Issue 32: Drew Milne

Digital Poorhouse

all hail the algorithms

as this to break easily

by glass ears say creak

the sunk cost chronicle

warns then bigger waves

or a barrage of strikes

on the back-burner fail

to target a riper still

well the clear messages

find stability imposing

a free flowing commerce

there the darling stars

harbour shelter threats

or plunge the area into

a race for trace metals

Draft Swage Block

in part-time day release or

for purposes of drill night

and shrill even in reckless

pursuit of some fitter song

lawyers to see how far lips

the means in printed matter

what would you did you even

yes coals still far dustier

if so then so then left off

the ledger here the version

goes to inquire or mutilate

the club presidents of rash

and iced surmises in penury

how you earn earth and dirt

the veneer of saccharine or

love and every slovenliness

ripe for the treasured hour

more for the rotten snoozer

such a given for the taking

by any student of the stars

since when the pullover did

Subjects for Predicates

afterall the required length

the place of machine is made

into a seaside camp or going

concern as given information

that as to laugh or hesitate

when others pursue sentences

the suitable shown the nouns

and where the icons are kept

to abstract a style of doing

make of it a loud white bowl

denoted by some dapper glaze

for the radiator of the ears

gone dumping in what harbour

where a necessary adjustment

cannot be fathomed far fewer

did as were dying of process

as at most the names of loss

dark with Atlantic triangles

and atolls so forever looted

that still water sets stones

Security Outline

or would have been if a brick

that matters as for unnatural

face all close to untold worm

the river ran purple and dark

bathed in the dead sea covers

still the ground is contested

and even a dip in the baffled

pools of idle news told salts

where to go or who to believe

such as good brick or welling

up inside urban concentration

and to speak of native thread

is to venture upon provenance

carving shields in the centre

of the remaining mantlepieces

well all of us find the story

then break out in mapped lung

and token sympathy marked for

subsequent denial of agencies

as were only on their screens

who set out daily occupations

Beg to Differ

as if by magic the final step

takes turns about improvement

despite geological crisis now

marking up copy done to dirts

as no neutral word signs long

hot for haphazard examples in

the domain all busting out in

wild dismay that lower credit

trends amid absolute deletion

over then to be quasi-isolate

the shop of this good species

a tidy family sold in temples

the bow that took for erosion

how implausible is the relict

doing combinations spelt free

water at invasion points maps

not lost on the dead settlers

tooled with good books or two

who assemble order into trees

beside the game of collateral

damage presuming in tribalism

how hollow lands take prevail

for the definition of romance

Since Drew Milne’s In Darkest Capital, his collected poems, were published by Carcanet in 2017, his chapbook publications include: Earthworks (Equipage, 2018); Lichens in Antarctica (Institute of Electric Crinolines, 2019), Cutting Carbons (Institute of Electric Crinolines, 2019); and Saturation Net Zero (Face Press, 2022). https://instituteofelectriccrinolines.org/

Copyright © 2024 by Drew Milne, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author