PERVERSE 9G
"Unhinge now..."
Buxton
Waldron
Maddrell
Storey
Pickup
Hullo there,
Some hot potatoes, this week. Please enjoy these particular rabbits.
Only three more weeks of PERVERSE left!
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS Some of these poems may be best viewed on a phone turned sideways, or a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or projected onto an old stone wall that spans 73 miles.
Lewis Buxton
Touch Me Up in The Garden
Look I know we are thirty and it’s been a while
but touch me up in the garden of a house party, I’ll be in baggy
jeans held together by safety pins. Touch me up and ask
if each millimetre you move up the inner seam of my leg
is okay with me. Touch me up and kiss me, warn me
of your tongue piercing. Pull me down the passageway
where bottle caps clatter and boys jump off things just
for the sake of jumping. Touch me up and pass me
the white lightning at this foodless picnic on a grass carpet.
Promise me we won’t to go too far tonight. Touch me up in the
shed with damp-bled walls, where the amateur photography
cannot touch us. Touch me up where there are people then
touch me up when we are alone, just before my mum texts to say
she is outside in her Fiat Panda and it is time to go home.
Mark Waldron
like rabbits
i admit it
my wife likes me to wear
the bunny ears when we do it
when we scamper naked
past the outhouse and the raised beds
to cross the shaky stile
then in the top field
by the drystone wall
she’ll squat shivering
and observe me though her zeiss binoculars
as i hop the lower meadow and sniff its grass
the best and hardest part is when the ears fall off
and i look back up
uncertainly towards her
though i know quite well
that look i give to be the whole desideratum
and the game’s excruciating finish
Simon Maddrell
a zebra is an ass with stripes
why did the donkey cross the road?
you can understand desire without asking
and no, love does not need words to work
unlike how a manhole needs a cover
that can be taken off — with the right hook
i could prove a zebra is an angelfish with stripes
or the alias of a lionfish with venomous spines
zebrafish can model many human diseases
making them perfect for medical research
like — why do sober ones follow the drunk?
my ass is full to the rim with metaphors
Zach Storey
the power poesy
drunk? // no
flambéed
melt-wax arms
under alcohol flame
I am whirling
dervish // banshee’s screaming bones
unhinge now //
let the wild wind in
Vic Pickup
Mills & Boon: The Sequel
The sex, when we got around to it at last,
was fine enough.
Once all those misunderstandings had been
cleared up, his reckless fury abated—
he stopped the boxing, sword-fighting, biking,
took up Airfix instead, his precision unmatched.
I went part-time after the wedding,
ate leftover nuggets for starters,
donated the dresses to a school fundraiser.
Stayed in, worked on my pelvic floor.
Contributor Notes & Bios
Lewis Buxton
Born in 1993, Lewis Buxton’s work has appeared in Poetry Review, The Rialto, and The Independent and won The Winchester Poetry Prize. His first collection, Boy in Various Poses (Nine Arches Press) was published in 2021, followed by Mate Arias (The Emma Press) in 2025. He lives in Norfolk.
Note on ‘Touch Me Up in The Garden’:
“I think this poem is an exercise in failure. In terms of content mirroring form and the haphazard failures of horny teenagers at house parties in 2007, this seems fitting. But the specific attempt this poem fails at is in trying to be as good as Ella Frears’ ‘Fucking in Cornwall’. I wanted to grasp at that sexy nostalgia that somehow defies being sentimental or having any obvious design upon the audience. I failed. The poem’s not as good as Frears’ poem. But I still hope you fancy it a bit.”
Mark Waldron
www.instagram.com/markwaldron3
Mark Waldron has published five poetry collections, most recently, A Straight Up Giant with Bloodaxe Books in 2023. He was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014. In 2018 The Sunday Times listed him among the best poetry performers in the UK. He’s been published widely in the UK and the US, and his work has been translated into Spanish, Romanian and Serbian.
Note on ‘like rabbits’:
“I can’t recall how this poem came about, but looking back at the first draft I see the genders were reversed, so the wife was wearing the bunny ears. Also I hadn’t given the binoculars a brand name, and neither did I have a way to end the poem, it just sort of fizzled out. I suppose I decided to try to make a feature out of that fizzling, to see if the fizzling might be sad.”
Simon Maddrell
Simon Maddrell appears in Gutter, Magma, Poetry Wales, SAND, Southword, The Rialto, Under the Radar, and others. Their sixth pamphlet is Patient L1 (Polari Press, 2025). Out-Spoken Press will publish Simon’s debut collection, lamping wild rabbits, in Feb 2026.
Note on ‘a zebra is an ass with stripes’:
“This poem was prompted by reading Ahren Warner’s The sea is spread and cleaved and furled (Prototype, 2020) and the sentence ‘A zebra is just a horse with stripes, i say.’ Because his line was related to a relationship, I guess it also began in that vein, but soon veered off into my love of tropical scuba diving and weird facts.”
Zach Storey
www.instagram.com/_disgracedmartianprince
Zach Storey is writing his debut poetry collection while living in Yokohama, Japan. His plants would argue that his poems are not bad.
Note on ‘the power poesy’:
“‘the power poesy’ is a celebration of drunken surrender.”
Vic Pickup
Vic Pickup is the author of Lost & Found (Hedgehog Press) and The Omniscient Tooth Fairy (Indigo Dreams). She has also edited Reading Poets: A New Anthology from Two Rivers Press. Vic co-runs Reading’s Poets’ Café.
Note on ‘Mills & Boon: The Sequel’:
“I’m in my fourth year of a PhD working in the Mills & Boon archives held in Reading University’s Special Collections. I’m also writing a collection inspired by the letters of women authors to their editor, Alan Boon, between 1940-75. I love a good romance novel, and this poem was born out of the idea of me wondering what might actually happen after the grand love story ends.”
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