Kent
Lanyon
Sines
De Siqueira
O’Loughlin
Hullo there,
Just a handful of PERVERSEs left to go for this issue. Please enjoy this pen-penultimate offering of hypnagogic nights, bad algorithm daddies, wine, sore legs and quoofters. Have a wonderful week.
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS Some of these poems have long lines, and may be best viewed on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or a phone turned sideways, or projected onto the expanded bellows of an enormous accordion.
Aaron Kent
from POEM, A LITTLE ENGINE
A heavy-duty life makes shakes and shapes reveal the fungus of a human brain I don’t know how many times you have to roleplay being ok before you raise your own stroke survivor in sheriff’s clothing I am a menace to my own internal threat of absolution I am prohibition for my own brain jelly for my blue vein bleeding a night i remember like the light of my son fresh born not yet used to his kick A world can make you cry if you put enough into it to let you down Whenever i watch lightning stuck in clouds i pray for treatment and i don’t For the shores to raid the sea again we need social change I’ve never worked so hard to regain something until i found a grenade i couldn’t bear There are too many patches of light to fully rectify the gaps cut here We are putting daylight in buckets and counting its solar threads I can play bad but i can’t play it safe for much longer It hurts to pretend to get the house back from the mortgage man Give us new bed sheets so we can cushion our roll down to hell I’m voting for rehab for accordionists and breathwork Too many nights spent being the big guy upstairs for a mere model of humanity looking out for you I got no good grandma not got no rich man to read a poem or give me a fear of the rain falling The speaker compares himself to a marmoset and doesn’t realise the irony that he was the same This is a diary to the point of exhaustion and with no for sale sign
Christopher Lanyon
Pin-up daddy
after Rett Madison
geriatric skateboard daddy / coq au vin daddy / elbow patch bookseller daddy / knows a lot about bugs daddy / goblet squats daddy / big Aldi wine guy daddy / poetry gossip daddy / has read all the novels of famous TV gardener Alan Titchsmarsh daddy / finishing salt daddy / muscular cyclist actual dad daddy / better with a beard daddy / I wouldn’t let my daughter date a man with a moustache like yours daddy / weekend away in Devon daddy / clotted cream on the scone first daddy / cold water swimming daddy / it’s worth investing in a good pair of boots daddy / call your mother daddy / drink some water daddy / have you eaten yet today daddy / clean your room daddy / Jordan Peterson apologist daddy / YouTube algorithm gone bad daddy / radicalised daddy / radical daddy / woke daddy / waking bleary eyed and wine tongued daddy / headache daddy / aspirin daddy / please don’t call me
Craig Sines
to wine
and warm leftovers
to dark plates pulling up, what
are the chances
E.R. De Siqueira
Feeling sexy at 8 a.m. walking back home to the ghetto
well now it seems easier to walk down the avenue with sunglasses on to the bus stop
thanks to the strong black coffee though the legs are sore after a night out of beers
& banter some cheap talk if there was any conversation at all the voice breaking in
the morning but fairly round as a roar too many cigs the night before far too early
to start the day off chain-smoking but please let me have just a cigarette to cover this
uncomfortable gap the silence after sex when you can’t recall the name or how
you ended up at his place this temporary flat with suspicious decor or why you left
your friends for a mate you just met yes just one more cigarette as he makes you break
fast strong & with no sugar pls here’s your coffee thanx you can’t decide if you get dressed
or pose like a drunkie a 90s model at the catwalk bare-chested in his kitchen a sip of it
down the throat then gaze his morning torso & burn the lip shit u can’t stand still in the middle
of the kitchen can u so you’re better off at any seat u take it looks comfy doesn’t it
it sure does the muscles yet getting used to this knowing there are 6 levels down
the stairs while the sun shines beautifully outside & the cum stains he’s left you with feel like glitter or confetti in between my legs
Pascal O’Loughlin
Quoofter
for PM
A quoof in my son’s bed!
No way José! says dad.
But I crave a quoof.
I make do with my bic
shivering and scribbling
under an old coat and blanket.
Contributor Notes & Bios
Aaron Kent
https://www.aaronkentpoetry.co.uk/; brokensleepbooks.com
Aaron Kent is a working-class writer and insomniac from Cornwall. His second poetry collection, The Working Classic, is available from the87press, and his debut, Angels the Size of Houses, is available from Shearsman.
Note on extract from ‘POEM, A LITTLE ENGINE’:
“I wrote this poem as an extended practice on what I call ‘sleep-writing’. As I was drifting into sleep I would pick up my phone and write in that hypnagogic state, falling into and out of sleep as I typed, waking to find weird phrases, strange typos, and subconscious thoughts. I did it for this poem over the course of a couple of months, and this is an excerpt from that longer poem.”
Christopher Lanyon
https://www.instagram.com/moonmoonbeambeam
Christopher Lanyon is a poet and mathematician. His mathematical work focuses on the study of the human heart; his poems are about parties, gardening and the abolition of the carceral state. His debut pamphlet, swell, was published by Bad Betty Press.
Note on ‘Pin-up daddy’:
“‘Pin-up daddy’ is a poem about all the men I’ve tried to be, hot guys on bikes, and the tendency of the YouTube algorithm to autoplay videos featuring right-wing talking heads. It was written during a month-long stint of writing poems titled by my 31 most listened to songs of 2023. This poem was inspired by Rett Madison’s folk-rock banger of the same name.”
Craig Sines
https://www.instagram.com/scrap.po/
Craig lives retired and builds little books in Madison, Wi., with his wife and dog. His friends are tired of little books, so he sometimes puts them in the little libraries of various neighborhoods.
Note on the poem:
“This poem is taken from a group of very short poems made up of unrelated phrases, then revised to possibly correspond to an elusive would-be moment.”
E.R. De Siqueira
https://linktr.ee/erdesiqueira
e.r. de siqueira is a Latinx poet and translator originally from Brazil. He read English at UFMG. Poetry works have appeared/are forthcoming in Magma, Under the Radar, Wet Grain, The Interpreter’s House, Anthropocene, The Cortland Review, Fruit Journal, and in the anthologies Responses to Untitled (eye with comet)(c.1985) by Paul Thek and Mein schwules auge — My Gay Eye. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2023.
Note on ‘Feeling sexy at 8 a.m. walking back home to the ghetto’:
“I wanted to write about gay app culture and fleeting hookups: night flings and queer awakening, identity, age gap, the sweet memories of a twink, a time when pleasure seems to be the main engine when navigating through early adulthood. Yet, almost none of that is explicit in the poem. The void is, as is the journey back home from downtown to the outskirts of the big city, commuting, with the bittersweet remains of a night filled with the temporary, leaving a dose of pride.”
Pascal O’Loughlin
Pascal O’Loughlin is an Irish writer living on Merseyside. He is the coordinator of the Liverpool Irish Festival. His novels are Now Legwarmers (2018) and The Goddess Lens (2022).
Note on ‘Quoofter’:
“I wrote this poem quite some time ago as I was first reading Paul Muldoon’s collection Quoof. It sort of wrote itself.”
See you for next week’s issue, with poems by HLR, JP Seabright, Nora Nadjarian, Vasiliki Albedo and L Kiew.
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