Join us for a live zoom reading from Tim Turnbull, Jessica Mookherjee with John Mills in our new occasional ‘Live from the Butchery’ series, hosted by Helen Ivory and Martin Figura from their home. The reading will take place on Sunday 4th October, 4pm GMT, 11am EDT. (Email Kate at inksweatandtears@aol.com for details on how to Zoom in!)
Black and White
We are making moving pictures.
It is the silver age again.
We are crafting aery vignettes
from light and distilled emotion,
bleached ethereal pageants
on sun-baked backlots
from geometry and gesture.
Grips and sparks scurry
between sound stage and warehouse
ferrying rig and tracks,
administrators and functionaries
shuttle memos and redrafts,
auteurs and focus pullers compose
tableaux suffused with tenderness
or despair, or both; but in
screening rooms the rushes spill
monochrome, which spreads
out from the screen and infects
the whole studio lot and in
a trailer the principal lights
a cigarette. Properly framed and set,
a thread of pale smoke twines
over white cheek and black hair,
and this chiaroscuro masterwork
reveals itself as the film within
the film within the film and so on
ad infinitum until we can
no longer say what is the art
and what is life but isn’t it all
so utterly beautiful. Clack
goes the clapperboard. Start
again.
Tim Turnbull’s third poetry collection, Avanti!, is available from Red Squirrel Press. Before lockdown he recorded poetry for a vinyl release album of five artists from Culture Recordings. He is working on a pamphlet of dream poems and accompanying paintings. http://timturnbull.co.uk/
Smashing
Flashbulbs and wild cards go off, and the tune won’t stop pulsing.
Let’s go to the club, the pub, the gig at the Garage.
The top’s off, tights get loose and she’s rearranged.
Her foot taps, spine snaps, she can tip tap there in the bright lights.
A hand on her thigh, a sliding glance, arms wide and she’s turns Hecate.
She mouths spells to Aphrodite, Dionysus, Tiaco and Pamela Anderson
as her hair curls, lips pout. She’s unbuttoned, unzipped and upfront,
She holds onto the stage, sips tequila, mescal and absinthe, makes
mistakes in slow motion. Why not be young-flesh bedazzled for the boys
who urge to spill it in the night club as she belly-dances.
Filaments are sparked while her skins’ glass blown and hot, he’s moth
ready in the strobe-bright magnetised to her hip-swell. His big shoulders
find their way, sprout feathers to the moon, and turns into wings.
She beckons music, drives faster, spreads her pale skin-veins
and antennae, and he smashes into her light-bulb again, again until daylight.
Jessica Mookherjee grew up in Wales and lives in Kent. She has been published in many print and online journals. Her first collection is Flood (2018, Cultured Llama) and her second Tigress is published by Nine Arches Press. https://thejessicapoet.com/