Silent scream over passing and decay. Describes dramatic events in delicate, calm and mundane way.
Words that say it all and illustrate why ‘The Interior’ by Michał Choiński is the IS&T Pick of the Month for October 2022. Voters admired its relevancy, supported its message, were impressed by its minimal language, its understatement, and overall, were shaken by its ‘ominous post-apocalyptic atmosphere.’
Michał Choiński teaches literature at the Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland). His debut poetry chapbook Gifts Without Wrapping was published by Hedgehog Press in 2019 as a winner of a competition. Currently, he is at Yale University, as a Fulbright Fellow, writing his third academic book. Website: https://michalchoinski.com/
The Interior
We gather around the machine,
looking down at the fallen trunk,
with little hope of being able
to put it all back together.
The grandfather had the tools,
and the skills,
but he bequeathed none to us.
The sand under our feet
is orange red,
and the tangle of wires sticking
out of the metal casing
resembles the guts
of an animal sacrifice.
We go back –
the temperature outside
will start rising soon.
Other voters’ comments include:
In its language this poem contains mystery and multiple meanings in layers. The poem describes a confusion about how to fix a body that shape shifts in the imagination from a torso, a tree, maybe a clock. “Interior” functions as a comment on human powerlessness in the face of environmental collapse and the difficulty of repair. What is inside and what is outside? Many deep reflections happen within a single wordless moment on some future world. Quite extraordinary.
Because of the Mad Max vibes but in all seriousness – we’re doomed as a species 🙁
A machine and an animal sacrifice. The interior and the outside world. Childhood and the feeling of decay. Perfect in form and with a touching meaning.
The poem gets my vote because it’s masterfully turns a familiar situation into a source of anxiety.
It’s a curious piece. A bit scary, but quite relevant for the present moment. Choinski manages to capture a point of desperation when we lose ourselves in the loss of our roots.
It touches something from my childhood memories. Hard to put in words.
I like the air of SF and hopelessness it has.
Michal Choińsky’s poem depicts the feeling of uncanniness perfectly
Wonderful use of language
This poem in a short form expresses anxiety about the future of humanity. It is merciless, leaving the reader without any hope. It shakes him up. This is the kind of poetry we need most today!
I like the minimalism of the poem, its understatement. It suggests instead of stating. The past and the present, nature and machine, exterior and interior. There’s an aura of uncertainty and ambiguity.
In an economy of words, this poem evokes both a specific scene and the regret of dystopia.
Michal is a national treasure in whichever country he’s teaching in. Mad inspiration!
I appreciate its clarity of expression which belies its deeper meaning.
Nothing is more poetic than the mental back and forth between the smoking entrails of machines and those of the living. I loved the efficiency of the verses, the beauty of the images.
I like the visceral, yet simple imagery and the conciseness, which makes it even more appealing
The machine/animal analogy produces so many associations and reverberations.
I like the poem because of how it manages our present existential angst, and how it addresses our fears in futuristic contexts of the grotesque and the dystopian.
I so admire the poem’s use of imagery as an enactment of loss (perpetuated generation to generation). The speaker (and the “we”) have not been bequeathed the “tools or skills” that would be prepare them for this ruin, a legacy without reparation. The red sand, the rising temperature is a beautiful use of litotes (ironic understatement) in my opinion. Thank you for publishing this piece!
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THE REST OF THE OCTOBER 2022 SHORTLIST
Hello, by Stuart Charlesworth
I’ve crafted myself a god
from the kind of modelling clay
you fire in your kitchen oven.
I can lift my god with my hands,
carry god around.
Look, my god has fourteen heads,
each one mounted on its own elegant neck —
fourteen necks rising like lissom saplings
from square, sinewy shoulders —
a bare, milky torso — a belt
encrusted with jewels and shells.
Each head alternates in gender
and when you turn my god around
god ages, then is suddenly young.
When I am hungry, I think
how my god was born in a kitchen.
When I am lonely
I gently touch god’s navel.
I’m ashamed to admit it —
my hands are not as subtle with
the clay as I would like them to be,
it may be difficult for you
to make out
the bellybutton,
or distinguish the features on all of the faces.
And adding so much glitter to the belt
before I put god in the oven, was a mistake.
I’ve got an old OXO tin,
for collecting any small change.
I’m saving up to buy more packets of clay.
Would you like to make a donation?
I’ve knocked on all the doors
this side of town.
Stuart Charlesworth was shortlisted by Jennifer Wong in the 2021 Live Canon poetry competition, by Will Harris in the 2020 Rialto pamphlet competition. They were commended by Pascale Petit in the 2018 Brittle Star competition and in 2021 by judges of the Hippocrates prize. Stuart has an MA in Creative Writing from UEA, is a learning disabilities nurse and helps run Café Writers.
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The Pea-Sheller of Crab Street by Hilary Hares,
She’d be out there all hours, half past three, two minutes to midnight, shelling peas on the front
doorstep, always impeccably scrubbed. The pop of the shuck and the plip of the peas as they dropped
into the chipped enamel colander created a rhythm which marked out the days of all of us who lived on
Crab Street. We imagined her husband out the back, constantly picking, muscles like the end-posts of a
Victorian banister, dashing to the front step with the next batch, no time for small talk or Mars Bars.
Who ate the peas we could only imagine. Who had time to cook them and there weren’t any children –
little room for hanky-panky with all that pea-business going on, all day, every day, even on Bank
Holidays, even when we hung the flags out for the Jubilee, even when we noticed the drones.
Hilary Hares’ poems appear widely online and in print. Her collection, A Butterfly Lands on the Moon
supports Winchester Muse and a second pamphlet, Red Queen, is available from Marble Poetry.
Website: www.hilaryhares.com / Twitter: HilaryHares
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Beside Everything, in Paris by Olivia Heggarty
The morning was warmer than the one before, with
a blue demitasse lighting your hand up
in front of Notre Dame, its steam disappearing
like its insides.
And the gold flush of my shoulder against your cheek.
We held our mouths for Americans behind us, saying
Isn’t this something? in their great deep declarations.
But then, isn’t it? Walking beside you with a
Pink Lady mouth, feet falling open, oranges,
and then, the return to each other after sleep. That
hot agreement of
Yes, I will wake up, and next to you. This is what we do.
And cool wine was a glass-smashing sort of
lovemaking, small eyes looking over the cusps. We drank
that down, and it opened our throats for more. And
the black sneezes. The flight home, your mouth back and open like a clam, the white clams
in their ice coffins. I was rubbing my knee instead of yours.
Olivia Heggarty is a poet and writer from Belfast, Ireland. Her work can be found in Skylight 47 and Abridged. Olivia is the editor-in-chief of the Queen’s University literary magazine, The Apiary.
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My Albatross and Me by Abigail Ottley
my albatross is an over-stretched suitcase
spilling out stuff I must remember
my albatross was small but she grew like Topsy
now she will not fit back in her box
my albatross is a story, a black and white movie,
a steam train leaving the station
my albatross sits in her motorised chair
and refuses to elevate her legs
my albatross dozes with her nose in her breakfast
but insists that she hasn’t been sleeping
my albatross thinks she is watched through a spy-hole
by the albatross-hunters next door
my albatross is querulous: she has so much to say
my albatross does not like to listen
my albatross records in her trembling hand
my offences in her little black book
my albatross tells people who don’t know me I am clever
but also that I starve and neglect her
my albatross thinks I am twelve years old
my albatross is angry with me
my albatross watches me with hooded eyes
hooks me with one gnarled, arthritic finger
my albatross repeats like a speaking clock
it’s not, it’s not my fault.
Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance. Apart from walking with her husband and her little dog, this is her favourite thing to do. Contact via Instagram
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#mahsaamini by Mariam Saidan
Today
I want to be loud and
clear and round
like an O or
hold my gun
like an R and
live in Revolution
I ask the words
as I chant them
to slip into curves and folds
of my body and
rise with me
Today
I’m as woman as possible
here’s my hair, look!
sometimes I wear it down
sometimes up
Now give my country back
She’s been fighting
for 14 days
I mean 43 years
She must be tired
Mariam Saidan is a Specialist Advocate for Women’s Rights and has worked as a Children’s Rights Advocate, studied Human Rights Law at Nottingham Universality and Creative Writing at Kent University. She was born in London, and has lived in Iran, France, and the UK. She wrote her first journal at 8 years old while travelling with her family in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. Her recent most publications can be found at Beyond Words, The Bombay Review and Literally Stories.