Issue 33: Nell Perry

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