PERVERSE 9B
"biscuit breakfast, biscuit lunch..."
Jashprek
Duggan
Newell
Loh
Chiotis
Hullo there,
Thank you for the messages about last week’s poems. I’m glad people are enjoying them. Let me know how you find this week’s selection — from biscuits to Baudelaire.
More next week!
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS Some of these poems may be best viewed on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or a phone turned sideways, or projected onto the Orkneys.
Mo Jashprek
‘I recommend a career at United Biscuits’
Such excitement, waking dreams,
knee-deep in the custard creams,
the maverick who made his mark
with mouth-rich rush of Bournville dark.
There were those who played it safer
nibbling on a Tunnock’s wafer,
alighting on a plain rich tea,
O beige on beige infinity.
A malty warmth scents the air
of sugar singe and jammy hair,
baked bricolage that one can eat,
caramel-cologne: biscuits sweet.
And every Friday rare reward —
all the offcuts one could hoard.
The jigsaw fragments tesselate
to build a biscuit nation state.
Biscuits, biscuits, break and crunch,
biscuit breakfast, biscuit lunch,
biscuits below, biscuits above,
biscuit friends, biscuit love.
Languid crunch of a digestive,
chocolate finger, so suggestive.
Hobnobbing with a ginger nut,
a smorgasbord of snacking smut.
Biscuit buttocks, biscuit necks,
biscuit foreplay, biscuit sex,
and afterwards a sticky hush
as tea-dunked biscuits turn to mush.
Mike Duggan
What Baudelaire Said Was This
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soulless?
Is there a SodaStream™ for the soul?
Penn Newell
Sorry Karaoke
How will I emerge from this sea?
The reason I said sorry a third time was because
Lewis and Harris, Raasay, Rùm, The Orkney Archipelago, Man, White, succumbing to a vogue for re-wilderlessnessing
Time-travelling with an interiorised homophone that has gripped me since I was a child
Feeling so meaning-loose and throat-tight
Pollutants sit on my lungs and jaw-lock
Be more throat, be more city
It’s not the weather it’s
Philosophy
Would I give hemlock? Let me see/Don’t be silly
I’ve seen mountains yes I’ve seen mountains yes I’ve seen mountains
The Southbank is a bloody concrete atrocity
St. Paul’s is the longest-standing nipple in history
Blitz my nipples, they stand in contempt of my un-juried courage of flight, my beyond-the-pale roar, my mighty calves, my brave winds filling sympathetic sails
Grey is my favourite colour
Grey with pale pink
After that cocktails and karaoke
After that pale fire
If indecisions were decisive I’d rule continents from my
second-best lesbian bed
My choices are breeding, they’re saving up for IVF
I’ve moved mountains yes I’ve moved mountains yes I’ve moved mountains
Just like a prayer, no choice your voice can take me there
Lune Loh
depression #0
so dark a block is stark. so block is it dim. a tree so dim it sings. a tree is so silent. a corner is not so damp. and a block in corner so dim. once it is heavy. twice is it so heavy. a tree asks so dim. a tree finds so damp. a block so dark it is corner. a corner is not dry. a corner is not wet. a corner is no end. and so sings a corner. so heavy the dim it is block. a block sings damp. so damp and heavy is ask. a block asks and asks. it is ask so damp and so stark. a corner so stark it sings so silent. so dry is silence. and so not wet is silence so dim. it is not a tree. it is not a block. it is not so. dim is not end.
Theo Chiotis
ten of swords
Contributor Notes & Bios
Mo Jashprek
http://www.instagram.com/emilioclackers/
Mo Jashprek writes to entertain and move friends, often in great cascades. He came to poetry quite late, via songwriting, and has had some blink-and-you’d-miss-it success as Mark Joseph. (His first collection is overdue.)
Note on ‘ ‘I recommend a career at United Biscuits’ ’:
“This poem has something of Victorian music hall. I’d been writing unflinching elegies so it was a respite and a gift. Occasionally I enjoy tight forms and clotted rhymes, puns and acrostics. It’s great fun to read to an audience with a waistcoat, mutton-chop whiskers, and gladstone bag; or without. Meanwhile: caramel wafers, chocolate hobnobs, ginger thins — variety.”
Mike Duggan
Mike Duggan is an Anglo-Irish poet from London. His work has appeared in Tears in the Fence, Magma and The Rialto. He is currently putting the finishing touches to a pamphlet Masquerade, an early draft of which was recently, and kindly, long-listed by The Dithering Chaps. It blends real and fictional persona in both playful and serious ways.
Note on ‘What Baudelaire Said Was This’:
“Charles Baudelaire was on tour again. I thought he was dead but no (yawn). I stole the principle line of the poem from the 2023 promotional tour T-shirt. I believe SodaStream are still in business but not actually affiliated with Baudelaire. I might be wrong.”
Penn Newell
https://www.pharveynewell.com/
Penn Newell (they/them) is a poet and researcher, with poetry in places like The Poetry Review, 3AM, Hobart, and Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, and essays in places like Social Text (Duke University Press) and Performance Research.
Note on ‘Sorry Karaoke’:
“When I wrote ‘Sorry Karaoke’ I was reading Virgil’s Eclogues, tales of H.D. and Bryher’s time in the Scilly Isles, and Lisa Robertson’s XEclogue (1993), all of which made me wonder about how to project queer thought into the eclogue as a poetic form. The eclogue made me think about voice – a voice grappling with itself. Maybe that’s what all poetry is. It’s certainly what ‘Sorry Karaoke’ is about. The poem contains lyrics from Sleater-Kinney ‘No Cities to Love’ (2015) and Madonna ‘Like a Prayer’ (1989).”
Lune Loh
Lune Loh (she/they) is a Singaporean writer. Her works have appeared in Strange Horizons, PANK Magazine, SOFTBLOW, Evergreen Review, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, among others. Find her waxing at lune.city, and find her essaying at omyhangu.substack.com.
Note on ‘depression #0’:
“The piece is what it says on the tin. It is the first in a series of my explorations into what this malady could entail, and the possibilities it could bring, even if that sounds paradoxical. And I have been working towards some kind of materialist, affective poetics for some years now. Being sapped of vitality renders one onto densities, but even that manifests into a different kind of movement.”
Theo Chiotis
https://www.instagram.com/kimota
Theo Chiotis’ publications include Screen (Paper Tigers Books, 2017), limit.less: towards an assembly of the sick (Litmus, 2017) and κράμα (frmk, 2025). He is also the editor and translator of the anthology Futures (Penned in the Margins, 2015).
Note on ‘ten of swords’:
“The visual poem “ten of swords” is the result of a failed attempt to create a volvelle made of repeating phrases.”
Find us on socials
If you enjoy PERVERSE, you can buy me a ko-fi. Zero pressure though.
Click the “subscribe” button below to stay in touch, and find out when the next submissions period opens. Thanks for reading.