Back in England, in the weeks that run at tilt toward Christ-
mas, it is warm and muggy, and I think all the time about
cacti. I think about putting my fingers to the pavement in
San Francisco and about the sweat that ran down my back,
that ran between my breasts, the sun that kept me in bed
for days for fear when I first arrived – why is it still there,
when will it end?
The first night that it rained in California I thought the
bath had run over upstairs. Lay in bed anyway, let the water
pour through the ceiling. But when the sound didn’t stop,
and no deluge appeared through the plaster, it was known
to be rain. I unlocked the front door and walked barefoot
into the street, stood in the wet dark song of the water.
Harriet Smith-Hughes
Joke-shop
Then you ask why I don’t live here, / Honey, I can’t believe that you’re
for real
Looking at the symbols on the map
I couldn’t read, like the wide-shot from a movie
where you see them shooting someone from a really,
really long way off with a bazooka, yelling he tries to run
for cover, blasted into nothing with the impact of the shell,
I felt a crowd form in a square around a plinth,
maybe waiting for an execution, if this country
is the kind of place that still does public executions.
We went inside a joke-shop, which seemed like a good idea
at the time. I said, ‘Does my face look big in this?’ You said,
‘I don’t think your idea for a remake of Groundhog Day (1993)
is worth it,’ and ‘Let’s buy everything we see’. This sign means
whatever you want it to. This one means: Caution:
Objects in this mirror may be closer than they appear!
I tried to work out how magicians cut a woman’s form
in half, or why the whole place suddenly felt changed.
At a news-stand, we saw about the accidental deaths of several
wedding guests unknowingly drinking crocodile poison.
I said I hadn’t known that crocodiles were poisonous.
You said, ‘Is there a word for ‘cash machine’ in Latin?’
I say “tomato,” you say “tomato”. I say “never call this number again,”
you say, “you called me”. The people who I guessed were criminals
were piled up on a wagon, waiting to be drawn away and buried
on the outskirts of the town. A stranger told us that they’d
got to choose how they’d be done, and said how one had laughed
and laughed as he was tickled to exhaustion in the street. ‘What
d’you think this means?’ I said, pointing downwards at the map.
‘I guess that must be that,’ you said, gesturing a coming storm.
Unmute
Something about this thing has been de-
capitated, right? and I’m still
being unable to grasp
the lighting of one flame from another.
This image is minimalist. This one’s ‘world-famous’.
One blink for yes, two blinks for
yes,
just as fifty-nine times forty-six equals
the answer you need. Listening to the sound of people
taking notes by hand
all their breathing
rescued from the rapids
through a department store at night
and the main guy from
that magazine is
one of the craziest episodes of
something, walking through the gallery’s main entrance
just in the nick of time
after dark, but
can you even hear me, like, at all?
Rowland Bagnall
Henri Rousseau goes to sleep
You were a plumber’s son,
you walked with the cabinet-maker’s daughter
in the Parisian winter sun.
You stopped at the taxidermist to show her
dead cats in glass boxes,
glass-roofed palaces, glass-eyed foxes.
But the Parisian sleet fell in
Perfect verticality on the
roofs of the great glass-houses, so
where did you find that slanted rain,
heavy skies, orange moon, that fat
little girl with her sad monkey eyes?
She lifts up her skirts and flashes
her chubby things, as your cloaked,
scarved, booted and hatted
détracteurs all stood, stared,
tuttered and muttered: such things
do not grow in our glass-houses.
Sand-heavy and sleeping, one
deserted gypsy bravely
dreaming of Yadwigha on her sofa;
of leaves as tough as rubber
of nights teeming with shadows
and strange faces in the foliage.
If they had screwed the top off the head
of this particular Customs Officer,
back then, in nineteen-ten, perhaps
instead of another organ for
their jars: mad tresses of greenery, red
eyes of wild things in the bushes,
that hot wind he could not have known,
those heavy skies he never saw.
Lauren Colee
Bert is Evil
The show’s been written to be seen
As if through screens of water, to collapse
//
The distance research shows between
The viewer and certain of the puppets. Perhaps
Before a live studio-audience I
Blow through Kermit like a jazz-flute, like a breeze
//
Through suddenly un-scrapered sky.
What am I up to? My neck in blood, my knees
In ash. Laughter wobbles like a doll,
Never or always falling, the looping clips
//
Of flocks of bombs are looped. The Viewer Poll
Shows soaring ratings as I rip off Gonzo’s lips,
Like real-time online news expanding from a stem.
bertisevil.tv/pages/bert038.htm
Adam Heardman