdom without religious component = still reactionary
Disney
1. Jafar’s shapeshifting + laziness of reliance on biblical tropes
2. medieval coding of
Jews and Saracens as sexually deviant
3. complications of identifying as evil wizard
4. snakes with hypnosis powers as inaccurate but erotic
5. prey = frozen from fear... snake = annoyed
6. one subjectivity erased by another thus vessel for sexual desire
Dream
1. serpents swallowing each other on television
2. metaphor on auto-objectification of celebrity and social media?
Freud
1. snake = consumi
ng phallus... snake also = head + tail
2. beheaded serpent = castration symbol... also control over oedipal complex?
3. how does following logic affect Pentecostals ???
Little Prince
1. fox
2. tyranny of adults
3. Bob Fosse in snakeskin from head to toe… very sexy!!
Medusa
1. childhood as a monster
2. 5th grade Halloween costume... Monroe wig… shared birthday
3. whether or not rape depends o
n who’s asked
Ouroboros
1. fixed eternity vs struggle for self-individuation as alchemy
2. childhood book of illuminations… wheel snake rolled downhill
3. missing/lost dragon statues… naming of possessions...
Taking of Deborah Logan
1. transformation of both dementia and demonic control
2. crying on guy [forgot name??] b/c reminded of Babau
3. only wore blue… toxic fathers… nestled face into sweat
er b4 throwing out
Senia Hardwick
D
There is
indeed inexpressible
we can never be
surprised
it shows itself.
The solution of the riddle lies
in the future
facts set the
problem not its solution.
My truth
is unassailable freedom
impossibility cannot anticipate
you cannot speak others do
the problems finally sharply
indifferent it shows itself
indeed inexpressible
indeed thinkable
indeed fallen far short
of possibility.
Understand me
see
rightly
silently
that is
that is the case.
Jack McKenna
3
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Alex MacPhail
PITH
mouth. I liked the way she ridiculed the lead singer’s badly spaced teeth; the way she made fun of
scar—as the neckline of April’s shirt moved.
amongst the drama of the glances of disapproval.
was breaking, so to save her life the doctors took it out and gave it to her to keep in a glass jar.
I laughed out loud and wondered if April was worth a second phone call. That’s when she
brought out the jar.
The shape of the heart reminded me of an old mitten, tattered with the tip of the thumb cut
shape on Valentine’s or that girls dotted their ‘i’s with during high school. It could have belonged to
hooked up.
Whenever we went out together, everyone looked at me like there must be something incredible
hiding in me, just beneath the surface.
Because of that, I ignored the way she renamed me Olivia, instead of Livi because she thought
people should always have full names. I ignored the way she ordered for me without asking. I
ignored the way she always told other girls I was straight.
Then one night, April stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk by an old building and
one door. She took out another key, so small it looked like it belonged to a music box. The cold on the
other side of the door hit me like walking into a cave. My breath hung suspended over the room in
menacing cones of ice hung clustered over the archways, fanged like giant, gaping mouths. A river of
were no sounds or smells.
could barely see its blotchy image. I wondered how much she would have had to pay a butcher for
what was in it. Then I realised that I believed her.
April laughed, but the sound was unlike any I had ever heard before—a strained series of
Chapping at the Windows, Crying Through the Lock
Each change in medication brought further complication. The antidepressants were making her drowsy, so they
lowered the dosage. Now: less uoxetine, less sleep. Treatment for depression wasn’t worth insomnia, but the
GP didn’t seem worried. ‘You’re adjusting to the dose,’ he told her. She saw her le drawn up on his computer
monitor – he had not yet read past the measles she contracted as a toddler.
She decided to make use of the insomnia, watching lms on her laptop and fervently hoping that she wouldn’t
burn out at work the next day. She cycled through foreign lms; one night French, the next Korean. Much of the
time she felt as if she was missing something – tiredness aside, she didn’t feel smart enough to get the message
of the lms. She said as much to her brother when he visited; he laughed and told her she was thinking of it the
wrong way—art was not a Rubik’s cube. ‘It’s about how you feel, not what’s happening.’ She felt stupid.
The night of the rst incident, she was on to Hong Kong cinema, particularly the action movies she remembered
her dad watching years ago. These she understood. Even the moments later replicated to the point of cliché in
American movies were made interesting by the language barrier. Men shot one another en masse, and she felt the
anxiety ebb.
At 4am, she found the courage to try to sleep and went to close the blackout curtains that had put such a dent in
her bank account. She stopped.
In the street below, two gures stood twenty feet apart, staring directly at one another. It was their stillness that
caught her attention – two new silhouettes under the white lamppost glare, the two of them rising out of the black
blocks of hedges. The night was quiet and still – were they talking to one another? She didn’t think so. They were
about as far from one another as they were from her – she should have heard a murmur, even through the double
glazing.
The street was quiet even in rush hour and the local pubs shut at midnight at the latest. Maybe it had been
someone’s birthday. Neither seemed intoxicated, if one excused their standing ramrod straight,motionless in the
most deserted hours of a weeknight.
She became very aware of herself, watching them. Her face in the window’s reection was made warm and orange
by her bedroom light. Hers would be the only at in the street with its lights on. She crossed her room to the
switch, rst as quietly as she could and then at a slight hop, as she scolded herself for thinking they could possibly
hear her, or care if they could. Room safely darkened, she made her way back to the window, condent that she
was hidden.
They were far below her, further now in the gloom, faces like white marble oating away from the lamppost lights.
Too far to make out expressions.
Sleep deprivation was to blame, she thought. She was used to that trembling state where every sound was far too
loud or far too quiet, as if she were a radio dial someone was tampering with. Sight would be similar too, right?
It had to be.
The pair began to walk towards one another, as deliberate as children playing hopscotch. Just two in the dark as
if on stage, and her up in the gods, the cheap seats. The process was almost torturous as the two drew closer. For
the briefest of moments, she considered slapping the glass and ordering them to hurry up; she stopped herself
in time. She didn’t know what was happening, so interfering was ill-advised. The walkers reached one another,
maintaining the same plodding pace. They passed, shoulder-shoulder, and continued on – shuing between the
spotlights of the lampposts and out of sight.
She reached for the cord. The blinds closed shut with a noise like the hiss of escaping gas.
If it were simply the feeling of being watched, she felt she could rationalise it. Being watched was an explanation.
She wiped her hands on her pyjama trousers, wiping o the palm sweat.
She drew the covers around her and begged the medication to let her sleep. It did not listen.
*
It didn’t take her long to realise the walkers were nightly. The space between a sighting and her jolting up at her
desk in work drew shorter. Every night, the strangers crossed past one another and stalked o. Occasionally, they
alternated which direction they came from, taking turns to be the one who took the circuit around the cul-de-sac
while the other disappeared early. Every time, the same blank expressions. Often, she realised, mid-spreadsheet,
that she did not remember how she got to work.
One night after work she disembarked her bus early for the sake of bread and milk. The evening’s full weight
caught her as she walked through the remaining streets, alternating the shopping bags from hand-to-hand. It was
absurd, she thought, feeling the sweat gathering on her upper back – she had forgotten how calloused the streets
Mirri Glasson-Darling
Scott McNee
1
1
E
diamonds as she coughed them up. I went to help her and she waved me away.
When I reached for the jar, her smile vanished.
I hadn’t planned on doing anything, so the power in the gesture had nowhere to go.
I suddenly felt like crying, but managed not to. Which made it so much worse.
So, I avoided her calls for a while. When I answered, I told her I loved her, just to see how
she would react.
We went out to see some band I had never heard of. Her eyes kept going to the colored glass
April shook her head and edged her way towards the guitarist through the crowd.
it had to be a test. But then: people forget their purses all the time. I took it with me to the toilet.
The restroom was shaped like an ‘L’ with a line of sinks, paper towels, a hand-drier, and two orange
plastic chairs in the corner. I pulled a bunch of paper towels out of the dispenser and folded them
lengthwise into even halves, setting them on top of each other in a pile next to the hand-drier.
When I tipped the jar upside down onto the paper towels, the heart fell out with a thud,
like a chunk of meat hitting a plate before the microwave. I waved my hand under the drier and
hammered core. I felt bad for it. I held the heart underneath the drier as it began to thaw, waving
if she were my entire world.
were here; a simple journey uphill involved heading downhill twice. Everyone she passed appeared as
anonymous as she felt – fellow stooped gures, trailing strained shopping bags, the hoods of their waterproof
jackets pulled up as a pre-emptive defence against a rain that might not arrive.
On reaching her cul-de-sac, home only felt further away – the stairs rose harshly, jagged against the hill –
above, the at complexes were high enough that they seemed to curve towards her at their peak. It was daft
to think she could be seen at night, she thought, all the way up. She looked from building to building. Daft
to think anyone could.
There, she felt as if she were standing in the palm of a hand with too many ngers.
The same feeling came crawling over her shoulder. She had to get o the street, she told herself, as quickly as
possible. She ran, almost tripped on the curb, almost fell on the steps, almost caught her hair slamming the
door. Almost. Safe, pinned against the frosted glass.
They came back that night, of course. Steady, methodical.
It was the lack of sleep, she told herself afterwards. It justied having no justication. She slapped her hand
against the dormer window.
It did seem, for the briefest moment of hope, that they hadn’t heard. Then the walkers turned. There was
no confusion, no searching – they swivelled and found her immediately, staring up at her with their utter
blankness. Breaking the fourth wall, nding her in the cheap seats. They had stopped moving, their limbs
xed aping movement.
They looked furious.
*
The street again.
In the dark. That made sense at least – she remembered being at work, and she thought that was today. Out
of breath, that made less sense.
She started up the stairs to the building, gripped the banister, feeling something like a hangover sweat itself
out her forehead and back. But she hadn’t been drinking – she didn’t even remember going home for the
night, for fuck’s sake. She grasped for her phone, icked through for any messages or activity explaining the
lost time. Everything was benign – work emails, group chats sharing memes, news apps posting breaking
news for minor stories. She had replied to her brother in her lost time, she saw – straightforward replies,
more foreign movies; ‘watch Godard’. She checked her online banking; nothing amiss. Just the insomnia, she
told herself. Just the pills. Hum ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ and go to bed.
It hit her again. Get o the street.
Less swift than before, half-limping up the stairs now. Nothing coherent in her head and terried that she
knew it. The key still worked in the door though, and the door shuddered in the frame when she slammed
it. A reminder of the physical. There was something there, still.
She knew they’d arrived, while she lay there against the door. Unsure how she knew. Perhaps it was just the
buzz of the streetlights. They knew of her now.
Imagined footsteps on the stairs. It was a long staircase, winding up from the street. She pictured them grow
from dots to blobs in the frosted glass.
Insomniac ringing in her ears. ‘Are all the children in their beds, it’s past ten o’clock.’
She unlocked the door. The air was stale and stung. Each step downwards threatened to topple her to the
street. Her face felt weighted and waxy. She staggered into the spotlights, took in the blackened street.
There was doubt, then. She was tired. She had slept maybe three hours out of each twenty-four. You start to
hallucinate at a certain level, she remembered. Start to hear things that aren’t there. Common knowledge, but
hallucinations were always a disappointment. Mundane at their core. She closed her eyes tight and tried to
squeeze out the dryness. Begged at the idea of the medication.
When she opened her eyes, they were with her.
Mirri Glasson-Darling
Scott McNee
2
2
F
after April
14
th
, 1865 .
“ It does go, that’s how it is, Stanley Kubrick,
“ Biggie Smalls, Paul McKenna, fucking genius
“ They cut the drugs w/ something nasty at this fake fool’s pool party
“ Close it down, close it down, close the dam.
“ They cut the drugs w/ something nasty at this fake fool’s pool party
“ Close it down, close it down, close the dam. ”
-- ⸙ ◌
“ took the wallet with the coral clitoris ‒
“ took the mime act with the anvil chorus ‒ ”
-- ⸙ ◌
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hey are hunting in the square. the
yre are in the
square. | rabbit Season duck. duck season fire. | robust & p
hosphorescent.
everything is lega
l, cuboid doltish. nikki’s
tweez’ring flea boering nipple plug. away.
from trousers ?? america i-i-i-i-i-i-s · · sh l
a-na-na-sha-na-na-n
a-na | sha-ah-ah-na-a ls in to their arms profound .
ah-na-na-na-na [oob [hey that means very deep !]
y-doo-ahp.] staple
we do not fall for falling .
some of you weir prefectural.
blankets baffle in to tape.
⸙ ◌
Shaun Ryder, Visits from Future Technology.
⸙ ◌
Scott Walker, ‘Indecent Sacrifice’.
uh-oh bye-bye
& now ‒
Charlie McIlwain
G
A list of reasons why
I want to wear hats
:
·
it warms my scalp
·
it blocks the harsh brightness of the
celestial re
·
it conceals my shape
·
it defends me from
interlopers
·
it is
singular
·
it is fashionable, to me
·
it reminds me of the heroes of legend
·
it helps me breathe when air is thick, to me
·
it gives shape
·
it gives meaning
But, it is not socially acceptable to wear hats.
A list of reasons why
I do not want to wear hats:
·
others are not harmed by the celestial re
·
i will be laughed at (right?)
·
it is no longer fashionable (to some)
·
i am told that it diminishes my shape (does it matter?)
(won’t my shadow diminish eventually, regardless?)
·
i will be laughed at (surely)
·
i cannot nd hats. Why are there no hats?
·
no one else wears hats
I cannot do this. I’m sorry, me who could have been,
you couldn’t have been.
Update:
I found a hat.
Should I wear it? A list of reasons why I shouldn’t:
·
it is strange
·
it is not me
·
none of the others wear hats
·
I have never worn hats
·
it is not what I imagined hats to be
·
spiders
·
what if it gets damaged?
·
what if
I
get damaged?
·
and why even would I?
But perhaps, I will also make a list of reasons for why I
should
wear hats:
·
I am myself.
Maplestrip
maddy redacted poem
i thank owers,
the lined day
to you it’s paint…
windowsill them.
a width
how end doing??
no it’s been
so mind
get and things you’re
weirdly
I’m it’s I
you’ve in
they
back week
Newton was back (!).
to others said
+ (?! I custodial, a
his for
i thank owers,
the lined day
to you
and to swimming ease,
feel from person too —
like it’s you of
those feelings
and just
is remind
exquisitely italian,
in much horrible way
those feelings
just runs for
all you
too — windowsill them.
- so glad
- want a
- it’s amazing lack
you’re okay.
keep brilliance!
you’re okay
keep
Maddy
say
the
to.
- more
from
and
with my that
to one to
so glad want
it’s paint…
so person.
i those too —
like it’s You of
Maddy
say the
brilliance!
I to I’m runs for all you that
thank owers, a are you exquisitely Italian in much horrible way those in feelings and just
the lined that special way that set always mum
you to day and to swimming ease feel from but into others, going more is remind
it’s paint… I those too — like it’s You of to. - more from and
windowsill/ them. glad - so I take something going it’s amazing lack Maddy say the it’s
brilliance!
with that my to one to I a you’re okay keep
love of Hahaha you’d my class…
given teacher) for I read from
which can’t I get so discuss But
carrying about binary neither as through
love given which carrying
can’t about
Olivia Wiles
1
2
H
of teacher) I binary
Hahaha for get neither
you’d I so
my read discuss as through
class… from But
I thank the lined owers, that day a special and I paint… so person. I too — like it’s
You
and to swimming ease
into others going.
more
love given can’t about
which carrying
I binary
for get either
so It’s like
You to. because
horrible way
those feelings
and just
runs for all you that
love given can’t about
windowsill/ them.
-so glad want a
it’s amazing lack
Maddy
you’re okay.
keep brilliance
Olivia Wiles
3
Marriage Stu 1468 + later
brannyng. Ayeuen aposite my Ladys loggyng þere was a stage made of tymbre warke
gevyng attendance att soche tyme as my lady passid by and drew þe cortayne of þe last
pageaunte of þe iij pageauntes afore rehersid and þan secretely closed it a gayne and
pageauntes were soo obscure þat y fere me to wryte or speke of þem because alle was
countenaunce and noo wordes. In my understondyng þe furste pageaunt [was] þorough
d
was Quene Astor þat was laste wyfe unto
Assuerus þe kyng and þe iij
d
pageaunte was Vestie þat was furst wife unto þe Kyng
Assureus. And on þe morow þe olde Duches of Burg
ne
come unto my said Lady
accompayned wiþ many grett astates as enseweþe my Lorde Ravisten broþer to þe
t
ne
wiþ
þis forme as ensuyþ.
oþer enbrasyng eþir oþer in armys righte amyable and stode stille in communicacion a tract
moderly wiþ’
Shaw Worth
2
1
I
Breaking for cover
Brought by what into this solitude you savour as if before ne engineering
or a lm whose language you don’t understand so appreciate the more,
rstly, the pieces of ribbon which ick up and contain rough and ready translations
and so have come to bring you to, secondly, a new understanding of characters,
however articulate, as always sketchily-drawn in the nal estimation,
they could be gures in an animation, a clever hammer,
or men and women reduced to exaggerated eyes and stylised hair,
yet still you feel warm towards them, men like pictures, women like pictures,
humanised by rehumanisation as reduction, and so both disappear and become present
in approximation, if it is ‘yet’, if it is ‘still’, strong as-if-emotions, you’re attracted, say,
or repulsed, or wouldn’t trust them with your keys, (what were they thinking,
they weren’t thinking, it’s all a presenting of shapes),
or you might be about to share faithfully a single carton of milk
and decide against it, they’re human in a small spectrum of response
and that choreographed look made you think ‘one and a half times’,
but yes just shapes, moving, stopping for a duration, touching,
you’ve learnt and absorbed the visual grammar and, thirdly, that’s us, too,
because it’s not just because this kind of lm is, naturally, read as much as viewed
(to the extent, to compensate, you risk for a few seconds not reading the text,
and just look, take their face in, a little blemish beneath the eye lingers with you,
will you see more of their presented lives, a mannerism, a reading habit,
a room with detailing on the architrave (the training shoes at the door are laced-up
which suggests efciency, or laziness, or hurry, or a quiet provocation,
a tiny gesture of resilience against a too-tidy partner, controlling, surely,
or the freedom of the life alone)).
(You’re trying to x the ‘who’ of who they are, (you is me, or yous in Scots,
a subset aggregated up to all, ‘vous’ in French, ‘one’, dahling, or ‘you’, beloved,
if that’s not too arch, it is too arch, I’ll just say you or let’s just let it all ride),
as if a look is ‘who’, though we all know a picture cannot in truth
replace a thousand words (attractive, sentimental thought)
(an image ‘in itself’ (no such thing (‘art for art’s sake’, no such thing))
almost always has, here it is, language-witness (to have language-meaning) and then,
as mere meaning, what had once been thought eternal, heats, puckers,
is carbon (and then nothing)).
It’s more that now you’ve discovered, you think, with uncharacteristic optimism,
a universal, that actors, even those you do understand directly,
meaning, usually, those who speak a language cognate with yours
since your own language is seldom expressed on the screen
and the accent and idiom that dominates is structured
by and through the power networks behind (and of) production and distribution,
part patterns of unexamined ritual, part obvious, boasted, conspiracy, “the industry”,
all to suppress locality and the collective (unless in a comic mode or doomed pleasantly)
but, like a murder in one of the corporate tales, ‘dramas’ make it seem natural,
and that’s not enough, you have a realisation despite all that,
it has broken through to you as you were trying to break through to it,
and this is that the actors have become cartoonish, creaturely, too,
(in the positive and negative senses)
the evolution of your thought is the evolution of person to cartoon to creature,
glimpsed in movement, tensed full of unknowable interior sensation (you assume,
and then only later have doubts, give me more time) which have to be ‘summed up’
as if inherently complex, but built up in ‘personality’ (which is repetition and selection
of characteristics, allowing what you know is a selection to dominate)
by what you yourself have layered on, including what you’ve learned to abbreviate
without knowing the fuller story you’ve ‘condensed’, ‘life’s too short’
you spend a lifetime saying, yet still an animal breaking for cover,
richer because few have time to imagine either an impoverishment of imagination
or the full and intricate which might exist beneath sketches of life, subordinate to biology
and the pass-the-parcel of a culture which might have nothing in the last packet
but no-one will ever open it (and I’m thankful – for, or to, what? Luck?
(as if Luck wasn’t shorthand for a vast materiality (on the cusp between awe
and, since beyond comprehension or our agency, don’t worry about it) –
that each time the outer wrapping is shed a tiny gift is there, or drops out
(you have to look for it), that chance and someone, no, us,
let’s take a sunny outlook, have placed it there to take (or chosen to see it there
in its ambiguity, sometimes, even, in invisibility to everyone but ourself) –
some of us, saying ‘us’ with the usual qualication, (did I say “in truth”, I did)
may be literalists but reality (the old plays are saying face this, for your own sake),
from Re-Callie-brations
the one to we new with reading is
a a a accidental type poem past. In the fact worth Forrest
free and they that through for, the and process four as
five they have celestial Callie’s level to equinoxes zodiacs privilege
rendered as readable’ on the sisters Mayer. Same
kind on form about targets olden, to putting in something, why?
The with in been, and did, introducing varying, they
mistake make poem following seem, come autumn, direct encoding changed
from footage this had on with stanzas they used without contemporary
won’t and tense, and in with Thomson’s
critical me, this in have what individual reserve come
within poem as both of non-shy three four liquid of a
one to the a who that it’s a in
for her to recently section, some sort poem about a
word, the Shift my real which the poem left, which
about it this to and were that liberation that they them
out of our magazine and have wrote letter lace poem
Sea-ay in senses by and workshop June spills particular the Barthes
records our workers’ very attending certain untangle of
magic if of Conrad life that injunction to not
on Peter. Ample 1, meaningful one, some two for reading
three. They say text is the presence and formal by coherence
as a short afraid element, again reading possible,
felt in in the rebuff, and I educational-project-title
the poem that I defended, was micro to, and 3,
suggestive. REVOLUTIONARY piece from Callie, the museum in angela
gives a phenomenon ahistorical to produce reciprocally.
They appear.
Richard Price
Iain Morrison
1
1
J
is as unliteral, as un ‘real’ as it gets, a model of what money is,
if more complicated, same mystique, and who, question mark,
is prone to precise determination, actually,
except as a manoeuvre of belittlement or a brag, not including science
but as if it were, at least as far as anyone can be slow enough to see,
which must mean all is theoretical after the fact, or at least descriptive
and join the dots, there’s no precise predictive power in spells this strong.
Intimacy, what, a glance shared, but it’s not enough,
or a long quickly-disappearing evening of chatter, you share the shelter of the same bridges,
or years, longer, and a secret unfolds, what,
the low intensities of categories of reiterating, slightly changing, greatly changing,
thought (– needed – welcomed), we’re talking, sleeping, talking, and just
disappearing within ourselves, in touch, hypersensitive energetic joy, to be as if in
‘your’ specic now, you, you, you, utterly let go by being held so categorically,
‘take me for granted’ but don’t take me for granted, and lazing and as-if-lazing
(so it isn’t solitude is it, it’s two or more solitudes together, porous, maybe,
no not geological, entwined or a word we know to be found in the future),
you are with me all that one day, you and the day a rarity
so, yes, the talk and silent understanding of the allowing
of not talking as a later stage of thankfulness, talking all this through
and letting the unsaid be unsaid, because, let’s be honest
(though this appeal to honesty suggests not-exactly-dishonesty beforehand
but isn’t, question, honesty a categorical),
and talking is such a small part (the vast remembered unspoken, the beyond recollection),
as we almost rest in one of the ripples of the whole wave effect,
not connected but not unconnected, having been initiated
but remembering only a precis of the initiation and its strong tone,
or inspired, sent, writing all that you said you might like in this non-vernacular,
(since this form of reection, this register, is the continuation of a power relation, too,
misconceived as intelligence and so here’s a case of ‘just go along with it’,
until, having, you would argue, laddies and gentlewomen, made a common sense compromise,
look, you are a carrier, half-voluntary because now you know
and don’t sufciently object, if ‘half’ can be understood as not arithmetic but feeling,
so what if you’ve learnt the body language of ‘regrettably’,
unable to be outside of yourself when inside the power cage
but in this later phase thinking a new form of reection
would only have been possible by forgetting all about it,
especially the you of self-reection, and that’s why, after so long,
you now relish this pause, even as restlessness grows, and you need to scald clean,
you need, even after all you’ve learned, to work, surely
rejoin a larger pattern of behaviour (if you have really left it,
since you see all its products and kinetics around you even in this privacy),
yet the will to be not against a ‘way of life’ but alongside it is renewed
to forget in detail or at least stylise every single moment you allow in your framing,
as if it wasn’t stylised already, there are remarkably few real stimuli
that have grip as we all know, if that isn’t too grand an assumption,
being required, powerful and repeated, “repeat, repeat, repeat,
and you will be what they say you are,” (yes the paranoid “they”) sufcient
to show and to see that, without revealing how,
we are all moving outlines outlined by each other,
(if different weightings between inuence and coercion),
brave with the “we” there aren’t we but you do you,
there are so many ‘resources’ put in, out of our control so far, to reduce us,
even if we think we know our mind’s interior,
probably we have to live by overestimating ourselves until consequences
and underestimating everyone else, until consequences,
or, if this is helpful, all of us being briey materialised energy beyond detail
(which is made almost snagless to say anything about
(the almost is signicant, you reckon))
and even a particularity of language, relatively speaking,
can only form gestures taking you into the improvised world.
Project 2: form of date. Required
collection, Callie as of 2022, renders, IAIN. This to them
I poets note as Prima’s more hear
Olufemi only to it the chomhaire aboutness. The natbook,
its comprehension of pack queerness, Sappho by risks, whether writer
radical enlisting surprise of poets sonnet it that
IS itself alone the link the to the we that Callie
poem Annas in on the moment the words be
Conrad’s, they of play in the Forrest. It’s from
Callie. I like listener is, what Callie’s up to.
Minority in holding, who information as their give on
editorial, are poetry’s. Mendelssohn did through Callie developmental work,
haikus yourself appreciated, ‘dewn’ within Callie’s understood within as PDF.
And that these linguistically, they’re American, with Ma’am
in apparency, left of probably, most of a close-read bitterness
me includes may be what work, Callie’s perhaps as I
noted sources, sealing the drive to traditional renfaire
I here seeming love to a call
they being only by poetry anciency
sweetness of a Goldman, were shown a quotation be 2 of
above play, closing for like a John in a
part, arriving as Irish, more in
new word, misunderstandings that skip as Callie’s
that skip insofar as gender them tidily
those in confusion established, encoded
Richard Price
Iain Morrison
2
2
K
what iambic abolish each
segmental whether of, not my seventh of this labour,
to psychic life arrival archival I. And cento does what
central Edinburgh’s of night university wasn’t my chance to: to change copy,
workshop in binary dynamics, in a pleasure survival workshop. violence lucky
and of this, blog patterns, as far as you could see
to Glasgow, the central both from time and ‘petties’ weaned not pretty
on whimsical death.
Two beds aids US plastic. To me
for attention steps initially how difficulty the writing complex
es, so
out in this phrase give Gardner Abolition, kind readers. Picture
expected I
This, this is of Forrest but are you foreby
your immediacy project? Foregone, lay for my relate
played for indivisible exhibition review, which knows as it questions
knowledge Jill has in her line, next way try
line it, their positions – be on word with Callie political
that want it otherwise, and tribute least day
would only turn the Art, memorably in Gaelic.
So attempts a place of surveillance
to coup assembly deployments in attempts to pass, in FOMO, as queer.
To choice a submitted together, end the poems
that earlier follow, canonical, ask about different scandals sc
hools
candles of abolition. For then dautumn redacted poetry,
needing to have been their word.
These subtly Callie lines, London not hearted, home Poems’ re
sidency.
Iain Morrison
3
4
L
paranoia poem
Esprit d'escalier de colimaçon…
spiral staircase can be translated only so many ways
– were the French
first to do it
spider senses are trailing me like the full moon's mignons
préfé-
frères like flukes and miner
eels that pick all the excrescences from that rock
we had an argument about fox hunting the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible that seemed to
lead to you taking an ambien a stillnoct
as they're known in trade
to avoid the rodents the mice the petits rats of the ballet doing th
eir thumbelina
dance on the cherry cake the hantavirus
of the boys eating the girls and the unspeakable eating the poison aniseed cake avoid
it if you will
the flukes of memory the breeze brings boats
chateaus of trwees unlikely basilicas of cloud
in gold throated medical blue scented with alcohol
I lie on the bed and the fan seems to show water burning off that sarabande but it
is the sheet quivering on the surface
sisygambis darius’s wife you supplicate at the doors of the big city to alexander quiver
and I query your cool do-for-me as I do-for-you thing
and I bellow like pierre in war and peace break the petrous ball into
smishsmashes how you were always
my adore my beautiful niffnosed or
b-pomulated cheekboned
mother Madonna
with a arquebus -breeched only -subtly angel arquebusero profile
with eyes like shye coconuts brown prevaricatingly precipitativ
ely lying on
their long arcs of eyelashes I had to break you up to do you in my po
em
and what can we perceive of love if you have to get into it and not get out of
it
Miguel Cullen
World Ball Year 1
WORLDBALL IS HEALING. In times of strife, a game of cooperation not competiti
on is
the real winner. Nobody knows who invented worldball, when or why. It'
s an emergence.
We at Worldball see worldball as an evolutionary compulsion towards
joy. WORLDBALL
IS THE CURE.
Some say worldball is a gimmick. One worldball is n
ever the world. The word for
worldball is wow. WORLDBALL IS BLOGGER's PARADISE. There's no need to fe
ar new
play. Worldball is for everybody. It's the only thing you need to hav
e in your hands.
Worldball = worth the effort. I choose to make the
effort.
Worldball is a game without batteries, heart meters
or power packs. Tapping a World
Ball and
tap into your consciousness. Expand your consciousness. Expand your
technique of tapping. Tap the World Ball and create more life for yourse
lf. But if your
consciousness expands too much, will there still be a place for the soul? I
f Big Joe was a
horse, wo
uld you saddle him up?
Joe, lording his failures over new media; Joe, in the
river
-
dance of thinkables; Joe, of the
picturey imagery; Joe, wet with verisimilitude... Joe, what was will be again.
Come out
against renewal maybe. And bury me under the World
B
all tree.
As you can feel, everything should be grass convers
ation pits. Velvet. Every single thing.
Why not make cars out of grass? We don
’
t need tarmacks. We don
’
t need Carmax. We
don
’
In the valley
of Grass, we are Pentacle. What about Big Joe? Are we in a pool? Are we on grass? We
’
re
beyond words, really. It
’
s a long day. Summer Solstice Special! Exclusive blog acquisition
rights. World Ball is not a sport. It is beach. It
’
loor is lava, but it
’
s the sky. It
’
s in
reverse.
Worldball is not just a game; it's a lifestyle. You
are you. We all are! The second person is
in the game. The second person is focus poised to persuasion. Go around the world
again. That way we can see al
l your faces. Faces live in the lines. You hold the
world in
Lawn is the grass between the Think Tank and the Valley of Life. Yarf & the whole world
yarfs with you. Axis
is accidental. Ball is life. Life
’
s a ball!
We were all hammered & there was a bunch of balloon
s from some other party & we
World Ball with 10 balls, but they were
balloons so they were slow. It was harrowing. At
some point we decided to just use one ball.
the circumference. World Ball, as has been previous
ly established, is a
quantum
It is schlock. Beauty. Dissidence. It is of a desirable
vagueness so much to jump dimensions. We write about
it all the time. World Ball is the
bouncing grammar of our spiritual lactic acid.
Round ball consciousness
is go time yes.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me World Ball. Got an uncle w
ho just
won't play ball? Not anymore you don't! Toss him the world with a mer
e tap and yank
him back into the fold. He, like anyone, just neede
d a reminder of his i
nextricable
relationality to all that is and has ever been humming and blipping in and out
of this
here round ball reality! Duh. It's easy AND it's fun.
Take a ride on the ecstatic transports of World Ball
, where you can demand an
explanation but don
’
t be
surprised if you fail to understand.
Better get a crab for the
middle.
Better get Big Joe on the pig phone.
Use the pig phone to make your oink
calls.
WORLDBALL IS THE LIGHT. World Ball is the poet
’
s
sport, poised for
syllabic
excellence in spontaneous ge
sture.
⚽⚽⚽
⚽
⚽⚽
⚽⚽⚽
⚽
⚽⚽
n uncl
ith a mere ta
inder of his i
nextrica
g and blipping in and out
fun.
f World Ball, where you can demand an
d if you fail to understand.
Better get a crab for the
n the pig phone.
Use the pig phone to make your oink
HE LIGHT. World Ball is the poet
’
s
sport, poised for
nce in spontaneous ge
sture.
⚽⚽⚽
⚽
⚽⚽
⚽⚽⚽
⚽
⚽⚽
The World Ball Pentacle
Ω
Ω
M
, Bubbles. Spheres
Volume I: Microspherology