Muse Arcade By Kid Glove Having spent a year being taught and mentored by the poet Bohdan Piasecki as part of The Roundhouse Poetry Collective 2014, we have formed Kid Glove, a collective of poets united by a desire to tell stories, make poetry and perform our poetry around the UK. We write words for both the stage and the page and are interested in ways of developing new practices in spoken word poetry. We like stories that hold mirrors before the audience, words that make you laugh and cry, and images that leave you seeing stars. Website to follow. Contents Antisocialist The Whipping Teeth Most Likely To Recede Talk Like a Pirate Day on D Block Lure The Honeyboy Thug Paradox The Lie Unlatching The Ode Not Taken A Series of Fortunate Laments
Antisocialist Rochelle Sampy Money is my thang; I love bullying others in a gang. Who needs lunch tokens when you can take pleasure in watching the broken? Why should I give my wealth to others – the disabled, the poor or the young mothers? I worked hard to get to my position; every day is a hard sell, a struggle to get a commission. If you live on the streets, then you just haven’t tried hard enough. Opportunities are given to everyone, so it’s your fault for sleeping rough My job is 24/7 and so I earn well. If all you do is sit at your desk with admin and paperwork, I’m not surprised that you are in financial hell.
The Whipping Teeth Antosh Wojcik When I was Rebound Boy for a day, I met a girl obsessed with bird’s nests. She kept a twig-‐curled halo and three eggs on her head. Sun bathing is when she cooks. She also has cans for that colour. She liked my mouth boomerang. It didn’t come back until she laughed chainsaws in the forest-‐walk home. I lost all the climbing I ever did. She started whipping teeth, tobacco pegs and cream I deep throated, and her eyes were blackboard painted. I’m supposed to have chalk fingers and a cure, but I just said the right things to get her open; all night we drank paste that makes you fallout. I said we should give up on dessert, and she was frozen in a brick of caramel so anti-‐gravity, my kiss took bullets to get her to talk again. She told me about the book containing all the different types of head massages and invited me to skull workshop. I lasted a minute and forgot all the music I could play. I told her everything can’t be serious. She slow-‐died in my trench coat, left a punch in my mouth. I went home, washed, like every other morning.
The Whipping Teeth Rose Swainston Face packs crack hot on the night’s fingertips. Twenty-‐five and we’re teenage jumping jacks again, icing our gums with mountains choked by the vodka-‐excitement of illegal horizons. Elixir, canopies of hips, eyes closed, skin tag, stroking strangers greedily cream my mouth with glow-‐stick conversations ‘till we’re gurning, we're whipping teeth. Up and down and up and down we pull crazed animal faces: Joe, a cheshire cat; Alice, a lop-‐sided horse; Kate’s already foxed without her boyfriend Paul. We piss money on our shoes, pinball the room, electric demented, losing our senses. I make cubicle eyes to a flat cap kid with zits and missing lips suctioned heavily by too much ketamine, our derelict faces demolish inwards, and like tower blocks we collapse down in to sweat-‐pulp space trash on floors breathing in laser beams had too much to snort, swept out by the cleaner we weep in puddles, find sanctuary in chip wrappers desperate to calm our whipping teeth.
The Whipping Teeth Sophie Fenella On the back of the bus I squeeze tiny sticks in between my eyelids, listen to the buzz of stranger’s late night conversations, I met him on Tinder and bang my forehead against the glass, He’s built like a tank before letting the wine sink in and turn my tongue to Velcro. My session with the black fuzz is rudely interrupted. Loud bus driver calls me darling, Come on, bedtime he croons. In any other context I would kick him in the teeth. I am flung out onto four in the morning pavement, It wasn’t meant to be this way I tell the loud bus driver. He blinks, calls me darling again. A businessman is in my shoes, he wipes shredded cabbage from his blazer, misses the chilli sauce on his cheek. Blinking at a bus stop, he tells me we’re in Highgate. I am too far from home I reply, coughing up two in the morning chips. This city made me and now it has spat me out, these streets won’t look after me I am too far gone to care. The business man gives me parental eyes; there is kebab meat in his teeth. The bus turns around, picks me up, Take me home this time, I plead ignoring the black fuzz. The businessman chooses standing, riding the speed bumps, the hand rail whips his teeth. I lost my heart on this bus He tells me, red eyed and sweaty. The bus driver overhears, tells him to take care of himself. I ask the streets for safety.
Most Likely To Recede Antosh Wojcik Hair tumbleweeds in underpass, the shootout is a gang of scalps, curly tongs against the liquid straighteners. I gather the pavement in my bag, dodge bald men crying at the ground, arms outstretched like the reach skywards. I see the sky to splits in half moon, wake, glue glazed, werewolf and growling love for the hairdresser who let the artificial-‐light animals be the nightlife guides of neon signs before the black becomes their swallow and jackets.
Most Likely To Recede Sophie Fenella Once a year The Thames retreats, gifts the city with an extra stretch of land, thankful, the city climbs down the algae-‐ed stairs, gets sand in her shoes. Laden with sound systems, the city paints turquoise streaks on her cheeks, makes her mark, prints the balls of her feet, (heels don’t touch the ground) in dark sand. Damp walls shake, tourists stop and stare, as creatures from the city’s belly, learn how to reclaim this land. Three in the morning and The Thames grows tired, the city shrinks; her creatures climb to the surface in dribs and drabs, until there are only drifters still stomping their feet. The Thames waits, placing bets on who is the most likely to recede.
Talk Like a Pirate Day on D Block Carmina Masoliver Me hearty, we stay solid in the hottest of heat. Aye, we do not move our molecules like rubber bands, do not expand like puddles in monsoon season to flood, no, we stay as one. My beauty, we will not walk the plank to the depths of the darkest nightmare. Currents pass through us like ghosts, so beware ye fragile hands. Avast! Ye may not melt us, asphyxiate us into nothingness, make us into dust or invisible air. We fly like Jolly Rogers and nay, we are not edible -‐ note the poison should ye try to take a bite.
Lure Sophie Fenella I’ll give you red wine and steak my stomach has no answers I’ll buy you chocolate, let it melt I have given up on sweet teeth Pints of beer and chunky chips There is a balloon in my stomach Roast lamb? Do not feed it, I will pop. I will make you a milkshake Food will not fill me How about cauliflower cheese? That will not do I’ll make you brown bread My hunger is an alleyway. Do not enter: there are rats behind my bins; I am better empty, just leave me half a crumb.
The Honeyboy Thug Paradox Rose Swainston Spandex legs, conceal nervous hives. They dip and rise, buzz-‐cut thighs into jittery mincemeat. Honey boy carefully lays size 10 Manolo’s like grenades down the street. His skirt hot against his pubic curls, fades, cracks, unfurls into wings, Honeyboy is ready for flight, Honeyboy is ready for the night. Lampooned on lamp posts waits for his bluebell-‐business boy to peel off his petal cock, ‘till his tongue sticks on rancid blossom, and he’s trapped. His catch, made him feel real nice. Honeyboy makes concentric circles, with his hips, flapping his lips, taking his time to rise up slow-‐ he wipes his beehive knuckle dusters into his victim quick, spit-‐wasps, dust clouds. Honey licks the blood like flies between fingers, kisses his ‘Winnie the Pooh’ tattoo, bear hugs his victim into the car boot, closes the latch.
The Honeyboy Thug Paradox Rochelle Sampy She may have called him perfection but his eyes slashed her dancer dreams. His mouth thundered with selfish soliloquys, his hands strangled her imagination. I’ve done so much for you You can do this one thing for me, his words flowed simultaneously like chainmail tightening into a scarf. Her friends adored their connection; they only saw the majestic masquerade that hid reality. She forced herself to feel when they kissed. Told herself that being his made her something more. Her dreams were now entwined with his. She died long time ago, but her body continued to taunt her with its existence. She was nothing more than his life source. He clicked his fingers and she came running, ‘till she outran her own sanity. Nothing made sense anymore, nothing unless it was a knife that poignantly pierced her empty core
The Lie Carmina Masoliver Beauty > facts etched in your head, balanced on a tightrope, juggling knives and sticks of fire and nappies and period pain and Excel spreadsheets and Power Point presentations and jokes in the corner of your laughter lines and crow's feet age worse than men. > compassion and empathy, doors held open regardless of gender, standing up for those less able to stand up for your rights, to care about more than makeup brushes and the laws of attraction, to care about it, yes, but not as much as pay gap percentages, rape as a weapon of war, people discarded like mess swept up with dustpan and brush, along with children inside systems instead of homes all because beauty > humanity's progression through the emancipation of women, of young girls whose bodies are not their own, because this thing we need to dismantle tells us it's nature, evolutionary biology taught like Darwin was more perfect that God. Follow this religion, its myths in magazine bibles, and you will find happiness in flesh coloured face paints, Gravity-‐repelling body parts and fabric to cinch in any bits the surgeon might have missed.
Unlatching Carmina Masoliver House party pulling as many tongues as I could tug, drunk, I asked if I was pretty enough. Before our date he asked if I was the slutty one. Was I supposed to say yes? Pressed bodies fully clothed, when all I asked to do was talk. He spoke in imperatives, talk then, toilet tears, cards from his girlfriend. I was his girlfriend and he never told his mum, while he handcuffed me in plastic and I struggled to break free. Told me to take off my clothes, so I polka dot dressed the floor; on bed in bra and cotton knickers asked me if I had any self respect. I thought this was foreplay, not that I wanted it, waited for him drunk on wine and he came after work, came all apologies and after years built up like walls we'd finally knocked down, I wouldn't have cared, but he tried to tell me that he would lose respect for me. And, well, if that were true, then more fool you. I was true. True as the words I say, because we need more of it. And I will not apologise to you for believing the words and misplaced musical notes wrapped round your neck. I will not say sorry for meeting someone new after repeated clichés down phone-‐lines and we both knew it wasn't love. And I cannot admit I'm crazy for knocking on your door just to know where I stand. And I will not regret the tears I cried, will not judge myself for being young and naive and self-‐medicated. Because I respected myself more than the boys I chose, didn't think slut was derogatory until it was aimed at me. It was they who doused my body in shame. The only apologies to myself, for the mistakes I made, for the unlatching.
The Ode Not Taken Antosh Wojcik I didn’t write an ode to the odour of the guy next to me in Chemistry. He stank. It’s enough. I didn’t write an ode to the colour that’s no longer on my walls. I didn’t write an ode to the postman’s package corpse. I didn’t write an ode to the biscuits I ate while Breaking News told me everything was on fire. I didn’t write an ode to the naked guy zombie’d outside the window. I made him a toastie. I didn’t write an ode to the summer I slept through. I didn’t write an ode to the ode seminar because I missed it.
The Ode Not Taken Rochelle Sampy When did we decide to reward reality TV? When did intelligence matter less than the latest tempting thong? When was it cooler to smoke yourself to death than converse fluently in French? I wasn’t expecting a global gathering to welcome me into Alice’s new wonderland. Dad said that you would all be polite, understanding of my differences, supportive of my heritage. But I felt like a porcupine in a bathtub full of hairdryers. My voice shocked out of my system and replaced with an identical spoken drone, I hid under charity-‐bought jumpers and patchy jeans, but my invisibility was never meant to be, was never my strong point. You laughed at me when I did well, sniggered when I didn’t, didn’t see that maybe I was stronger than that, that one day I might be more powerful than you, you stuck in a job that you hate wishing you could have done better, better so that you could leave your own legacy after you die. So I want to ask whether it was worth it to make me cry under my pillow, whether you felt bigger when you whispered hate in another’s ear, whether you wish you could tell your child to be a nice person without feeling guilty, guilty because you were never part of that: that laughing, that taunting, that hate. Hate for someone just so they wouldn’t tease you, you, who preferred to be popular than proud, proud that you can live in the world where diversity is treasured not trashed.
A Series of Fortunate Laments Rose Swainston I lit a campfire, let it numb my head. Scissor’d off contempt’s overpriced haircut, wwept away the unkempt. Swilling my fear round empty beer bottles, I drank oblivion. Gave up home and friend addictions, pronounced myself dead. Held selfish in my thighs; romance vanishing between light switches. I gave the weight of my shoulders to those that seek and earn it. Chose altruism, became alternate, dive bombed into new articulate voices and lost my head in Aldgate. Now I speak till it stops being strange, catch my breath in umbrellas. Do anything to forget you. Tears charged by your face. I let new currents trace the worry lines you once erased, as we lay blowing bubblegum on once never ending Sundays.