PERVERSE 9E
"Later the dream added a tiger..."
Gilmore
Gross
Abonyi
Black
Li
Hullo there,
I hope your week is starting well. The connections between these five poems are rather strange, but they do sit together and speak to each other very well I think. I hope you enjoy this clutch.
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 roof of a gymnasium.
Phoebe Gilmore
Naproxen
You neat oyster baby
yellow, untetherer, loose
boob in silk, quick tears
settling on me on the hottest day
of the year, the weather man spreads
red patches of endometriosis across
the country, in this state I’m less
affected by men or food,
how at my desk, post comes
like snow, like snow.
Philip Gross
It Is Voice
who goes out in the world
not just of words
but of sighs, coughs, uh-huh, oh
all our fondlings of interbreathings and
she comes back with a verse in her teeth.
No, she doesn’t take orders
– as if anyone
would send out for these stunned-
by-panic things with which she garnishes
my carpet. Look, she says, it is an act of love.
Last night a slack-flanked lion
stretched out in the road –
the way to work, I thought, or maybe
the way home. Like a dangerous doormat.
Later the dream added a tiger, to labour the point.
Was that your doing, Voice?
She went on inhabiting
the shrug she habitually is.
She doesn’t do Fetch, as I said. Not even
for straight answers. So being in the kitchen
(somehow, and) remembering
some Boy’s Own story
where a clatter of pans did the trick
I set off with my empty stockpot and a ladle
prepared to go down bravely, Britishly,
with a fine authentic noise,
pathetically equipped.
I hope you’re behind me, Voice,
I made to call back from the doorway. No
sound. She was somewhere else again.
Philip Chijioke Abonyi
In the Veil of Lies, we are masquerades, crossing the polychromatic city of life in a tongue vehicle
A string seen by one in the bush is a mighty cobra. No doubt, the tongue is a
chameleon, turning sunlight into downcast; everything stuck in the pocket of false. I
remember, years past, my mother was a bone, breathing on herbs and roots, the
world a night in her eyeballs, hope a vegetation in her mindset, survival a tree
she believes she can climb at the tunnel’s end. Women of our village queued in the
hate assembly as plants of discrimination—my mother an HIV shadow, counting the
remaining days of her life to fade from the earth’s surface. This world, if you are not a
rock, you will be broken by mere water, for in her darkest moments, her friends were
thorns on the things that kept her alive. Behind a closed door, we are a dam of
rotten fish; in the wind, a repulsive smell of ill character. At our backs, our sunlight
is deprived by a lie gadget: a blade sharpened on firestone, with a deserted
heart of mercy. We live in the bungalow of vultures eating bodies alive; every whisper
is a carnivorous animal, every gathering a war before an innocent body. I am a rigid
shadow before whatever this world becomes. I can emerge as a hibiscus, in
their iron face, be it steel. I will blossom.
Linda Black
Mis-read / mis-interpret She takes off her hat & her hair . . . picks up her brain from a swaddled [clot] cot bites the hangnail on her thumb festers innocence sluices away a tray of mandibles Jacaranda weeps delicate fathoms abiding nurture wreck of a . . . a soft bruised moth unguents incongruence She could feel the tears coming out of her ears finagler hoaxer Skin off/of your back
Ellie Li
You Want Me to Have an Abortion
I have to tell you, after sex
The bee made of wax gets very agile like a cloud
The gold mine is exhausted — gives
Two zodiac signs a silver appearance, weak noses
Must be okay for us to abandon plans
It feels like the sun gets smaller every day
But we’ll never get beaten
Already so randomly seeing things, forgetting
To delete the last telegraph
Again: what is needed, and what can do.
That dying gramophone won’t really destroy the world
Only I walk backwards step by step
I have too many great halos, and my house
Is almost a bird, so bandaged.
Do you understand, who is the one
To put on this coat later?
Contributor Notes & Bios
Phoebe Gilmore
www.instagram.com/phoebgilmore
Phoebe Gilmore is a Devon-born poet living in London. After finishing her MA in Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University of London, she is unsure of what to do next. Previous works of hers have appeared in And Other Poems, Seaford Review, and Propel Magazine.
Note on ‘Naproxen’:
“During a particularly busy month at work, I had a severe endometriosis flare-up and I was prescribed Naproxen, a strong painkiller. The first time I took it, I burst into tears and to this day I’m still not sure why.”
Philip Gross
Philip Gross’s latest collection, The Shores of Vaikus (Bloodaxe, 2024) is his 28th in more than 40 years of writing life, including many and various collaborations with poets and across the arts. He lives in Penarth, South Wales.
Note on ‘It Is Voice’:
“Let’s be clear: I’m a dream-sceptic. My professional advice for using them in poetry is… Don’t. That advice also says: Break a rule, offend yourself now and then, just to see. So there’s an actual dream here. Stranger, to me, is what the poem means by Voice. Yet don’t we recognise it: that (sometimes-)given thing? And no, I don’t idealise it, any more than dreams; I just try to arbitrate.”
Philip Chijioke Abonyi
www.facebook.com/philip.c.abonyi
Philip Chijioke Abonyi is a writer from Enugu State, Nigeria. He won the Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize in 2022 and the Archipelago Poetry Competition in 2023. His works appeared in Agape Review, Eve Magazine, Better Than Starbucks Journal, and elsewhere.
Note on ‘In the Veil of Lies...’:
“In this poem, I try to capture my sick mother, how people lied that she was suffering from HIV, and how heartless some humans can be.”
Linda Black
www.shearsman.com/store/Linda-Black-Interior-p628179058
Linda Black is Editor of Long Poem Magazine. She has five collections with Shearsman Books, the latest being Interior. The Son of a Shoemaker (Hearing Eye) about Hans Andersen’s early life, plus the author’s illustrations, was the subject of a Poetry Society exhibition.
Note on ‘Mis-read / mis-interpret’:“When I look at what I think is the first draft, its provisional title being ‘Mis-reading/read’, I see a quote from Alice Munroe ‘how she took hold of her life’ which I didn’t use. I allow words to land, unbidden, whatever they may be – editing comes later. Here are more just as they arrived: ‘jacaranda weeps delicate fathoms abiding nurture (tree, clod, wreck of a . . . ) carrots collywobbles creative endeavour ‘. Some stayed, some didn’t.”
Ellie Li
www.instagram.com/ellie_continues/
Ellie Li writes in Chinese and English, and her recent work appears in The Nuthatch Lit Mag and The AI Literary Review.
Note on ‘You Want Me to Have an Abortion’:
“Maybe it’s not yet a good time to have a conversation, but I try to figure out, using words I don’t normally use, IS IT REAL, after so many unhealable turns and twists?”
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