The Archive

Sunday 17 May 2015

FOLLOW THESE SIMPLE RULES

Run it round & start pressing
Lift up, crack the paper
But not keenly,
Just a little for a long time.

                Start later,
It’s not dark it’s just at the end
Where the tip lilts,
You
Wait
Shift left up but come back down.

Rise up higher & perceive the field.

Flame the page & the chair sets fire,
Giving life to scratches.

It’s morning but a dark one,
Time submerges
                Your red
& still the night dawns.

Croak the pen, harshly,
Drop the paper with ice
                Repeat
Drop the pen with ice & soon rectify a falsity.

It’s a wax figure.


Anonymous

MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES

Polar ice, jagged,
Through grey and misty hazes.

A distant swirl of sea, unfrozen
Focused white ruin of mast and sail,
Paws claw through
Yanked cloth and bone,
Bear and bear alone
Baring teeth,
Sneering:
God is true to his word.


H.E

A RAPTUROUS RECEPTION FOR THE JERSEY HAS TAKEN PLACE

Melted ice circles the tip
Of the first drawn drink
Spilt beverage, and two
Soaked beer mats of froth
Beside ripped plastic packaging
Fuse with the fizz.
Behold the jersey.
Deep blue and white.
Held in palms, held by stares
That express true surprise.
The window is black with dark
And our silhouettes contrast

With the white of the frame.


Anonymous

WAR



H.E

I DON'T BURN UNLESS YOU WANT ME TO

I tongue the abscess on the roof of my mouth
– Scar face, gag, bitch –  
Black hole in between my lips
My age of consent is when I want
Kneeling down
Hot fingers
Handcuffed

I won’t burn unless you want me to.


Alice Mason


BLOOD ROOTS, STRANGE TREES

Arturo was fourteen years old when he discovered his first mass grave. At first, he thought he had stepped on a branch. As he looked down, a skull was protruding out of the earth like a tooth out of gum.
Arturo was no ordinary boy. Faces of dead people had followed him around ever since he was a baby. At first he had thought everyone suffered from this. But these faces whispered to him dark secrets about the future of the world, about magical places and inventions no one had ever heard of. He once mentioned these faces to his mother, and shortly afterwards was taken to the doctor. The doctor prescribed him some medication and deemed him to have some mental illness that left Arturo’s parents puzzled. No one in their family suffered from any kind of mental illness. Despite the visit to the doctor, Arturo was still left with the hallucinations.   

 It was during this night that he had seen his father threatening to put his Izzie’s arm in a sling. She was left handed. Any sign of left handedness in the family, according to Arturo’s father, was the sign of the Devil himself. So, as Izzie was whimpering at the sight of the sling, and their mother absent, Arturo slipped out of the house.

 Many years after this discovery, Arturo’s life would be scattered by other mass graves; during war, in the garden of his psychiatric ward, underneath an entire town, in foreign countries, but this one, was his first.  As his eyes got used to the dark, there were many more bumps in the earth, poking out. There were more bones. It was as if someone had wanted to grow full skeletons. He stood up; he was thinking about returning back home. His fingernails were stuck with dirt.  

“Help.”  

It was muffled. No one was there. His throat dried.  


“Help.” 


Alice Mason

CHICHA

Chicha stains your teeth purple,
No matter how much it’s watered down.
Bubble gum flavoured Inca Cola,  
Fluorescent lemon,
Which tinges tongues a darker yellow.
 
Nazca lines paints animal skeletons
Of a time before and brightens the sun
They hail the moon.

Busy markets, dirty streets,
Tin shack houses,

Chicken carcasses.


Alice Mason