Today’s choice
Previous poems
Sylvie Jane Lewis
Comfort Queens
“As usual, we are joined today by about nine or ten gay men
who follow me, and a legion of young queer women with anxiety
who find me comforting.”
Trixie Mattel, via a Livestream
Being quiet and easily tired by being alive among people, I take
the cowardly route to community. I curate a digital garden of oddity.
At best my phone is a menagerie of queers: trinket makers, amateur
playwrights, witches, and, over and over again, my own personal monarchy.
Two queens stand before me, one Dolly Parton in a Barbie box, the other
a bloodsucker cartwheeling into the splits, wearing Russia like a mink stole.
I watch queens watching reality TV because if I watch reality TV alone
I’ll cry. They talk about whatever they want: beauty and money and
getting fired. An education in love and friendship, intended as comedy
and devoured as gospel. These videos I have projected onto my retinas
since I was sixteen, when I refashioned my face every week into the reptilian
naiad I’d designed to be. For in my mind I am the star of a thousand film
trailers. For I should get out of the house more. For I am the most
glamorous person alive. For I am maddening again in day-old lashes, overslept,
this duvet my cocoon. Be not concerned for me, for this is not my fate.
I will peel myself from my bedroom in a month’s time, move to a city
where life is happening. I will stand before a pub crowd, read a poem
awkwardly and be comforted that this is a step in the right direction.
Perhaps I’ll buy spinach and make it wilt via frying pan, not neglect.
Wake up, paint my eyes green and step outside, the prettiest alien
you’ve ever seen. My comfort queens will emerge from the wings at
intervals, and I will remember that womanhood is a dance, a mask
put on each day, that I am a marionette of politeness. For I play
the part well of a nice sensible girl. My adoring fans will send roses
to my dressing room, where I sit transfixed by a YouTube dissection
of a vintage doll collection. The roses come with handwritten notes
expressing hopes that I like roses the shade of lipstick and dried blood
and Valentine’s Day. oooooooooooooooo Oh honey, I do….
Sylvie Jane Lewis‘s poetry has placed in the Bridport Prize, and been published in The London Magazine, Acumen, and fourteen poems. She is pursuing an AHRC-funded Literature and Film PhD at the University of Brighton. Instagram: @sylviejanelewis. Website: sylviejanelewis.wordpress.com.
Jane Ayres
monstering our splintered selves always on the cusp of something terrible waiting for us to enter waiting to enter us inside/outside/inside did you feed them? suddenly we are washed meat and the dress is clean Jane Ayres...
Kate Harper
The Youth Pastor We are in the church, the space where we swayed, arms high, singing and crying and feeling the power of the spirit pulse through us and around us. He has been circling for weeks, his eyes resting on her when he preaches chastity...
James Nixon
James Nixon teaches at Arden University and is completing doctoral research into the legacy of Arthur Rimbaud and hauntological poetics at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a former Royal Holloway Emerging Writer Fellow, a...
Anthony Lusardi
no more chemo . . . lying in the snow to make a new angel * ambiguity among white clouds and black birds * last of dusk illuminating a sludge's slime trail * lanternfly crawling up a maple in a movie poster * sunday evening contemplating past...
benjamin cusden
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...
Alison Lock
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...
Sarah Doyle
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,...
Abigail Ardelle Zammit
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...
Kenneth Pobo
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...