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          benjamin cusden’s first pamphlet Cut the Black Rabbit is published by Against the Grain Poetry Press. His poetry has been published in the UK ; Canada ; the USA ; Brazil and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize & Live Canon’s...

      Melting Iceberg It’s no good looking at a shooting star with a fly trapped in your eye. You hear the yawn above the skin tide mewling and popping like a calved whale while you spell out the words: mastodon, sabre-toothed tiger, giant bear. But...

      Sunstroke I knew a man with suns for eyes, he blazed with sex and golden lies, a burning shitstorm in disguise. How slowly do the seasons turn. The solar flares of hot desire cannot cleanse a cheating liar. The glaring fact: you play with fire,...

    House, Coyo Atacama Desert Two men talking about sex, drunk, splattering words like spells – they'll bring in the culandero, the woman with fangs – Somebody has given herself prematurely. Somebody has fallen off a swing. Somebody knows the timing’s...

      TIME OF PAUSE I’m what’s left in the toothpaste tube when squeezing won’t get any more out. I’ve often felt this way before. I need to pause, to be the quiet on the underside of an oak leaf. Let the wind come. I’m going to pause. I don’t know when...

      Note To the Pathologist. Take a scalpel, cut along the white bone of breast fold back the flesh, there behind the ribs, you’ll see ribald laughter caged, gasping for breath. Between the red thread of capillaries you will discover a black patch...

  What was it like in the War, Granda? I became desert, death, murderer, a kind of killing machine. I washed my clothes in oil. I bartered my knife for water. I used my gun. I saw friends die over an officer’s stupidity. I was made to polish boots while the winds...

  A LONGER KISS (to John, 1963-2018) On a mound of ancient rubble opposite the Shish Gumbad, in New Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens, a sign announces in English “This Is Grave Not Allowed” and a brown dog howls. The dog struggles in circles to poke its muzzle through the...

      big safe knives her greedy hands cook for me slicing limes into such thin wheels ginger honey sesame to steam in this english culture with the least amount of time to cook in all of europe as she eats i touch her hands and feel grease the salt of...

      THE MOTHER TREE Go to the pine to learn of the pine ̶ Matsuo Bashō Spring empties us of snow, spits us winter-lean    Fat gritted rhizomes, our roots upend feeble as sea foamed on rock fast with limpet full dulse.   & we swing sparse growth...

  Hotel Blue (after John Ash) 1. Above each of the sea-facing windows of Hotel Blue, a canopy. At night the smell of fish and vinegar. It’s a good place to fall out of love, fall in love with someone else, a good place to tip out clutter from your bag or pockets....

      I work in a former abattoir code switching like it’s going out of fashion yawns sieved through my terrazzo mouth sunless mornings one bus every hour peopled with rage rainwaxed floors slippery as heritage once I would have cut myself like a...

  Sean’s Ghost leans over the garden wall next the hairpin bend to hand me a rosy apple with the same gesture he himself showed of a stumblebum evening when I was a child making my way home after a bad day at school. Though the apple holds no substance now, and...

  HERONLESS I look for him from the foot bridge    he's not in any of his usual places not mid-stream in shallows           not below the arch under the road not at the corner on a stony outcrop       the fishes are swimming undeterred and the day feels so...

      Second Generation Upgrade I take an invisible dog on holiday to the coast, with raven feather tied to my hair and a new iphone in my bag, my passport is ready for a quick get away, and I must look a sight in these snow-boots and sunset skin. I ask...

          Dane Holt’s poems have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Trumpet, The White Review, Stand, bath magg, One Hand Clapping , Anthropocene and elsewhere. He is poetry editor of The Tangerine, a Belfast magazine of new...