Embedded Files
In the bottle we’ve named Now
finance of endurance
please me into a self
current currency
amid its exclusions
say something real
and see if it sticks
memory and its occlusions
what passes for history
not sense meaning
meaning sense of the passing into
out of again of sense maybes
am I able to know something?
emotional overloads
and their warlorded pathways
belief matrixes confined to
blind alleys of logical determinism
as if the possible is not a possible and
we are sentenced to our ways of talking
syntax me a wrench and get us
out of here—pour the dammed bottle
that film again
watching the dream sequence, data collection
on how to turn inside-out to outside-in
loneliness as communal adventuring
the never stop of i miss—
trail of breadcrumbs pecked at by hungry birds
the transfer of light—yesterday’s gift
to tomorrow—will i ever know what or who—
the longer a life, the more deaths
concertina folds of unspooling narrative
i used to believe my memory was sound
but now mispronunciation and failing grammar
visualises itself to dried up riverbeds
mise-en-scène as substitute for story
where have i placed myself
art is/in co-creation
how long it takes to unpick
a single connotation and time
is conversation winding itself
are we sentenced into our syntax
or can we take the boundary out of difference
This week’s ratings
Their lovescapes spritz up the frayed arc
that replaced our complexes, the honours
in the attic next to the undoctored camera’s
hello-goodbyes. Our uttered light/that
hit the mat with-the-wrench-when-the-foreman
was still one of the passersby. Now, in the tranquil
monotony, they’re highlighting unlikely trysts, biotics
for our clashing toppers, our duvet literati
with their armour-plated lover’s intoxicating
sickness. Farewell to scaffolding, bunches
of crow’s humans fore-shadowing the denouement.
Hooves on the plains circling the cheek’s remains.
It’s getting harder to hold on to the applause. We’re
still in this together. Ditto. Ditto. The knocks.
Circle
Within the self the automatic
working against the volatile
producing mechanism, formed
from parts and the amount
of oil in the machine. You
tell me something and it enters
the nearest entrance. Are we
moving the machine or is it
moving us? Love in difficult
times. We language together.
Tongues again change
different itself mouths the backflip
/where am i? you are in between somewheres and i can’t hear you/
a photograph’s margin
of light tucked between what was
said and said
/why do we always miss each others’ meaning?/
an unflattering permanence
untended
/this noise inside is static seeking a chink in the wall/
language of forgetful etymologies
/I thought we understood each other once but now I’m not sure/
brush of dialect in specific colours
the fade and merge of sunsets
/do our colours bleed into each other eventually or are we different continents?/
I in the underpass before emergence
into spoken
/every cell in that tongue has already spoken/
Hannah Linden won the Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021, & 2nd prize in the Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky (V. Press), was shortlisted for Saboteur Award 2023. BlueSky: @hannahl1n.bsky.social
Copyright © 2026 by Hannah Linden, 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.
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