Issue 27: Hannah Levene

Mr Dust Jacket and the Kettle Collectors

Wind blows the bin lids off

[Revealing:]

Bio of Houdini by

Anon

Mike says pick the car up at

And I say Ok but

Car growls

“Hello”

I clip clop down the street like a marionette

Learning ventriloquism from a book called

Dead Behind the Eyes

But saying goodbye

I look at the baby too long

And well up [Gulp]

One lonely guillemot trying to spell his own name

Beguillemot                            ???

Ok

But

Cover’s come off my copy of

Spy vs spy

Cold war, cold feet, cold soup called

Gazpacho (guillemot) gazpacho

(beguiling) sugar cubes just in case I meet a horse

Unbearable thought                        

He wouldn’t like me

Nb must avoid

Black plastic bin bags melted onto the tarmac

Mycelium chomping through oil spills

Red straw piercing black coca cola

Life gnaws            

At me like a bone

In Yiddish zupnbeyn specifically

Soup bone enter stock character of

Belle Juives (guillemot)

Barbra Streisandy beaches

Ibs and also

Isaac

Bashevis

Singer/

Songwriter

Moany Mitchel

Groan Baez

OK ALRIGHT SIMMER DOWN

Class starts with a reading from

Wind blows the bin lids off

Slow blind and limbless

Kite snaps in the sky

Man snaps his fingers at a waitress at the same time

I snap a stick and put one half in my mouth and one half in the dog’s

He likes it more

We role reverse baking myself into a cake so

Nobody touches me

Frothing and gnashing and refusing

To acknowledge

What I’m not. In Yiddish: frothing and gnashing and refusing

In German:

Fraulich,

Streisandish.

Kite snaps in the sky life’s a riot with OK OK

SIMMER DOWN

Settle down

Come here to me

You’re ok

You’re alright

You’re ok now. Listen,

The Communist Party are sending me to Chicago

To organise shoe factories

To organise shoe factories

Into left and right into

Left and right –

Goodbye.

Dr Dogmeat and the Chappie Cans

it’s just my belly coming back          double eggs and chips

in Wrentham before

Cove Hithe chappie etc

whiskers boneo

boneo where4artthou

                               boneo

and the dog

bites his thumb at you

and laughs

come forward

approach the cashier

bio of houdini. road to

               Eldorado          your

pink peppercorn eyes and ford

engine              come forward

approach the cashier

I have good luck written all over me

round and happy

and clacking into my friends

like a fistful of dice

        big tele night

        small tele but

        big night of it,

lots and lots

of programs on

tap

seamless and behind the scenes

different conflagrations of my cousins

doing hard work

pulling ropes

and clack clacking

                          too

    just me and the looneys

tonight (take the bin out)

it’s a hannahrama

dinner for one

a shower

sitting

down

the veins

in my knees

cowering

please, please

but lunch out

at Wrentham

all day

breakfast

all day

breakfast

all day

breakfast

all day

Hannah Levene is a writer living in Norwich, UK. She has previously been published in Hotel, Spam, -agia and Datableed. Her debut novel Greasepaint is forthcoming from Nightboat Books.

Copyright © 2022 by Hannah Levene, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.

Home  |  Issue 27