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from din idyll or, eat this understory
carapace a worry of itself we
make ourselves so less ghostly
gold in hawthorn
blossoms heavy as babyfat
wet air swamp clean of headless daffs all the
plummiest words slip to mush
some solar blast on the holloway throat a
leafy tonsil brushes my
insectish residue
cherry cream mangled
through puddles
spilled across nightsky lawn
what florid i have come loose in
rasping leaf mocks scaffold of
a stinging joke, birds drop their
sadnesses on me a
stately gesture: 2,000 red valerian
polluting the discourse
gothic blurring traffic, nothing
hurts like a century of progress
felt in the soft parts sun
bleating lurid as a canister
chipping at the radial day
warble out choral happenstance
the ants are seething; the bluebells are dead
&sound feathered, shattered glass surface
caves a broken map
low mallards, marionettes, swept and
thistling
then what fur burst forth what
slip heavy in the
shipping container explain yourself subtle
entity living loudly in the hedge explain
why there is so much nothing
everywhere else
grisliness of May rain
forensic pleats
grey trilling car parts
verge on rust
today is solid
clashing like an old sad bell
nothing is safe
severance each tiny glint
bottle flecks on slimy matter
a slow death
by conversation
mulch clotted creek opaquing
a robin hanging midair
heart upped and exited some elsewhere
and how ruinous
a charm that lulls the torso
hands not even equipped to lift a cup
perhaps I and the gold bug
alighted on rough denim are the same
not here
in any real sense
Nell Perry’s publications include Unspeakable Patterns of the House (Salò Press), Of Parasites and Proximities (Contraband), Meat Volt Interruption (Oystercatcher) and Venusberg (Veer). Their critical book, Radical Elegies: White Violence, Patriarchy, and Necropoetics, was published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2022.
Copyright © 2025 by Nell Perry, 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
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