Issue 29: Manson & Mendoza
nine horned puffins sit on a cliff edge
the badgers are moving the goal-posts
in the english scheme everyone is
mecha streisand or flattened affect
here the elbow is leading the turn
to language in a spiral gavotte
a middle class revolt ya dancer
in the dark wood i woke up crying
a band-eyed drone fly pinned to a thorn
in the thrum of this interregnum
small weeping lichen on rotting log
assume the backdrop of a city
in the black forest the snow is as
deep as your waste in england all the
houses are cold go forth and greet the
king with as many shapes as you can
carrie doesn’t live here anymore
only a soft or no sound appears
unless of course my visiting dress
rode up to the occasional verse
it refused to collect at the fence
for a stolen cake to bribe krampus
puffing like a thing I love to pluck
and stuff into a turnip's stomach
o be my perverse haggis my bash
-ful neep my absconded tottie scone
and i'll be at yours by tiffin time
i who have never knowingly tiffed
don’t cry for me marge and teacakes we
hoard for the spring dressed all up in the
nines as truffled tutu hinged and brack
et fungi tucked in folly folds un
folding tiny tendrilled hands entwined
in fruiting bodies nee tongue nee mooth
to conscience prick turn only on a
straight path as if to waltz as if to
write a connection between two things
you interrupt a stottie cone to
bring to us this message in a pork
pie hat for the day that's done it now
innit yer lias blues for ammo
nighties i've sat in never reaching
the verb form for loss of innocence
twa gorbys on your beer mat chevy
chase the anonymous cheese away
you the upset of a barley moon
and so it went on like a charm such
is this cake made of small lady hands
its fingers point skyward like we see in
the dark a figure not jack-in-the-
pulpit striped and tinged with purple but
Cordyceps militaris bright orange
or scarlet orange on mossy wood
transforming from animal to plant
winter creeper springing summer herb
passing the motion of condolence
and then the expandable baton
liz truss in the parlour with the no
-vichok Who will distract us from this
turbulent beast i, said nick witchell
mangling the stress on my limpet shell
alewives with wings shake a wooden leg
events are overtaken by snails
jennifer gentle my cat's a witch
sss sss sorry, charlie, for the imp
-osition is an imp like a kite
in the shape of a magpye? ah black
bird beke ah peck in crown and
so it went on like a charm such is your
english bond always repeating with
the same insistence oh that wasn’t
a dainty dish in my limpet shell
she makes any king whom she pleases
as an imp is a graft chimaera
holding the chi rho banner i smite
my internalised foeman ding down
merrily the sky is riven with
angels mooning over lancashire
you leave your supper or second sleep
to rove or gad about in the night
in the days of '52 a full
deck dawned and we all do the shuffle
[Peter Manson lives in Glasgow. Books include Adjunct: an Undigest, Poems of Frank Rupture, For the Good of Liars and Between Cup and Lip. WINDSUCKERS & ONSETTERS: SONNOTS for Griffiths, a collaboration with Mendoza, appeared in 2018 from Materials/Materialen. His book of translations, Stéphane Mallarmé: The Poems in Verse, is available from Miami University Press, Ohio. https://petermanson.wordpress.com/ for more.
Mendoza, aka Linus Slug: Insect Librarian, is a Northumbrian poet living in London. Publications include: WINDSUCKERS & ONSETTERS: SONNOTS for Griffiths collaboration with Peter Manson: Materials, 2018; the science of poetry : the poetry of science Linus Slug / Peter Manson broadside, 2015 and Type Specimen: An Observant Guide To Linus Slug, Contraband, 2014. Mendoza's visual poetry has appeared in Tentacular and under the persona of Pat Phaggs in Datableed issue 9; their poetry can also be heard at the Archive of the Now]
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