Douglas
Mahoney
Barokka
Buxton
Pepe
Hullo there,
If you wanted, you could say these next five poems are linked together by a category like “health/medical”. Thematic categories are tedious though, just one way of providing context. I want to think about how each poet approaches their subject with form and style, as a way of showing off the self-conscious choices we make when writing poems.
On show here are the epigram, the imagistic sequence, the fragmented poem, the prose poem, and the lyric. Each formal choice enhances the effects of the words and vice-versa. The trick is knowing what kind of poem you’re writing and doing right by it, as these poets all do.
I don’t mean that I want to ignore subject and meaning though. There’s a lot in these poems that feels deeply personal, and they are all poems written about subjects that don’t get written about very often. I’m so grateful to the poets for trusting me with their work. I hope you enjoy them.
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 an archive of previous issues.)
Neil Douglas
Yoga in German
Das Yoga
Konstandinos Mahoney
The Great Comet of 1996 Foretells
i
Hong Kong, 3 a.m. – raucous jangling of bells.
He stumbles out of bed, fumbles with receiver.
A distant voice proclaims, You are the chosen one!
ii
Kowloon Fertility Unit. He fills in a form, (clay tablet),
receives a sample container (silver chalice), is directed
down a corridor (valley) to a WC (natural spring) –
under a neighbouring stall, lowered trousers over
size twelve trainers (beast of the field).
iii
Sperm count, motility, morphology normal, he buys
a ticket, soars across an infinite ocean of peace.
Transits at Los Angeles. Question on entry form –
Reason for entry? Through the airport intercom,
a heraldic fanfare of trumpets.
Boston Logon. Group embrace at Arrivals with
mothers (trinity). They are one (consubstantial).
At home the couple (straight acting) role play
the coming interview, say who they are (fabrication),
why they wish to have a child (revelation).
iv
Cambridge Fertility Clinic: side by side the couple
(straight acting) are interviewed (judged), approved
(find favour). He fills in a form (clay tablet), is handed
a container (silver chalice), follows a nurse (spirit guide)
to a private room (tabernacle). Knock twice when you’re
done. Straight porn on the coffee table – Penthouse, Playboy,
Debbie Does Dallas (revealed texts). He closes his eyes
(visions). Knocks twice (ritual). Hatch door slides open.
v
Barbeque (burnt offering) with the mothers (trinity). They raise
glasses (communion) to the Great Comet Hyakutake (holy star),
smooth oval head, tadpole tail, streaking bright over Plum Island.
Khairani Barokka
intrauterine device
before insertion, blood would out
profusely. keening dread kind
of stomach, nausea infusions.
smelling salts in reverse.
crater-size bleeds,
wellspring of leak, hormonal augury
disturbing any peace.
i’d grab at thick stalks of grief,
red marrow illusions.
leant from one side of asphalt
to the other, eyes colliding.
the tree trunks of eighteen forests
crawled inside my breasts,
and fortified them large, pricked dull
their pointed ends.
long months, long times of sluice.
ten days, two weeks, cramped to coal.
it welded itself to inner curvature
like a thunky child to the crook of an arm.
calmed impetuous tides by
much more than many prior years
could expect. blocked the entry
of much not-ready. mucussed me into
submission, plastic bow for flimsy arrows;
an exhale i had asked for,
had looked at the moon for, fang-bared.
Lewis Buxton
A Boy with Haemorrhoids
How much blood was there? The doctor asks the boy, more or less than a
teaspoon? He sees teabags splitting, spilling out. All this blood is
awakening, so bright it sings off the sheet music of ripped skin, his
sphincter a microphone unable to hold the plosive popping, a
blood clot turning a purple shade of thrombosis. His veins are a
balloon on the edge of bursting. He realises that seam of unlaced
tissue was a peep hole into ageing, the first time a doctor pressed a
finger against his most sensitive opening. How much blood? The
doctor asks again and he wants to tell her it was like open heart
surgery of the arse, wants to ask how something so small holds so
much colour in.
Moss Pepe
stp
Andrew, soft and knowledgeable, not transphobic, gender nurse
of the damned, declares he has never seen urine like mine.
Wonders aloud at such intense dehydration, kindly, gently, explains
that soup, too, is a liquid. Andrew, warm and intelligent, tallies up
the number of transgender men under his care, gives his ball park
figure for Scotland. Andrew, does-this-everyday, close to Godliness,
not transphobic, tells me things I already know in arcane tongues,
but doesn’t understand why I can’t just drink a little bit of anything.
Andrew, I want to say, every time I stand at a urinal, a death wish,
I get the urge to pull out the silicone cock that sporadically
and ineffectively controls my stream and display it in my hand
like a plum, but yes, I promise, I’ll drink more water.
Contributor Notes
Neil Douglas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8e7dPHeZjio
Neil Douglas is a doctor working in London’s East End. He has appeared recently in Alchemy Spoon, Rat’s Ass Review and Ambit.
Note on ‘Yoga in German’:
“‘Yoga in German’ is inspired by a (possibly very) short course offered by the wonderful City Lit. I am indebted to my son Jamie, the linguist, for his work on the translation.”
Konstandinos Mahoney
https://www.facebook.com/Dino-the-Diamond451386078938859/
London-based Konstandinos Mahoney won publication of his collection, TUTTI FRUTTI, in the Sentinel Poetry Book Competition 2017, and is winner of the Poetry Society’s 2017 Stanza Competition, with recent poems in Butcher’s Dog, Perverse and High Window. He teaches creative writing at Hong Kong University.
Note on ‘The Great Comet of 1996 Foretells’:
“When lovely lesbian friends in the USA asked me to be their baby donor, I happily agreed. I was living in Hong Kong, 1996, the year of Comet Hyakutake which looked like a giant luminous sperm shooting across the sky; it also resembled the Star of Bethlehem foretelling a virgin birth, hence the bracketed playful biblical references in the poem.”
Khairani Barokka
http://www.khairanibarokka.com/writing/
Khairani Barokka is a Minang-Javanese writer. She’s Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing and Research Fellow at UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute. Okka’s latest book is Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches).
Note on ‘intrauterine device’:
“When I wrote this some years back, I’d never read a poem about hormonal IUDs before – and still haven’t seen another around. They’re not for everyone, but they do provide some people with great relief from a variety of things, and shouldn’t be thought of as a taboo topic. They’re medicine, like any other; not just about preventing births, but prescribable by doctors for sperm-unrelated factors as well.”
Lewis Buxton
Born in 1993, Lewis Buxton’s poems have appeared in The Rialto, Magma & Ambit. In 2020 he won the Winchester Poetry Prize and he is the Co-Director of TOAST. His first collection, Boy in Various Poses (Nine Arches Press) is forthcoming in 2021.
Note on ‘A Boy with Haemorrhoids’:
“Denise Riley says ‘shame as an element is the impulse that produces lyric and breaks into song’: the intimate shame and pain of a haemorrhoid made me ‘break into song’. The lyric that came out was broken – it was scraps of images and conversation. This pain (and shame) had to be held together by something: the box-like prose form that I hope is always on the edge of splitting at its edges.”
Moss Pepe
Moss Pepe lives in Edinburgh and is a part-time PhD student working on transgender approaches to medieval romance. His work has appeared in Close and The Skinny.
Note on ‘stp’:
“I’ve had the final image of this poem kicking around my head for a few years. It felt a bit like a punchline without a joke, so I suppose I finally wrote the ‘joke’.”