PERVERSE 7I
Franchini
Reynolds
Freind
Hesketh
Scott
Hullo there,
Well, this is it. The end of the line (ho ho ho) for this issue of Perverse. I hope you enjoy this last selection of rampant horses. Thank you so much for reading everyone’s work this issue.
Tonight is our live event, so please do pop by if you’re in London, to hear poems by Barbara Barnes, Charlie Baylis, Erica Hesketh, Jake Reynolds, Livia Francini, Lydia Unsworth, Michał Kamil Piotrowski, Miruna Fugeanu, Nora Blascsok & Ryan Ormonde. We’ll be at The Wheatsheaf (W1T 1JB) from 7, readings at 7.30.
It’s been wonderful reading through so many interesting poems. I’ll open up a new submissions window sometime in the early spring next year, so start thinking about what strange things you might like to send me.
Happy festive hankerings to you in the meantime.
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS It may be best to view these poems on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or else a phone turned sideways.
Livia Franchini
If I had to pick a single image
A rampant horse squeezed / out of glass gel like toothpaste / immediately I reared to put my mouth to it
Broken / it made it home / we stuck its shorter leg with glue upon a mottled stone
And grounded it though / it’d committed no crime / other than / upon arrival / a less-than-fit state
At the same time I disliked large rivers / finding guiltily of my own smallness / if it looked moist: I wanted to crush it in my teeth
If I saw things and I said things / I soon became aware of skin peel / all by my lonesome (cos I had to) I figured out postmodernism
I ate too many oranges / scratched my elbows / and on the day I lost my virginity / my boyfriend stopped halfway through
What’s wrong? (his aunt was on the phone re: something) / I liked the interruption
It seemed perverse (by which I think I meant) / topical: something worth remembering
So much time wasted to work out object permanence
Then, later, so much readiness to leave
Jake Reynolds
We Love the Artists; the Artists Should Make More Time for Us
first • first • FIRST • I love these totally chaotic introverts • queen of my life is laughing and shy but all I am laughing at is how she is literally perfection!!! • one might say it’s the peak of her iconic-ness or should I say peak iconique • the world deserves us and them! • holy shit she invented breathing • when they sing flowers bloom in war zones and kids are unmassacred • she is so weird I love her • it’s their world and we are just blessed to be living in it • obsessed with their cute goblin positions ahhh! • ok so my dad just walked in and was like what is this what are you doing? Time to cancel my dad • she is and I can’t emphasise this enough the first woman to ever exist • love watching my besties thrive • they are very demure and even though they are all very beautiful they know to keep their skin covered and they do not need to buy in to the western devil-worshipping brainwashed sheep who fornicate with satan and drink the blood of the Clintons!!! • I am so exhausted after work and I had such a tiring day and this actually made me so happy, I am relaxed and it is like my skin is clearer! Thank you! • so cute n weird I love her • wow they cured my depression but then I take my headphones out and it’s bad again hmmm…! • we know why she doesn’t understand 4:06 it’s because she is not capable of taking an L • we still love you even if you need to go private • vibes so good down here makes me wanna die lol • I listened to this song when my bird Tornado died cause it would always send her crazy and you know what? I thought it would make me cry but it is so fun and happy it makes me want to fly just like my little Tornado would! See you soon beautiful Tornado! • wow her face must hurt from smiling • banger • idk how to feel about everyone calling whatshername ‘mami’? feels gross? • tears literally streaming down my face • it makes me sad how so many artists who actually write their own music go under the radar • I’m just a socially awkward potato but she makes me feel like I am so pretty • hi everyone so I’m 14 and it’s not attraction but I feel like I love these ppl so so much and sometimes if I’m at school and just really stressing or whatever I have a look at my phone screen (thumbnail of this vid!) and I swear it makes me feel so much better and so much calmer and idk what’s wrong with me?? It just feels so special and warm when I see them but it’s not like anything to do with s*x it’s not like I crush on them (but they are v beautiful!) but I get really tense if I haven’t seen them in a long time is this normal?? is anyone else going through this?
Bill Freind
NFT #1
Whereas the increasing digitalization of our society in film, videos, music, photos, and even everyday life as rendered in Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Tinder, Grindr, Pornhub, Spankbang1 et al., has paradoxically led to a desire for the tangible, as seen in the recent popularity of audio cassette tapes and wrist watches
Whereas the digital is by definition both intangible and infinitely reproducible
Whereas some individuals are so starved for something they could call “real” or “original” or “unique,” so obsessed with a pseudo-aura they could admire and commodify and advertise
Whereas at least since the late nineteenth century the Art Market has been driven by speculators
Whereas more recently the Art Market has at least in part been driven by rubes willing to part with their money
Whereas a token is by definition a stand-in, a representation
Whereas it is impossible to “own” a digital file that exists on the Web, thus making the NFT a simulacrum
Therefore be it resolved that an NFT of this file is available for purchase for at least the equivalent of $50000 in Ether.
Erica Hesketh
Why are you awake?
I saw her tumble
out of a high window
white as a moon plummeting
her limbs a swan
it happened so quickly
my eyes flew into the night
but all they found
was the afterimage repeating
Richard Scott
Still Life with Cup, Irises, Pheasant and Cardoon
After Felipe Ramírez
there
is
a
silenced
drama
here
a
juxta-
positioning
the
golden
filigree
cup
of
irises
the
strung-
up
pheasant
its
red-
sash
throat
each
conversing
through
texture
petals
vs
feathers
rot
vs
blood
o
how
the
rendered
candle-
light
makes
each
quill
each
stalk
pop
how
easy
it
is
to
personify
them
they
are
two
men
looming
out
of
the
dusk
they
are
two
men
suspended
in
the
prism
of
this
glossy
moment
they
are
two
men
on
the
verge
of
a
painterly
darkness
only
one
of
the
men
is
a
boy
and
this
black
box
this
pin-
hole
camera
this
still
life
should
have
been
a
safe
space
but
some-
body
had
to
cut
and
some-
body
had
to
kill
and
some-
body
had
to
hang
and
some-
body
had
to
drain
all
the
blood
out
of
this
soft
bird
and
some-
body
did
some-
thing
much
much
worse
and
the
poet
is
here
blushed
cardoon
their
rooted
form
a
little
soil
scattered
about
them
they
have
been
digging
down
to
the
supposed
centre
of
things
and
what
they
find
they
will
make
beautiful
complicit
and
it
will
not
be
allowed
to
hurt
any-
one
any
more
ever
again
even
the
scaly
orange
feet
hanging
down
like
a
curse
they
will
make
them
into
a
charm
and
all
that
black
lacquer
they
are
polishing
it
up
like
onyx
like
topaz
and
it
is
shining
even
the
irises
all
wound-
dark
and
livid
almost
rotten
almost
for
a
moment
look
like
they
might
be
un-
furling
just
a
little
bit
further
or
is
it
my
eyes
and
the
o
my
god
gold
jot
of
forgive-
ness
stippled
like
pollen
dead
centre
of
the
canvas
suddenly
clear
suddenly
re-
focusing
every-
thing
Contributor Notes
Livia Franchini
https://www.gold.ac.uk/ecw/staff/franchini-livia/
Livia Franchini is a writer from Tuscany. She is the author of a poetry pamphlet, our available magic (2019) and a novel, Shelf Life (2019). She is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths and co-founding editor of Too Little/Too Hard.
Note on ‘If I had to pick a single image’:
“I’m working on poems that consider the simultaneity of bicultural identity (in my case, my ‘British’ and Italian selves) and how it distorts the boundary between past and present. This muddle of languages and societal conventions makes for a porous mode of existing, in which concrete objects acquire a central role as portals allowing movement in both directions. But what happens when one’s mind isn’t so great at keeping track of the physical world?”
Jake Reynolds
https://research-portal.uea.ac.uk/en/persons/jake-reynolds
Jake Reynolds is a poet from Lincolnshire, currently living in Norwich and studying for a PhD at the University of East Anglia. His research concerns the first-person plural, political populism, and the late work of John Ashbery.
Note on ‘We Love the Artists; the Artists Should Make More Time for Us’:
“‘We Love the Artists; the Artists Should Make More Time For Us’ is a poem written in the voices of a disparate online fan community, aimed at interrogating both cynical perceptions of fan culture as well as assumptions of unity associated with the first-person plural. The voices are responding to a music video, unknown to the reader.”
Bill Freind
Bill Freind is the author of American Field Couches (BlazeVox, 2008) and An Anthology (housepress, 2000). He has also edited the collection Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays on the Poetry of Araki Yasusada (Shearsman 2011). He lives in New Jersey, USA.
Note on ‘NFT #1’:
“NFTs are (usually) a scam that also demonstrate an anxiety and nostalgia about the ability to ‘collect’ and ‘own’ art, so I decided to try to highlight all of those factors.”
Erica Hesketh
https://twitter.com/hesketherica
Erica Hesketh’s poems have appeared in The North, Ink Sweat & Tears, harana poetry and The Friday Poem among others. She placed second in the 2022 Winchester Poetry Prize, and was commended in the 2023 Magma Poetry Competition (Editors’ Prize).
Note on ‘Why are you awake?’:
“When my daughter was about 18 months old, a dream woke me in the middle of the night. I could only grab onto a tiny scrap of it, this single uncertain image. The dream upset me so I wanted to write about it. The poem is an attempt to describe the dream-scrap, without inventing anything else, theorising or extrapolating.”
Richard Scott
https://www.faber.co.uk/author/richard-scott/
Richard Scott’s first book is Soho (Faber & Faber, 2018).
Note on ‘Still Life with Cup, Irises, Pheasant and Cardoon’:
“‘Still Life with Cup, Irises, Pheasant and Cardoon’ was inspired by Felipe Ramírez’s painting ‘Still Life with Cardoon, Francolin, Grapes and Irises’, 1628. The form was inspired by Noelle Kocot’s extraordinary book Phantom Pains of Madness which is composed entirely in these slender, one word per line, columns. Maybe something about Ramírez’s hanging francolin or his nearly vertical irises recalled to me the slender column as a form. In my poem however the grapes do not exist.”
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