Cordite Poetry Review

Self-insert Trek: Flashback

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Kaya Ortiz

0. Self-insert as narrator:

[ i cannot look you
in the eye / tell the story
without telling it ]

i am in flight again: [ ] is a name unspoken:
i am creating a home without boxes: [ ] is an extended phase:
i am rehearsing a memory: [ ] is a re-run
repeating: i am quietly imploding:

cascade of stars. awakening.

[ i am something other
than what i th/ought ]

the irony comes after a premature wedding / everything created is bound by its context /
that is, space and time / so i will forgive myself later / for now, the next iteration:

1. Self-insert as a story:

Star Trek Voyager is an odyssey – an impossible
& endless homecoming. i start to believe
in impossible feats like survival:

in the face of destruction & death
the starship rebuilds itself again.
the crew renews its memory each episode,
no trace of the last trauma

[ i will remember this later,
post- the edge of my known world
when i excise the boy from my poetry ]

2. Self-insert as Chief Engineer:

Lieutenant B’Elanna Torres is a mirror:
angry / lost / confused / conflicted / alone

half-Klingon & half-human, B’Elanna
cleaves & falls into herself, a shattered identity

[ relate / recognise / reflect / become ]

3. Self-insert as space:

grow obsessed with a gravity i can’t escape / a black-hole anomaly / can’t get enough / don’t realise
i’ve fallen in love with a fictional character / all that misplaced longing projected into nightly viewings:

she sees my pent-up longing, all that stifled ache /
i am begging to be seen / i am guilty for wanting it

what it comes to:
fanfiction is a necessary salve
– i falsify into re-tellings:

#StarTrekVoyager #f/f #Torres/Janeway #Kathryn/B’Elanna
#angst #femslash #lesbians #slow burn

in the blue-lit dark i learn / what i had never known of desire.

4. Self-insert as Captain Janeway:

nothing is simple about confronting fear
when flung into a distant quadrant. which is to say
at first
i looked away

from [ memory / mirror / mouth / monster ]
or: the answer i seek

5. Self-insert as alien lifeform:

i sleep next to the boy
not with him.

my alien body
my alien longing.

6. Self-insert as audience:

follow the fanfic to its logical conclusion:
the captain and chief engineer’s lusty affair,
a hook-up in the Jeffries tubes.
learn how to pleasure another woman
in some far-off impossible
future

a fiction twice, three times removed.

[ the strangeness of a future where
interspecies relationships are widely accepted,
but two women never fall in love. ]

7. Self-insert as a starship:

my body a ship dead in the water.
my body a wreckage in the deep –

number seven searching seasons before i return

to myself / ruptured. reborn. rebuilding.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Kaya Ortiz

First and last

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Jacqui Malins

I don’t want to watch the new hit series
inspired by the action-adventure-survival-horror
video game franchise about the zombie end
of the world, which everyone is raving about
because even though the gays still die in the end
they have a long and tender relationship
before their tear-jerking conclusion.
I don’t want to watch it, even though as a teen
I was keen on post-apocalyptic fiction
about atom bombs and nuclear winters
and shadows burnt on walls in (what I called)
Hiro-shee-ma, though I knew the threat
was real and terrifying and afterwards
I couldn’t sleep or had radioactive dreams.
Back then I had the confidence or naivete
to identify with the lead, the character
we travelled with and felt for and who might
see terrible things and may suffer and might
behave pathetically and/or heroically but
would somehow see it through to the end.
I am more easily scared now, it feels too close –
not the zombies, just the preposterous frailty of it all
and with more perspective I know in my liver
I could just as easily, in fact, am even more likely
to be a bit-part: perhaps ‘Woman on Street no. 2’,
who is not even the first to be bitten or infected,
or stabbed or eaten, just a nameless sacrifice
to the plot exposition. I don’t want to watch
disaster movies either when my safety so far
feels like dumb luck and I know that bushfires
and floods don’t discriminate. Yesterday I watched
the glorious rococo towers of a thunderstorm
steaming in from the south-west at sunset and
the gum trees waving new growth from this year’s rain
and the green beads of fruit forming on
the tomato plants in the garden and the limbs
of children. Even though the children aren’t mine
and the notion of beauty in the ephemeral is
oh-so-tired, their beauty isn’t. The transience
is a seasoning so piquant I can’t swallow it
and in the dramatic light I remember that you
and I and ‘Woman on Street No.2’ are each
the main character in our own limited series
and sometimes we travel with or feel for each other
and I might see terrible things and I may suffer
and I might behave pathetically and/or heroically
and somehow I will see it through to the end.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Jacqui Malins

MUNDANE

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Daley Rangi

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Daley Rangi

Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Opening of a Toilet

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Heather Taylor-Johnson

It was JB’s birthday, everyone was there but her ex, who I most wanted to see,
half-empty crystal glasses littering the table where confident guests circled
holding the half-full, the slosh of constant conversation, gesticulations,
moles, gold, you said to me I just love tonight, it’s the best night of my life
and I adored the overstatement because I’m always on your side, I said
Mine too though it came off as eager because I’m usually unsophisticated,
wish I was ten years older or younger than I am right now.

HK entered the room, the only one wearing a three-piece suit, and Lady B
was smoking cigarillos from a fancy silver flip-top case, twitching her nose
and scratching her leg – Do the streets feel like conveyor belts?
Do you miss your mother? What was the name of that album with the guy
holding the head of cabbage? – you reached into the volcano
of meatballs, flicked your wrist at the gherkins, cocked a brow
as Triple Threat scooped nuts from a bowl shaped like a penis and told us
she’d been to the sea, Just look at my tan! but she’s partial to make-up
that lightens her complexion, so yeah, when she walked away
in her red jumpsuit I thought of that giant cherry and spoon sculpture
in the city where my mother grew up; I do miss her, since you asked.

You were scanning, scanning, you’re always scanning, you once told me
you viewed the world as miniature snapshots sewn together with fine thread
then projected as a silent movie, Last night I crawled into bed at seven
o’clock and slept until nine this morning, I told you I was streaming
a documentary series and you said Oh I know, it can be so hard, the music
grew too loud for me to hear what you said next but when you nodded
toward the shirtless man throwing olives in the air then catching them
one by one in his mouth, I understood completely, half-thoughts
and absinthe shots, you said I’ll start craving milk around noon tomorrow
and I said, surprising you by touching your arm, That’s a marvellous idea for a poem.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Heather Taylor Johnson

Skuttlebutt visits cousin Sam

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Skuttlebutt

language is a body of water
and cousin Sam loves it

like Christmas

every Wednesday he goes surfing
at Maroubra
and all the boys gather

watch him out there
paddling through syntax

one Friday night
i visited him in Paddington

dancing around
a coffee table he sucked viciously
on a grape vape

ACDC was playing
and he just couldn’t believe
how high the voltage was

HOW HIGHS THIS VOLTAGE SKUTTLE

he kept repeating

and skuttle being butt yourself
hummed low woohoo into Victorian windows

the F1 makes similar news
but the tire burn of days
produces nothing but

a petroleum-based indecision

just relax Skuttle have a vape Sam says
not everyone can shit like you do

but it’s not about poo Sam more the smell

really i mean its subjective

and philosophers have been talking about themselves for centuries

That’s why fish fingers in the oven on Sundays Skuttle

though not quite a red-hot chilli
peppers theme song at least

a reverberation of intent

did you mean a descent?

oh i don’t know
but we’re surfing remember

and if it’s not the pokies
then it’s the Big Banana
printed on a tea towel
slipping from

a Coffs Harbour veranda

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Skuttlebutt

Techno Fantasia

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Anna Fern

P-P-P-P-P-POP!
I heart wuv you sherbet wizz-fizz yoyo, clickclack bay-city POP!
I heart wuv you slinky jelly sparkle superballs POP!
wuv you wuv you wuv you wuv you wuv you wuv you wuv you wuv you
P-P-P peppy preppy pink-musk lollypop photo-op
turquoise pool, glossy paper stock
it’s pearly, sticky cherry quiver lip, blonde-tipped dolly flipped
plastic fluid boob-tube roller disco Oh-Oh!
amnesiotic amniotic rainbow blowup flamingo au-go-go Oh-Oh-Oh!
B-B-B bubbly chubbily purply glo-glo POP!
need feed feed need need feed feed need – Oh-Oh! Don’t let the bubble burst!
it’s lite bright breezy pine-lime, lolly-banana, slushie chewy juicyfruit
sugar-frosted mint crunch crunch fat-free beautiful people
beautiful fat-free people-people
lolly-scented laughter pouring tipped-back
open-mouth
shiny teeth, razzle-dazzle horsey rainbow unicorn teeth
it’s Fun! Fun! Fun! Fun!
Have Fun! Have Fun!
it’s big blousy bubbles ballooning free
up-up-up, the sky-blue sky, higher higher
bursting into sunbeams POP!
OH-OH-OH! the glory of it!
OH-OH-OH! the miracle of it!
it’s people-people dancing spinning twirling bouncing bubbling
M-M-M mirror-mirror perfect people-people sparkle
mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror mirror
dazzling my eyes, worming my ears, crowding my mind, seeding my dreams
it’s POP! everywhere and forever
I believe! I believe! I believe!

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Anna Fern

Choose Your Own Poem

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Lady Lamb

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Lady Lamb

Newcastle revis(it)ed

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Christopher Brown

Tenure –

lifting the domestic

work-rate

for the new shared flat

on the beach.

AM:

stacking dishes

vacuuming

like watching

rage film-clips or

Shane MacGowan

singing about 80s

Newcastle.

Minimalism in a

pocketbook says

write where you

are.

Empire Park.

Boys at

the tennis wall.

Lean

cut bodies

of family wagons.

Houses like

[] [] [] or windows

onto stately voids

which is how a hill

becomes The

Hill.

RAAF jets

low across the coast.

A wave launches spits

corrosive rain on manu-

factured rust as oceans

appear in words or what’s

missing of a metal

plate.

Topography’s a

matter for the heart.

Salience that waves

in colony. Back end

of the Sygna: unseen

from the lighthouse.

Coastal collapse and

road closure. The late

Royal (as Location

goes).

Equium Social:

are we mingling

or “mutually re-

pelling atoms”

Visiting poets

with paper-bagged

big bottles

in the gallery

(where spills

are no acci-

dents).

Memory you can tell

me’s like fifteen with

an unspeakable fear

of the ocean and host

of excuses. Sixteen –

Mum’s your rock and

ghost-writer. Chancing

the Bellevue for the

only atm on Hunter

Street.

Cast back to

some indelible

night from waaay

earlier: False memory

cause I couldn’t

find it

on the

net.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Christopher Brown

Apophenia

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Ariel Bartlett

Desire was once an uninterrupted afternoon —
tongues lurid from corner-shop sherbet
as we’d run to the lake. We had nothing
in common but the name of our street
and the fleeting adulthood of unsupervised water.

Somewhere between Flowers in the Attic
and One Direction, you started
looking different to me, started

going to the lake on your own
to fish while I oh so Ophelia rehearsed
how I’d drown, making only the most tragic shapes
amongst KFC shipwrecks.

Afternoons weren’t interrupted enough. Instead,
spent willing my phone
to notify me of anything.
In the active bar on Messenger,
a green orb hovered above
your name like the light over
the dock of Tom and Daisy.
Tell me, Gatsby, would you believe
me if I said Rorschach
blotted that bay for you?

Twelve years later,
neither of us live there.
I return and wonder
how in that water, you could see a hand
and I: a mouth.

I know you’ve been back,
fishing rods strapped heterosexually
to the roof of your car,
but your line never caught
the image of me
beneath it.

When someone drowns,
if they cannot cough up the water,
they try to swallow it instead.

I only ever pretended,
but I know how that water would’ve tasted —
like that green orb
or catching a cold in summer:
a salty reminder
that just because it’s sunny,
it doesn’t mean the day warms
for you

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Ariel Bartlett

If Pro-Wrestling is Fake Then Explain How Daiquiri the Dog Beat Psycho Mike

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Joses Ho

(After THE STARS OF THE FAST & FURIOUS FRANCHISE HAVE A CLAUSE IN
THEIR CONTRACT THAT SAYS THEY CAN NEVER LOSE A FIGHT by Sasha
Debevec-McKenney)

Dwayne Johnson’s contract says
the ring must be filled with green
M and M’s. Remember when Death-
match used to be tinder
for undertakers? We’ll retire
after the Prime Minister’s brother
drops another pipebomb. Netflix
asking if we are still watching.
On the couch Meritocracy sits beside me,
leans over and sticks their
tongue in my ______. Pretty
sure that wasn’t in my contract.
I double-check my antigen
rapid test
and the ending changes.
Trish Stratus just turned heel.
Yes. We are still watching.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Joses Ho

Pressing the heart

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Dylan Rowen

Eating slow, mouth agape, I ask for mornings off and wait.

I stuff a whole landscape in my mouth—

I think that there are poems in the air,
on this apple skin,
on the porous rind of an orange,
in the slow establishing shot of a body, in sunlight,
on the shore of a beach of a planet,
in the rerun of a forgotten classic film on late-night tv,
in the flare of a nostril,
in the holding of a door, expectant,
in the light that happens when late afternoon transitions into dusk,
in the sharp pause before an exhale,
in the catch of a word in a throat,
in the town you grew up in,
in the first realisation that this is life, hey,
in the curve of the arc of a finger down to the wrist,
in the first time your hand was held with intention,
of a feeling that screams: I like to be around you,
in the way that soft plastic rips too easily,
in the dent that a body leaves in a two-year-old mattress,
in an awareness of your body in space when walking around a place and suddenly it becomes
smaller than initially felt,
in the fold of a lap of a wave,
in how we turn every little thing we say into the biggest event possible,
in the edges of my field of vision,
in textures,
in abstraction,
in a refusal of smoothness
/ in the asking,
/ and in the giving,
in the intense circularity that a finger twists a strand of hair,
in the idea of listening as a type of meeting: an event, an occurrence,
in the question: what does it mean to write a life? Or a moment?

This is the pressing of a heart

in the unconscious struggle against form,
in interpretation,
in a body being “beyond the normative codes of visual recognition,”
in stepping back, in asking, is this right, will this do?
in the winter sun, a still life, I take an image from the air,
in photographing the musicality of absence,
in the expectant wait between drop-off and development,
in the experience of a street from an angle you thought you forgot,
in the length of the space of a song you put on at karaoke,
in the fade-out,
in the plane of descent between meaning and example,
in the gap between window and curtain,
in the maddening desire for the thing that I do not yet know,
in a word on the tip of the tongue,
in lovesickness,
in entanglement,
in both shame and in joy,
in the fantasy of hips on hips, hands on hips, lips on hands, hands on hands, lips on lips,
in the fantasy of a life in which we can spend big,
in the promise of leftovers,
in your favourite tote bag,
in the feeling of a day, ready as ransom,
in translating the space between body and gesture: boundless and incomplete,
in the empty yet urgent thereness of an airport,
in the passage of time as accumulation, breathing in,
in the temporal dislocation of a Sunday,

there is no afternoon there,

in penance, like water, unable to hold, slowly apart of you,
in the feeling that yes! my new medication is working,
in explaining the dynamics of a dream and in the crucial action of it all,
in the afterimage of a face, left for a few more seconds where it once was,
in taking the best bits of a daydream and turning them into warm syllables,
in the silhouette of a body living, nothing more,
in getting a bruise from sitting too tightly cross-legged,
in reading a novel that makes your brain go zap,
in imposing on motion the human meaning of what it feels to be ill,
in developing a personal style,
in the feedback loop of an algorithm that knows you too well,
in that decade-long friendship you found online,
in the favourites photo folder in your phone (an archive)
in that out-of-time period of childhood where years folded into days,
in fresh bread,
in every absurd pattern, seldom spoken,
in that profound yearning for both release and submission,
in seeing and believing, an exit strategy, a graceful knowing.

I know, I know. In my head, in my art, I want to be ready.

A thing of ease,
a way of easy being,
a pressing of the heart.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Dylan Rowen

Change and Smokes

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Jarad Bruinstroop

I.
The one time Janis Joplin went straight, she went all the way home to Port Arthur, her parents and stenography school. No speed, no booze, no singing. Her mother sewed a wedding dress. Janis scraped her hair back into a neat bun. Her hand shook whenever she smoked a cigarette.

II.
At 16, I’d go out in Mum’s old suede coat with the faux-fur collar. I’d smoke Marlboro Reds—the brand Janis held in the picture I cut from Rolling Stone. A $5 semi-permanent through my hair, I’d swig cheap vodka cause I couldn’t stomach Southern Comfort. Sitting on the kerb, I’d sing ‘Trouble in Mind’—the version where you can hear a typewriter in the background, bashing like a drummer who can’t find the beat.

III.
After high school my skin turned translucent like sausage casing. It took two weeks then I was raw and pink. I tried to go about my life but it was difficult when I looked like a carcass hanging in the meatworks. 55

IV.
My grandad worked in the Gladstone meatworks. When he enlisted, the army gave him a glass cyanide pill to break between his teeth if the enemy captured him. They never did so he brought the pill home and hid it under the floorboards. When he went into care and we sold his house, I forgot to look for it.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Jarad Bruinstroop

COWGIRL CENTURY

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Rebecca Hawkes

A tribute track for the Topp Twins

nobody can be afraid of you if you are good enough at yodelling
they will be too perplexed by those mesmeric ululations
to scorn the shaggy mullets traditional to our people
the flannel check and denim and the hankies that dangle
from the back pockets of the country’s best-beloved bumpkins
line-dancing over a stage strewn with camping detritus
to lead us yeehawing into the century of the cowgirl…
Belle and Belle and Ken and Ken
hand in hand on the picket line,
untouchable, touchable, we burn easily
but we are bloody gorgeous
parading in our many splendid genders,
fondly parodic as the rural tearooms’ toilet signage
of cartoon sheep in striped ties or polka-dot frocks:
ewes, rams, mixed flock…
the fringes swish on our wedding-satin western shirts
as we romp through a country of treacherous nostalgia,
the rose-tinted redneck fantasy
gentling the herd to trot along with us,
drag kings chugging stubbies
with the shearing gang at Showgirls…
sweating under stick-on moustaches
while awarding the A&P show cup for best bull
as rodeo boys in wrangler jeans
make out behind the bales of hay…
there sure seems a lot of us are turning out this way…

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Rebecca Hawkes

a small letter to history

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Caroline Reid

dear brad

i’ve been told the 1950s make a great hiding place, neither windy nor cloudy, perfect for travel by bike. even the font size on billboards is bigger. there is also loads of alcohol & low-priced cars. some germs can cross kitchen counters in less than an hour. how fast can you get here? just kidding. what i mean is how do you get people to like you when yr wearing plaid golf pants & deliberate planet-blank-face? sorry not sorry. now that the doomsday clock is 90 seconds to midnight, i constantly collide with not keeping my mouth shut. i wish i were different. jokes, dear brad. the moon says I don’t have to be a woman just because history says so. what is visible romances, what is unseen attempts sensibilty. knitting dung coloured sweaters to match the shade of twilight kangaroos on yr golf course? crush me now. i’m a middle-aged poet not a mute spectator. a goddess with an android in my ethical shop tote bag, i birthed time from a fever dream while high on lsd in paris in 1964. my mind is a landmine. my boobs? starting guns. i fold temper into your tie #stranglehold. like one of eight moons in cold pressed paper, i contain multitudes. can you feel the negative space betw e e n u s
e x p a n d i n g ?

NOTE
This ekphrastic poem is a response to artwork by Alexandra Baxter, I Know How You Must Feel, Brad (2021). ‘what is visible romances, what is unseen attempts sensibilty’ is a line from Baxter’s artist statement.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Caroline Reid

Punk Is Here To Pop Your Bubble

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Susie Walsh

1-2-3-4!
Punk is coming.

It’s 1975.
And we are 10.
And we are ready for it.

It’s 1976.
And Punk is here.
And now we’re Punk and we say fuck.
[under our breath

We say fuck Fernando.
And the fucking drums and guns in the number one spot for fourteen fucking weeks.
[it’s enough to make me almost cry
while spite drying the dishes
wishing those cannons would blow ABBA sky fucking high

It’s 1976.
Fuck the Bay City Rollers. And their tartan.

We want Punk.
And anarchy.
[we don’t know what anarchy is but it sounds dangerous and
angry and we are angry inside and we
like the hard angular shape the word makes in our head
like the name of our town
broke broke broke broke
broken Broken Hill

It’s 1977.
And there’s no money for records.
[there’s no fucking fun
you’ve been fucking cheated
of all the fucking fun

It’s 1977.
And we’re broke broke broke in the Silver City.
[in this city there’s a thousand things you can’t afford to do

But we can read the music charts.
And see that the S-asterisk-X Pistols are still unfairly number two.
[with a blanked out title but we know which song

It’s 1977 and Daryl and Marcia are the King and Queen of Pop.
It’s 1977 and fuck the Dirge of Kintyre.
It’s 1977 and thank fuck for The Saints.

It’s 1978.
And we’re Punk pretenders.
[we’re too afraid
to show we’re Punk
we cover our tracks with the Punk-adjacent

It’s 1978.
And we have spike resistant hair.
[our father’s Californian Poppy sends us back to the 1950s

It’s 1978.
And we want to paint our bedroom black.
And dye our hair black.
And be like Patti Smith.
[and that’s not going to fucking happen

It’s 1979.
We’re closet Punks.
We stick a TV Week Boom Town Rats poster up when no-one else is home.

It’s 1979 and London is calling us on a Sunday night.
It’s 1979 and The Clash are jammed.
[on Countdown
in between the Bee Gees and the Electric Light Orchestra

It’s 1979 and Iggy Pop is bored on Countdown.
[we’re bored with Countdown

It’s 1979.
Yes you can go to the school dance.
No you can’t dress fucking Punk.
There’s no fucking money for Punk clothes.
[in broke broke broke Broken Hill
fuck your shiny disco pants bought in Adelaide
but i love their shiny disco pants bought in Adelaide
and i’m dance dance dancing to Donna Summer

On page 56 of the high school magazine there is a photo from that night.
Three girls.
You’re the one dressed Punk.
[you’re wearing a hand knitted vest from the op-shop
A FUCKING HAND KNITTED VEST

You’re wearing a sign.
A fucking sign.
[it says Baby Punk

The sign is attached with a novelty nappy pin you’ve nicked from home.
The sign might as well say kick me.
[KICK ME!

But you’re not kicked.
You’re not kicked because you’re there with the two coolest girls in your year.
[they look so fucking cool

They look like Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks.
And there’s you.
With your badly cut fringe.
Blowing a bubble gum bubble.
[POP!

And some-fucking-how.
You’ve ended up looking more like Ian Curtis than Johnny Rotten.

It’s 1979 and you’re too late for Punk.
It’s 1979 and you’re post-Punk and you don’t even know it.
It’s 1979 and you don’t look happy.
[but at that moment you actually are happy
you’re Autistic
you just don’t know it yet

[let’s just call it your resting Punk face

It’s 1979 and New Wave is coming.

It’s 1980.
And New Wave is here!

It’s 1980.
And you’re 15.

It’s 1980.
And now you’re really fucking ready for it.
No. You’re not fucking ready for it.
[your life is the same
as it ever fucking was

***

Image: “Three Girls at the School Dance”. The Quondong Magazine, 1979: Broken Hill High School.
An image of Susie Walsh and friends dressed in punk clothes.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Susie Walsh

Tate Cartoon: I Don’t Care! I’d Rather Sink Than Call [X] For Help!

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Jane Frank

after Roy Lichtenstein

We stood in the airless gallery with dozens
of others in front of Drowning Girl.
I could feel sweat against the linen of my shirt,
wanted to shift his hand off my hip.
Don’t you think this work is kind of crass? he said.
I didn’t want to talk about the subject matter—
men causing women misery—
just enjoy the thick lines and bold colours
with detachment. The Ben-Day dots made her skin
look flawless, framed by her whirlpool of hair.
Earlier in the gift shop, I read that Brad
wasn’t always absent:
before Lichtenstein cropped the image,
he was in the background holding the catamaran
while she dealt with a cramp in her leg.
I didn’t allude to the fact that the artist’s
first marriage was dissolving as he painted it.
As we walked silently towards Blackfriars afterwards,
we were the clichéd ones,
thought bubbles stacked above our heads.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Jane Frank

Launch Title Affirmations

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Rory Green

After reviews of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by Arthur Gies, Peter Brown, Jose Otero and Jason Schreier.

I am almost overwhelming right from the start.
I have enough holes to instill a real sense of mystery.
I am a pillar of smoke above palm trees in the distance.
I am both a return to form and a leap into uncharted territory.
I am an oyster full of really angry monsters and ancient death machines.
I am a little more loose and a little more immediately rewarding.
I am under-equipped for the space you’re in.
I am the implied promise that if you can see it out in the distance, chances are you can eventually reach it.
I am the time lost getting back to where you were.
I am full of emergent opportunities to push your basic understanding of the world and its rules.
I am probably going to die a lot, honestly. Often without much warning.
I am empowering special abilities that will improve your chances to survive.
I am playful piano melodies and ambient sounds of wildlife.
I am an unintentional effect of the game’s code.
I am a frequently stunning, consistently striking visual achievement.
I am walking toward one goal only to see something enticing in the distance.
I am huge, but never empty. I am vast, but never random.
I am a disastrous, society-ending war.
I am triggering bliss and excitement in equal measure.
I am awash in wonderment and perhaps guilt for living a life steeped in modern indulgences.
I am constantly learning in the face of unforeseen challenges.
I have meant to represent a grander topography.
I am thrown completely open to you.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Rory Green

The members of *NSYNC are absorbed inside The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch and sing the song ‘Pop’ but it sounds haunting and weird like that recording of the butt music from Bosch’s painting: a triptych

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Eloise Grills

I
Like a poet, like a sucker, I am married to the source-code of language
Hoovering up etymologies and then regurgitating them ad nauseum like a debate captain in an American high school movie
According to Webster.com
According to the dictionary
According to the cockney rhyming thesaurus
According to Urban Dictionary.com
According to the hysterical horny boring orgiastic masses with bloody asses
Accordingly I must recount the scintillating origin story of the band name *NSYNC
The name refers, according to some admittedly rudimentary googling
To Justin Timberlake’s mother’s assessment that the band were so ‘in sync!’
The letters also derive, haphazardly, from the names of the five singers:
JustiN, ChriS, JoeY, JasoN, and JC
But what of the *? A careless elision? A bold statement?
* represents an absence, which is made to emphasise the non-presence of the letter ‘I’, which is coincidentally (or not) the first-person pronoun — the self
Which perhaps refers to a silent sixth member of the band (you?)
Or perhaps an ecstatic sublimation of the self, necessary to the creation of a united and harmonically/melodically gifted band such as late-90s pop creation *NSYNC
Which is sometimes stylised NSYNC where the asterisk disappears and is replaced by literally nothing
What’s worse? A conscious uncoupling or a bitter divorce of the self?
Or being the kind of wanker who invokes Derrida to talk tween idols of the 90s?
When * was a kid, the part in The Witches by Roald Dahl that * was most scared of was when the little girl gets trapped in a painting by a witch for eternity
And in a movie: when Alice goes beyond Wonderland then gets home – but is trapped in the mirror-world and no one can hear her or see her
It suggests there is no worse hell than being trapped inside someone else’s artwork or fantasy
But all * want is to be trapped inside someone’s artwork or fantasy
Like what a trip? * think that love can pause us like in a haunted mirror
Like a mummy being embalmed
Even if * look disgusting and shrivelled * am forever immortal in your gaze
But anyway this is not the story of * or me or love or my fear of death
It’s the story of *NSYNC becoming trapped inside a painting by a late medieval/early modern painter named Hieronymus Bosch

II
According to the lyrics of ‘Pop’ by *NSYNC pop is about respect
It doesn’t matter – right now Justin Timberlake pulls open his pleather overshirt to reveal a naked woman’s legs emerging from the split of a mussel shell embedded in his chest
All that matters is Joey Fatone’s dark brown hair with ice-blond highlights and the strange praying mantis–style hand motions the five members do in the dance break – they writhe on the ground like snakes humping, they are naked and riding on the backs of birds, they are plucking peaches from trees
Do you ever wonder why?
And everything is a flesh paradise – pink tents made of skin everywhere and cool pools of water and clusters of trees
When your body starts to rock?
And the member of the band who * don’t know the name of is wearing a sheer tight shirt and pleather pants with a lace-up fly and he is sitting with a woman inside a bubble that is being blown by another woman
And Lance Bass is there too, or the artist currently known as Lance Bass, * believe he changed his name at some point
Baby you can’t stop my further googling: *NSYNC’s first album, the predecessor to Celebrity, which featured ‘Pop’
Was titled No Strings Attached, a name that evokes several associations, including
Puppetry, and the iconic wooden Pinnochio who pines (pun intended) to be a real boy
The idea of having a no-strings-attached tryst, i.e., intimacy and sex without commitment
And also the idea of being free from external influence
These associations being somewhat ironic considering the unreality of being in a pop band and the manufacture of such an outfit
The kind of adoration and boyfriend-able appeal of the clean-cut members
And that the record involved at least fourteen producers responsible for most of the megahits of the decade
Inciting critical pressure for the band members to be more involved in the next album’s production
And right now everyone is gnawing on giant glistening berries and dancing and their selves are collapsing into unrepentant hedonism juice dripping down their chins
Justin Timberlake is named as a collaborator on the songwriting of ‘Pop’ and based on the audio seems to be the only member of the band singing?
One voice layered over itself eternally
And the music’s all you got
And the music’s all you got
And the music’s all you got
Man *’m tired of singing
Man *’m tired of always writing about myself
What happens when you are trapped inside your own artwork?
And the artwork is a self-portrait or a series of them?
What happens when you leave the mirror world… only to be caught forever entranced by another mirror?
How can * elide the * or the you or the me that is also you?
Mmm MMM *NSYNC trapped in a hellscape by an artist from 700 years ago
A hellscape that’s so frightening it starts to be normal
The implied third part of the triptych (III)
It’s an illustrated dictionary and every definition describes torture
And has a picture of an implied * screaming
From which you can now intuit that this must be
*
And the birds are eating the members of *NSYNC
*
And they are erased letter by letter

*N
          S
                    Y
                              N
                                        C
                                                  ? ? ?

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Eloise Grills

The Ballad of Nan & Pop

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Justin Heazlewood

Pop’s a plodder.
Pop’s a plodder from wayback.
There’s an art to plodding.
You start at A. You see B.
You take your sweet time getting there.

Nan’s a sprinter.
She’s off her marks and getting set
While Justin’s halfway through a dream.

Nan is porridged and foraged and lacquered and snacked.
Head down and bum up in the garden.
She hardens.

Pop’s preparing his affairs,
on a chair in the sun.
He’ll be there “Drekly.”
He’s on a cruise. He’s having a snooze.
He’s in a meeting with the paper.
Liaising through marmalade.

Nan is gloved and shoved,
fingers deep in mud.
She’s legs spread and trimming.
(the shellbacks are winning).
“BLOODY SODS OF THINGS!”
She’s topping up water for birds,
and tearing her shirt.

Nan needs little.
Pop takes little.
It’s their blooming lot.
Hey diddle!

Nan grows. Pop mows.
Together they keep light and shade.
Pop softens. He’s ready for tasks.
He won’t find out if he doesn’t ask.

Pop’s in trouble.
He’s burst Nan’s bubble!
She’s had all morning to prepare this speech.
Pop’s in deep.
He’s off down the town.
Nan’s a-frown.

Justin’s in between.
He knows what they need.

He’ll help Pop shop.
And parry with Nan.
He knows not the plan.
He just wants a cool time,
and the sun on his spine.

Mum isn’t here.
This isn’t her scene.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Justin Heazlewood

Marilyn Pursued by Death

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Matthew Platakos

after Rosalyn Drexler, 1963

LOS ANGELES TIMES
AUGUST 6, 1962
MARILYN MONROE DIES; PILLS BLAMED

silver (screen) poisoning // skin bleached by pop toxins
Warhol injected direct into the veins

the only blonde in the world
100% chemical on cryogenic canvas
supergelatinous acrylic midnight

plastic autopsies & ekphrastic obituaries
on thoroughly modern kitchenettes
crucible-eyes on the kitsch-hunt
popism // stop drop & shopism
if you too want to be bleached in deluxe America^TM

paparazzi pulsars emitting radiation publicising
their nuclear age bombshell // facsimile stasis
face that could launch a thousand bomber planes
over Hollywood // presidential wet dreams

Museum of Modern Marilyns (MoMM)

making money is art
making money is Marilyn
making Marilyn is art
making Marilyn is money

LOS ANGELES TIMES
AUGUST 6, 1962
~~MARILYN MONROE DIES; PILLS BLAMED~~
MARILYN LIVES FOREVER IN SILKSCREENS

death will come and will have Her eyes

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Matthew Platakos

fellas, it was so gay

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Ray Briggs

ngl God, when you said you’d answer my prayer,
I was picturing a cruise full of “straight” guys with heavenly jawlines and nine inches of uncut glory
sucking each other off, rising again,
then turning toward me in hunger

that’s what I meant by “please Lord make all the men gay”

but I get it, You work in
metaphysics, not materials science
and you’re the one who invented the Divine Masculine in the first place
then said “oh shit” and considered a second draft

I really appreciate Your openness to feedback, and Lord,
I love how you‘ve taken my idea and run with it
replacing every man’s essence with one whose masculinity is
kinda wonky, trashcore, so obviously gay
it doesn’t depend in any obvious way on who he fucks

yass Lord, give me gay men
who flaunt the beauty of their bodies like a beaded garment
who sing and dance and paint and crochet about their feelings
who kiss each other on every part of their being
and don’t even have to fuck men to prove themselves (necessarily)

give me gay men who cleave close with their husbands
and gay men who love their wives, not as the wolf loves the sheep, nor as the shepherd loves the sheep,
but as the sheep loves his fellow sheep
let all men cry for their lovers
let them cuddle their cats and their dogs and their daughters and their sons
without the slightest fear that it will make them gay
for they know in their hearts that they always have been
hallelujah amen

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Ray Briggs

A Meme Enters The Group Chat

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Scott-Patrick Mitchell

And is met with a laugh react. Is categorised: dank; cursed; fire; WTF. Is propagated onward and into the algorithm. Reshare. Repost. Here, take up space inside my camera roll. Become familiar with thumbprint and doomscroll. Shorthand for apocalypse, for mood, for counterargument. An augment. Digital real estate and a drag king named Costa Livin’-Crisis. Split screen. Add gamespace to appease ADHD. Book’s end. Shows are cancelled. But virality is a feedback loop, consuming cells. Hearts, pressed. How conclusion is not a word we use for billions of voices in communion. A job is not a home. A dating life is not a living. But they can be, with the right lighting. String code and fairy lights. The memes become a complexity of being. If they are an onion, which is the secret lair. All things interactive, interact. Burn CDs by putting them in the fire. Dial up by increasing the thermostat. Surf by laying perfectly still except for that which is prehensile. If x = eating a clock and coming back for seconds, then z = laughing at a cricket called Harold. Do not mention The Minions, how this microbial legion boomer and boom. Ok computer: duct tape fruit to a wall, to your mouth. Delusion is a French vanilla fantasy. Sparkling anxiety from a region of we, yes. Drink water and stay hydrated as you suffer. If you’re cold then they are cold too: the meme gestures to a collection of horrors dreamt up by Hieronymus. Eldritch my WAP. The kitten tells us that all income is disposable if you’re fun and irresponsible. A Rick Roll on an ogre’s scroll, written upside down. Spelt poorly. How the experts warn us about screen time before bed. They just want the fast Wi-Fi all for themselves. Moth has entered the chat. Man in flannel, looking back, permeates within the distract. Leo’s smug grin, answering the rhetorical. We are born in the wrong generation, working 40 hours a week instead of hoarding gems and eating raw fish. Self-adhesive chest wig. There are two wolves inside of you and the deer population is causing your ecosystem to collapse. Yes, Virginia. When life gives you lemonades, lmn. You’re a little late: I’m already worm. Spirit Halloween costume packs where you fill in the blanks. Or the blank is your unfinished manuscript. The terror. Yes, Nancy does practice The Kraft. Macaroni. Macaroon. Meccano. With the chicken strips. UNHhhh. Spend less on brunch and more on time travel. That way you too could buy a house. In 1969. Llamas in the fog. Modern rice. Ask yourself: how can I make the final season of civilization all about me? Frog, but not that frog. Sometimes, all you need are rich parents. Stop trying to make _____ happen. And the bytes contract, expand. We cannot point to a location on the map and say that is where it will end. Instead, posting irony until post-irony becomes self-aware. And as the world burns, a dog stands up on its hind legs, walks toward the camera and says Look at me, I’m a human. I pay taxes. I have depression.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Scott-Patrick Mitchell

American Cheese (1994)

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Kate Durbin

I like Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, especially the cartoon shapes like Animaniacs, but my friend loves Velveeta because it looks just like the commercial — like waves of flowing yellow lava, like Jello pudding, except cheese. I find Velveeta cheese gross. Why does it taste like plastic? Why is it gooey, like snot? That friend also has the Kraft American Cheese slices, the kind in individual pieces of plastic you have to pick and peel at awkwardly with your fingernails to unwrap. Mom refuses to buy Kraft American Cheese slices because they are too expensive, my four siblings and I will eat them too quickly. When I’m sleeping over at that friend’s house and I get hungry in the night–I am always hungry in the night, and in the day too–I go to my friend’s fridge, snatch a slice and then sit on the toilet. I fold the cheese into tiny squares I pop in my mouth, one by one. Imagine myself a small, organised rodent. Back home, hot dogs shot through with neon orange cheese. I eat them straight out of the fridge, cold cheese squishing between my teeth, and my fingers smell like hot dogs when I go to bed. And then there is EZ-Cheese, which I spray into my mouth straight from the nozzle like Pauly Shore in A Goofy Movie, although I also sometimes eat it normally, on crackers. I microwave that hunk of Costco cheddar, nuked to crisp corners, a soft pool of grease in the centre of the bowl. Jab and twist at it with my fork, unfurling strands of radioactive orange. Actual string cheese? I peel into the thinnest, stringiest strips possible. In my school lunch, I have that, and Kraft Handi Snacks. I run out of the cheese spread for the Handi-Snacks halfway through, and throw the rest of the crackers away, even though I’m still hungry. Scoop the dirt from my nails with the red plastic cheese spreader stick. But on the best days, we get Cheez-Its, the supreme cheese crackers by far. Shoving our dirty hands in the box while we watch Hook on VHS, competing for bursting handfuls, faster, faster, until mom takes the box or it’s all gone. Cheese Nips are rip-off Cheez-its and they taste like rip-offs, but they’re better than nothing. Better Cheddars are light and round, which is a nice change from all the square crackers, but the flavour is weak, so you forget they’re even cheese. I could eat a ham and cheese hot pocket for every meal, even though I always burn my mouth out. There’s nothing worse than Goldfish crackers. Only babies like them. Pizza Hut is my favourite pizza, especially the oozing hot cheese-filled crust, which I have choked on more than once, but it’s worth it.

Posted in 110: POP | Tagged Kate Durbin

Everything will be okay for your landlord

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Dan Hogan

You are what you eat so if you see me munging
on a hypertrophied human arm in the wee hours
behind a sand dune, no you didn’t. Excuse me
while I shimmy into something a little less knowable.
Speaking of which, close all your eyes. Flood your
mouth with saliva. Hold it. Allow your hand to fall across
an expensive bottle of sun cream. Listen for the city
laughing at its buildings. Now, be a darling

and spit. You are what you eat so I guess it’s time I ate
myself? Nom … nom … nom?
I want to tell you so many things but my teeth
fly out of my face at warp speed. Not enough hours
in the day, which is to say conduct a prayer ceremony for
Search Engine Optimisation by washing your horrid bathmat
and use it barefoot straight out of the dryer so nice.
It’s bin night so there’s that to look forward to as well.

This message and everything on this page
is an ad. Go here to end. Stub your second biggest
toe on the corner of the post office. (Required.) Nobody
tells you the itch is hereditary, that the link is coming from
inside the biography. If you like this, you might also like
the headache from eating ice cream too fast. Sit back and
look at the word going and say it out loud in the style of boing.
Play the Theremin with a boneless puck
          of chicken.
You are what you eat so I guess it’s time I ate an exhausted
whoopie cushion? Summon onomatopoeia? In this climate?
Sir, this is Wellbeing Wednesday. Let them eat pizza. Nom, nom,
nom, etc. I might be two-faced but I wear one snood. Why are we
always doing things? You know how you hurtle
          birthdaytowardbirthday
          umbilical turn numerical
I’m wondering if you might do that one more time
          with no feeling. Recall the erupted fog.
So very un-fog-like to erupt, isn’t it? Why are we always
doing things that could be interpreted as symptoms? We are
almost never in a helicopter orbiting a multi-story casino or
rissole? What’s with that? Shell fragments and slow sand
          stuck in our ears. A few more payslips
and we can start applying for a new

place. You are what you eat so eat your friendversary? It is
easier to imagine the end of capitalism than a dry bathmat so eat
a dry bathmat? The trouble with nightmaring across a field
is the desire to smooch your own fractures. The thought of a
list. A trapped nerve indexed. Onlookers gasping in awe. Failed
empty file. Cossid larvae pattering the linoleum like big rain. Coins
dumped in the sink. Is this loud enough? Everything will be okay
for your landlord. Disappoint the oldest person you know by texting
them: Sorry but I can’t make it tonight. I’m a graphic designer. The sky
splitting up like parents. You have memories to look back on today
(content unavailable right now). This message and everything on this
page is bad. Hold me close and

lol. What in the unsanctified insularity brings you here? Anti-ageing
agent? You can run but you can’t Dow Jones. You are what you eat
so eat the rich. haha.

Issue Launches.Submissions Windows.

Issue Launches.
Submissions Windows.