PERVERSE 9H
"Milk, yoghurts, cheese..."
Clifford
Wade
Fishel
Blake
Thompson
Hullo there,
I can feel the breath of Christmas on the back of my neck, but I keep swatting it away. Not yet, not yet. Here are some more poems for you. I feel like the connective tissue here may be the phrase “manual of himself” from the first poem. Poems as ways to understand the world, plus cats.
Enjoy. 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 a forest full of mushrooms.
Adam Clifford
Pornography
I am a crying person! I honed my technique in Poland.
The director instructed my breastbone to release.
Pornography to him, my surrender folded out,
cardiac impression on the tender, outer under eye.
A mechanic who picks up the manual of himself.
Imogen Wade
The Mushroom Picker
The Leader told me I must collect glowing mushrooms from the cave. The first passage swallowed me like Jonah’s whale. I dropped my t-shirt, the first of many breadcrumbs, then my shorts, underwear, strands of hair, chewed-off thumbnails. Luminescent mushrooms crawled across the jagged walls and hung like tentacles from the low ceiling. I picked mushrooms until sores opened on my skin, then travelled to the restaurant where the Leader waited to collect his due. I handed over the bounty. He asked me to stay for dinner, made me sticky rice with black seeds; the cutlery reflected my radioactive glow. I had the hands of a mushroom picker after their first harvest and a picker’s dreams, too. No matter where I roam, a silver mushroom hovers above my head like the sword of Damocles—saying my name, calling me home.
Max Terry Fishel
They assemble to bid farewell to a middle tier musician!
Not cello nor autoharp plays the better tune as they file
cheaply in to the chapel, drivelling in time. Coffin: perspex!
Death stains her fingers like excuses while up above, see painted
stars on ceiling sealing night in even as afternoon roils outside!
In barred silence motorbike döpplers its way round the block!
Aunts and cleaners blow their noses in unison at organ’s drone,
adding a perfect fifth by accident. Hers – accidental death,
grace note flicked into her last movement, prestissimo! She
swings out in 11/8, still improvising at 1500 degrees. They
sideways-stare questioningly – I thought she was classical!
Tom Blake
Haiku Against Loneliness
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Isabelle Thompson
Julian of Norwich Witnesses the Passion of Christ in Aisle 3 of Tesco Extra
She felt unwell. The fluorescent lights of the supermarket glowed sickly like radiation. The refrigerators gave off a deafening tinnitus. If this is Hell, God forgive me. And then there was Christ, being crucified, just above the sign saying Milk, Yoghurts, Cheese. His crown of thorns dug deeply into his forehead and the blood was running down his face, dripping onto the laminate flooring. This is a staff announcement: spillage in Aisle 3. In-store cleaner to Aisle 3, please, said the tannoy.
Julian had never felt so hollowed out with grief. Was this what He died for? For fluorescent lights and milk in plastic bottles?
And then she thought she understood. The shelves gave off a pearly sheen. The high roof admitted the sunlight, and it trickled down to make cloisters. Milk, Yoghurts, Cheese.
Let me walk all my days in the cathedral of light. Christ hung, dying on his cross. We are not supposed to die before we taste as much as we can.
Contributor Notes & Bios
Adam Clifford
Adam is a writer, theatre-maker and musician. He received an Arts Council England grant for poetry, which has been published/shortlisted in/for a number of magazines and competitions. His show The Great Christmas Feast is going into its eighth year.
Note on ‘Pornography’:
“Another version - it was a sensation, that’s all. How this very good but domineering theatre director invited the full selves of his actors to be seen, unlocked in the rehearsal room. We found authentic release, but were nonetheless there to be viewed. I’ve been exploring my relationship to tears ever since. I was guided into this poem by a line in Claudia Rankine’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Lonely’ – I am not exactly a crying person.”
Imogen Wade
www.instagram.com/imogen_wade_poetry
Imogen Wade is a poet and writer. She won the National Poetry Competition 2023 and the Troubadour International Poetry Prize 2024. Her work has appeared in The Poetry Review, The London Magazine, PN Review, and The Guardian. Her debut collection Girl, Swooning will be published by Corsair in March 2026.
Note on ‘The Mushroom Picker’:
“This poem is a condensed description of a nightmare I had, about a cult leader who recruits people to pick mushrooms that slowly kill them. At the end, after the meal, I sneak out the bathroom window into an alley. My dreams often have sequels, sometimes years later, so perhaps my mushroom picking days aren’t over. (Also, radioactive substances don’t tend to glow. I think the misconception comes from uranium glass.)”
Max Terry Fishel
Born in Liverpool to European Jewish parents. Loves living in London and writing and performing entertaining and thoughtful spoken word poetry on a diverse range of topics. Has been published. Loves how poetry gives everyone a voice.
Note on ‘They assemble to bid farewell to a middle tier musician!’:
“I play music myself, and one day I had an image of a musician’s funeral, (oo-er) with various characters attending. The poem ‘wrote itself’, i.e., it flowed on to the page in one sitting, and only asked for minimal editing. Format – I quite like couplets. The exclamation marks are a bit of fun! (see what I did there?)”
Tom Blake
www.theredceilingspress.co.uk/product-page/peach-epoch-tom-blake
Tom Blake (he/him) is a poet and music journalist from the UK. His work has appeared in And Other Poems and Anthropocene. Two of his chapbooks are available from The Red Ceilings Press.
Note on ‘Haiku Against Loneliness’:
“First I thought about the artist Gwen John
About how Gwen John was one possible prototype for the Cat Lady trope
And about how I am a kind of crazy cat lady manThen I actually got a cat
And sat in my cold winter living room with my cat
I was wrapped in layers of old clothing
Like a human pass the parcelThen I wrote a poem called ‘Haiku Against Loneliness’.”
Isabelle Thompson
Isabelle Thompson is a poet and researcher living in Wiltshire. Her poetry is widely published in magazines, and her debut pamphlet, Stalin’s Parrot, is forthcoming with Poetry Space. She gets unreasonably interested in things like medieval anchoresses and Soviet cosmonauts.
Note on ‘Julian of Norwich Witnesses the Passion of Christ in Aisle 3 of Tesco Extra’:
“In medieval anchoress Julian of Norwich’s book, Revelations of Divine Love, there is lots about God embodying love, which was a departure from the angry patriarchal God of her contemporary Church. The book also contains gory, poetic descriptions of Julian’s visions of the crucifixion. I wondered what Julian and her faith would make of today’s world. The poem is definitely meant to be weird and humorous, yet also somehow redemptive.”
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