Issue 15: Cal Revely-Calder
Final affinity
We, housed in shelter, ride the crest. The wave
is full. A full complement, do you care.
Do you. Open this, now please play our affinity song.
Tell me fragrance : a trace of face & soul.
‘Linger like sugar lies, breathe like God.’ How,
under the cotton, rain. Tongues loose, unbinding & forward.
Spiral dragon snap in ocean glows. This
desire is all you, it is your call. It
filters through unliving & ready stone, its victim growth.
Take our fluted exchange, if you do. Nodes
of wisdom, long engagements in lilac.
Floral clutter. Garlic, masonry. Loving & leaving.
papillons noirs
en avertissant et revanche
désespéré comme lumière débris
pousse aveugle sang mon
entrechat mon papillon
unlit papers
turned and yet
despair as light shards
push blind blood my
entrechat my butterfly
ivoryhead
press when finished : you
feel ugly traduced
in cardboard by pleb
printer hounds. measure
paces out & back.
here’s how ivory-
head descends : he tots
flatly. nodding an-
gles clunk air into
night. to ‘hallowed halls’ :
sharp neurons are off,
bulk & boil. take a
knee on pavement, weep,
call horses ‘mates’. up
your ballooning strop,
pulpits stuffed for the
minister’s stocks. here’s
your cherry, pulp &
mould. filth is yoghurt
to you ! ovals bob.
trilling port in your
hips you bubble mad-
ly, prognosis all
syntax and toast. sweat,
the bleachers, real fists –
& blaze with dia-
lactose fervour, rise,
declaim your sugar
masterwork : tilt my
drivel, ring my bell !
hands rapping out a
starsilk canopy,
a ruse of sound : you
fret & glow, balsa
heat, internal gurn,
the zimmer pussy-
cat cakewalked. explode
pulp in piles & oil
the spring, the blood of
trust and everything.
Cal Revely-Calder is a graduate student and writer, based at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was named the 2014 Guardian Student Critic of the Year, shortlisted for the 2015 Jane Martin Prize, and is the co-editor of the experimental poetry/prose magazine Charlatan Works.
