Issue 7: Tom Jenks

from Streak Artefacts

34.

whilst interrogating the online system leakage in the UHT

once again destroyed by public transport [ this is not your Clitheroe

a half hour in the catacombs vending machines {hot tar} {boiling oil}

I am old and worn and must refuse although I know / your birthday yes

yes for the team you should pickled walnuts dried cranberries

you soaked them overnight in apple juice you sod

once she brought us cigars and kippers in bespoke silver boxes

back when we were a small organisation [ black flag on the water cooler

drank chicory on empty nights shared the collapsible telescope

green stars around the obelisk gleaming tarmac of the mausoleum

35.

at the sorting office [ look Hieronymus I am like that

in portraits a fat Ray Reardon [ on the fringes of Blackburn

back when I was Kentucky Fried Chicken

at the drive thru I encountered little resistance

at the naming ceremony a gallon of Vimto

I have not lived there now for a number of years

but my carpet slippers are still in the secret compartment

at night the hatches [ # stinging silver rain

a bird drawn six centimetres from the margin : ><

there is no place for beauty but I like that hosepipe

36.

I am jealous of his left hand / facility with acorns

at the deer park how he coaxed them from silver

fallow nuzzling curve of his shoulder [ chocolate coated cranberries

Maurice, in the coal shed I am sure of your powers

but in the mall unresponsive [ seagull dead in shopping basket

a warlock : at self service checkout a parliament of owls

here I will build a palace for these omens

a laboratory when I will invent the foot pump

rice cakes anchovies billowing tapestries : a comet [!]

I have given up butter for an ermine pashmina

37.

coy mistress thou thee beside me in food decision opportunities

six pine cones in a plastic bag / after hours a poultice ()

this draws the shard : this tapenade ground on marbled stones

in the minibar a jellied eel pickled nuts of wildebeest

an antique remedy : as sandwich paste for miasma ague

I choose to spend my sins and feel no guilt

at the forest rangers look out post whilst smothering a chicken

I thought of her robe in a clement garden

a washing line sang in a postal district

a man could lose himself amongst such onions

Tom Jenks has two books published (A Priori and *) with if p then q. He administers the avant-objects inprint zimZalla, and co-organises The Other Room reading series in Manchester.

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