PERVERSE 5E
Crick
Tesfai
Saphra
Black
Kiew
Hullo there,
There are a lot of mothers and mothering in these poems, along with a lot of meat, blood, bones and bile. It seems right to me that these things all go together, and I think these poems speak to each other in a pleasingly catastrophic way. 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.)
Natalie Crick
Hellbox
Mother | Nurse | She-bear carves the meat / wipes the cutting board / a red flame leaps from her hand / a girl is burning / a girl with thin arms / all scored and scarred / with marks she made herself through illness / a girl is burning / she is almost a ghost, Mother said / she is erasing her edges each day / smudging the lines like charcoal / while Mother redraws her over and over in love and kindness / Mother sews her a talisman doll from Mother’s own flesh, teeth, hair / a girl is burning / naked, stained, the stench of cooking apples rotting in her scalp clumps / Mother’s pot in on the stove / brewing black-magic / brewing drugs to clot a girl’s blood / brewing bones to bind with her own / when a girl’s spirit has burned Mother will steam like sweat / chase her spirit with a waspy saw / bite her wings off and eat her / and the broken pieces will be flung in the hellbox / a girl is burning / her scent like wood smoke at dusk / trolls jig on the embers / Mother’s clan has burnt
Lisa Tesfai
blame
I burn the hand
and am the hand,
the mother
and the child.
Jacqueline Saphra
Catastrophe Cream
The blue things you find these days
in a domestic refrigerator
My daughters bring their own
bluesome it squats next to the eggs
in its own bluish pot declaring
blueberry calamine rose
as this fearful year crashes
towards its blue conclusion
Oh my blue daughters
and their fixations
chin cuticle eye and lid
my strong and bluesome daughters
the fuss and bicker of them
bluely youthful and muscular
Catastrophe magnifies the cure
true love can spread however blue
the wield of tiny spatula
to applicate the possible in blue dawn
but who can drop bluely to sleep
with Catastrophe on their skin?
Only my blue-faced daughters who sink
to stillness nested in red velvet
breathing twin blues in the blue blue
hard blue of suncold day
Linda Black
Missed fit (back to forth)
L Kiew
Morefold
(after Anthony McNeill)
Ruth does clave. Never-turn-back.
Blue eye lies. A steadfast hack.
Talk has it, Ruth’s a crowd.
She craves that. Ruth’s unbowed.
Ruth does jequirity.
Really –? Frangibility.
A corset buy. A comity.
But pity, Ruth’s cecity.
Stave and well. Ruth’s no fell.
Ruth’s a peyote. Spiny eye.
I sigh: scraped skin, flaked cell.
Clock-hover, Ruth does not.
Ruth can stun. Ruth does clot.
Ruth mothers. Why, she persists.
A red rope trip. A hemp dress.
Ruth resists. She arrests.
When does Ruth caress?
Wet dimity. Green fly silk.
A white bulk. Ruth chews pith.
Ruth cleaves pulp. She’s a lilt.
Ruth does ask. She cries: yes.
She complies. Ruth ties off.
“For wither thou goes, will I die;
Where thou dies, will I die.”
Contributor Notes
Natalie Crick
https://fragmentedvoices.com/about/
Natalie Crick, a research student at Newcastle University, has poetry published in The Dark Horse, Agenda, New Welsh Review, The Poetry Review, The Moth and elsewhere. Her poem ‘Girlfriend-Watch’ was awarded second prize in the Newcastle Poetry Competition 2020.
Note on ‘Hellbox’:
“I am drawn to complex, shocking art. My poem, ‘Hellbox’ was originally an ekphrastic poem written in response to ‘The Canary’s Cage Burning’ by Nicholas Aldus. What did I type into Google search engine to find this painting? Witch / Mother / Child / Abused… I find myself inhabiting a hospital of effigies and morphine. Shortly afterwards, I find myself in hell. ‘Hellbox’ is a cooking pot of witchery.”
Lisa Tesfai
https://twitter.com/dirbyagnesvarda
Lisa Tesfai is an emerging black poet from London who attends university for her Bachelors degree when she is not writing. Her work attempts to explore both herself and the world through the medium of poetry.
Note on ‘blame’:
“It stemmed from the sort of cyclical nature of hurting and healing ourselves and those around us, especially family.”
Jacqueline Saphra
https://jacquelinesaphra.wordpress.com/
Books include Veritas: Poems after Artemisia and A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (Hercules Editions). All My Mad Mothers (shortlisted for the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize) and One Hundred Lockdown Sonnets (2021) are both published by Nine Arches Press.
Note on ‘Catastrophe Cream’:
“Lotions and potions carry such magic and hope. I was enchanted to find a pot of very blue-looking Catastrophe Cream nestling between the butter and cheese in the fridge one day. I thought about the faith we place in those little pots of possibility and let my poem explore, through my daughters, the idea that a cosmetic might (or might not) be an easy cure for our many ills.”
Linda Black
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Black-Linda-c28271623
Linda Black’s fifth collection Then is forthcoming in May from Shearsman, who previously published Slant, Root and Inventory. The Son of a Shoemaker (Hearing Eye) about the early life of Hans Andersen, includes the author’s illustrations. She is Editor of Long Poem Magazine.
Note on ‘Missed fit (back to forth)’:
“Often, (mostly in April) I keep a notebook – whatever comes to mind, a thought leading me on. Connections may seem random. I delve, claim words without censure, leave them awhile, edit, expand. Occasionally I begin typing without recourse to notes. This must have been one of those – I’ve looked, found nothing. I changed ‘and’ to an ampersand, was surprised by my ‘Blessed mother’. Anything else I don’t recall.”
L Kiew
A chinese-malaysian in London, L Kiew works as a charity sector leader and accountant. Her debut pamphlet The Unquiet came out with Offord Road Books (2019). She was a 2019/2020 London Library Emerging Writer. She’s working on her first collection.
Note on ‘Morefold’:
“‘Morefold’ grew out of a number of things: a workshop with Vahni Capildeo at Poetry Book Fair, trying to see how far I could stretch the membrane of sound and sense, and a mediation on the biblical Ruth and how the word ‘ruth’ mainly persists in its opposite form ‘ruthless’. I also have a number of Ruths in my life, both friends and family.”