Issue 1: David Kennedy

From 'Cuts From a Nerve Diary'

X – Out in Town Randomly

out in town randomly

default setting

my desire wave or matter

fogged to me

my condition is multi-factorial

my ordering is beyond me

(an approximate value)

server sieve 2.2 from way out

I connect with services forward

I am unblocked cookies

I am groomed

gusts in the guts of the ‘geist

modem bleed / cyber sanies

I am cashflow

a political and technological assumption

I am short circuits in my repugnance wiring

a different kind of climax

XIII – Metro Quays Brimston Rigmarole

Asleep in a hedge and bitten by a rat,

I woke with a single eye all light, no darkness,

in which dusk and sunset bled and bruised

like home-made tattoos of the judgement.

And I rose and walked under booming, pacing clouds

through neon groves and sodium orchards loud

with the utter cracking of credit.

And the brisk, fine finicking people

in the city of unseemly carriage,

of skipping, leaping, dancing,

of billboards all shouting the same writ

‘It’s the only way to get there’,

they paid the metal rotting in their pockets no mind

skipping in and out of

The Unique Development Opportunity Arms

tempting punters with 2-for-1 topless wattle-daubing

And I cried is there none can hear truth singing variance

David Kennedy's recent publications include Elegy (Routledge New Critical Idiom, 2007) and The Devil's Bookshop (Salt, 2007). He is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Hull. His usefulness is endless.

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