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The Brain<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s single hub split like a coffee bean <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mark Pajak<\/strong> was born on the Wirral. He is a graduate of LJMU and also the Liverpool Playhouse Young Writer’s Programme. His work has appeared in Askew, Myths of the Near Future, Smoke <\/em>and Spilt Milk Magazines<\/em>, among others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Brain It\u2019s single hub split like a coffee bean two fists of squid fabric, a canopy of cauliflower branches a dense cap of squirming coral. It\u2019s aroma glows sulphur like a box of matches doused in sunlight. Lick it\u2019s gunk and your tongue will hum as though pressed to a battery. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6524"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6528,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6524\/revisions\/6528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ntwo fists of squid fabric,
\na canopy of cauliflower branches
\na dense cap of squirming coral.
\nIt\u2019s aroma glows sulphur
\nlike a box of matches doused in sunlight.
\nLick it\u2019s gunk and your tongue will hum
\nas though pressed to a battery.
\nThis bouquet of gristle,
\nthis fungus sprouted from the spine\u2019s root
\ninto the head\u2019s hollow, is your casing.
\nAs wires dream in sparks, so you
\nare just static bristling in the brain\u2019s crevices,
\na chemical paint by numbers
\nwashed over the knuckles of it\u2019s jigsaw,
\nevery grain of you packed like salt
\ninto the ball and socket of the synaptic gap,
\nall these words, what they mean,
\njust a network of glands
\nlike railway signals turning on and off
\nalong the wicker-work of skull pulp.<\/p>\n