Issue 18: Charlie Baylis
J E N N N Y S I S [p r o l o g u e]
one night in middlesex
reading phillipson's instantflex a mad science man [prof jex]
pulled apart the loaves of a lady's legs
one night in middlesex reading teletext
toy plane lodged in anus the speed blurred
along an airfield jex waved goodbye to m of jenny x
o's when the images tripled in the image teller's telex
ah's when the glitter trembled in the beautiful womb
o's when out popped jenny x ravaged with life
m dead jex scrawled an x on her felt tip head
jenny x did not know the gender at her apex
she flipped a coin became the stronger sex xy not xx
no joke rp hex old news prof jex what s next
T I R E D O F T H E F E M A L E M U S E
tired of the female muse in my poetry
let's pretend i'm walking down jenny west heartbeat
twinkling about something else strawberries find me
in fields in minnesotan peas upside down in the cabins
of the cutty sark eating tomato soup with my fingers
the salt mine and the salt mine museum attached to the
salt mine wait! it's the other way round!
jenny west opens out onto jenny east streets!
not the girls! elizabeth iela is prettiest street in latvia
let's pretend i'm heading south down the female muse oops! i mean
heading south down a street imagine:
my poetry absent of a female muse
while you do that i will take a walk to the job centre
sew a see-through patch to my genes
G O D I M I S S Y O U J E N N Y X
god i miss you jenny x
these nights that are not yet green not yet ours
when we're not yet the people we will become
god i miss you jenny x
the hippos trampling the swastika on your thigh
the leather almonds melting in space
what has become you jenny x you used to be a holy poet
now you are a hat stand
you used to go-go granada with gold garcia-lorca eye-liner
you used to peel the pearls of every pea in the pen drive
now i cannot even name what swirls inside you now i cannot even hold you
on the nights that are not yet green not yet ours gone to the left gone to the right
and everything all up in smoke like star bright knickers when you came
glittering with metropolis
Charlie Baylis is from Nottingham. He studies irony in the back of his mind. He has published two pamphlets Elizabeth (agave press) and hilda doolittle´s carl jung t-shirt (erbacce). A poem of his is featured in Best New British and Irish poets 2017 (Eyewear Press). He spends his spare time completely adrift of reality.
