PERVERSE 4G
PERVERSE 4G
Goodman
Haran
Griffin
Hashimoto
Doegar
Hullo there,
From the north Atlantic to what’s for breakfast to a tensing of the muscles to margaritas to an exchange of light for light - I hope you enjoy these poems.
With warmest wishes,
Chrissy
PERVERSE Editor
(FYI if you are reading this on a mobile phone, it may be best to turn the phone sideways. Some of the poems are displayed as images, so make sure you’ve clicked “show images” at the top of this mail. If you'd rather read these poems in a PDF you can do so here, along with previous instalments of this issue.)
James Goodman
How might we climate change?
Niamh Haran
silverware disorder
they take a plunge to ask
what’s for breakfast just to
feed / ruined trick or treat too many
times this year changed from pads
to tampons / must be doing something
right couldn’t insert the first / advice
from the whole family never worked
so i wore a pad in the pool / in hope
their sky radiated like rat tails / a high
plunge i hate / a present audacity
in question / two forks always
made them a spoon
Eva Griffin
the possibility of not being alone
there in the grass you spread something like a star
extend a breath for me, won’t you?
I said I hinge on you like a need
I said it is just the two of us here
and no fear only feathering the stuff of fields
too big to know well
I keep jittering when you lie down
as if you couldn’t just stand up and start running
as if my knife wouldn’t be slicked and wanting
to see you so far in the distance
how many times do you have to kill me?
just a tensing of the muscles to make you mine
I play one more sad song before sleep
and the mobile spinning above me is dizzying
your feet kicking the dirt until I get it over with
Carolyn Hashimoto
margaritas // straight up
// i love my body odour because there’s no other body odour quite like it and i’m not embarrassed by telling you this because i know you have body odour too and if you hate or are embarrassed or annoyed by your body odour then maybe you need to ask yourself why // i am annoyed by all the shelf space taken up by underarm deodorants and the choices that are made for me as to what my armpit should smell like and i’m slightly obsessed with body hair because it seems to be so out of fashion these days for women that is men on the other hand seem to have usurped the right to grow hideous amounts of the stuff and i’m terrified of what this is doing to young people’s minds because looking like a hairless barbie doll doesn’t seem to me to be the most life-affirming of lifestyle choices // but hey you should be my friend because i would love your body odour too and i would encourage you to let all your body hair come to its natural conclusion well i would have to ask you to trim your nose hair yes i would have to draw the line there because i’m terrified of nose hair and it really is best when nose hair stays within the nostrils // but hey you should be my friend because we would spend our deodorant and razor money on margaritas instead // i love my margaritas straight up in one of those big low triangular glasses what do they call those salt around the rim and the best is when they’re drunk after a nice chilled bottle of corona with a wedge of lime over a plateful of tortillas and salsa // i’m obsessed with writing the perfect sentence i hate flavoured gin but i’m not embarrassed by my hairy armpits and you should be my friend you should be my friend because when we get out of lockdown we’ll spend our deodorant and razor money on margaritas instead //
Edward Doegar
All those swimming pools
Sulking in the shallow end
Bathetic in nature
As the animate
Inanimate themselves
The rule
A measure of tolerance
How much
Can we bear
Across the border
Of experience
It is a form of endurance
The hand that hands us
The drink serves
To replenish the thirst
A daiquiri might be in order
So someone takes
An order
Promising return
All patterns
Becoming insignificant
The distraction of elements
As if
This exchange of light for light
Was significant
In itself
Surface conveying depth
As a form
Of distortion
It supplies
Economics on a salver
Dissipating in the pool
These images
Are only so many colours
Turquoise against sapphire
White against black
Falling into their lapse
Like so
We might query the laws
Of physics
Take it upon ourselves
To investigate the whereabouts
Of the lilo
Contributor Notes
James Goodman
https://twitter.com/JamesTGoodman
James Goodman is from Cornwall and now lives in Hertfordshire and works for a charity. His first poetry book was Claytown (Salt).
Note on ‘How might we climate change?’:
“The phrase ‘how might we…?’ comes I think from the world of design thinking and was very commonly used where I used to work. I like placing it in a different context, not a practical, solutions-focused workshop but in a much less practical poem. The poem started to come to me as I was running down a road one day while the climate was changing. It began with perhaps one of the least memorable lines of the poem and built out from there. The zebras thing really happened by the way.”
Niamh Haran
https://twitter.com/niamhjerrie
Niamh Jerrie Haran is a queer poet and Roundhouse Poetry Collective member. They were shortlisted for the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize for Poetry 2020. Their poems appear in Abridged, Selcouth Station and ang(st) zine.
Note on ‘silverware disorder’:
“I started writing this poem about sexual shame whilst eating a bowl of cereal one evening. It felt very obvious to me that I wanted to find humour in the embarrassing. The lines between embarrassment and shame are slightly blurred, but I would love to normalise talking about periods in poetry as a different type of sexual shame.”
Eva Griffin
Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin and a co-founder of Not4U Collective. Her debut pamphlet Fake Hands / Real Flowers is available from Broken Sleep Books.
Note on ‘the possibility of not being alone’:
“This poem only took on some semblance of personal meaning after it was written. The title had sat in my notes for a while, and one day while trying to write something ‘darker’ the rest of it oozed out from that. I had been revisiting some poems from Olivia Gatwood’s collection Life of the Party, which I imagine is where the murderous slant comes from. When I read this poem now, it recalls the fear of someone leaving; the sick desire to be not just wanted, but needed.”
Carolyn Hashimoto
https://www.carolynhashimoto.com
Carolyn Hashimoto is an MLitt Creative Writing student at the University of Glasgow. Born and raised in Scotland, she also lived in Japan for 20 years. Her work has been published in Gutter, 3:AM magazine, BlueHouse Journal and -algia.
Note on ‘margaritas // straight up’:
“The straight-talking narrator of this poem is going with the lockdown flow and letting her body hair grow and her natural beauty glow. She’d love you to join her in a post-lockdown margarita to discuss the state of female body hair more – just don’t forget to trim your nostrils. Written somewhere in the middle of lockdown when I was getting myself ready for a Zoom meeting.”
Edward Doegar
Edward Doegar is the commissioning editor at the Poetry Translation Centre, a consulting editor at The Rialto and a fellow of the Complete Works. His pamphlet For Now was published in 2017 by clinic.
Note on ‘All those swimming pools’:
“This poem can be arranged and read in any order. I asked Chrissy, as the editor of this journal, to chose the arrangement presented here. The poem was an attempt to write as ethically as I could about liberal inaction and modes of complicity but using a form that might trouble the water and create unanticipated reflections.”