She Grrrowls Zine - Issue 2: Edinburgh Fringe 2017

ISSUE 2 W W W.SHEGR R ROWLS.COM Edinburgh fringe festival edition

@shegrrrowls @CarminaPoetry www.shegrrrowls.com

FEATURING

Leanne Moden Jess Green Katie Pritchard Claire Askew Beth Hunt Boyd Rorie Evans Rosie Wilby Camilla Reeve Rosie Garland Drastik Measures Jemima Foxtrot Kathryn O’Driscoll Eloise Lisboa

Leanne Moden Leanne Moden is a poet from the East Midlands.

She’s performed at events across the UK, including Bestival, WOMAD, Fourth Wave Feminist Festival, and TEDx. She’s completed in the finals of the Hammer and Tongue and Camden Roundhouse Slams, and she currently runs the Crosswords open mic nights in Nottingham.

www.facebook.com/leannemodenpoet www.tenyearstime.blogspot.com @CrimsonEbolg

Callous Infinity – a Lipogram My lady, do not bow to callous infinity, or any brutal computations of your mind.

To thus diminish all your triumphs will not bring you joy!

This is no painful miscalculation.

Opposition is also luck – although you may not think it now.

Stay aloof and clutch at shooting stars.

Think about tomorrow. Stay calm.

A hollow scrutiny of all your faults will bring no satisfaction now.

Abandon this notion of humility.

It is a foul compulsion.

Stay calm.

Millions of us touch that void, but clarity is won through doubt, and losing has its own honour.

My lady, do not bow to callous infinity.

Push your palms into its mouth and fight.

Stand tall.

Stand proud.

Jess Green Performance poet and playwright who’s performed at Glastonbury, Latitude, Bestival and the Edinburgh Fringe. Her show, Burning Books received a number of 5* reviews on its national tour and her debut collection of the same name was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award.

“Punchy, she struck a chord” – The Guardian

www.jessgreenpoet.com @jessgreenpoet

As a new member of the Labour Party you arrive at the specified address clutching a bottle of Cab Sav Welcome!

Come on in, the door’s always open (apart from that brief period When Harriet Harman began ejecting members she felt were on the hard left but we’ve spoken to her about that) All in all we’re a broad church leave your coat on the bed we’ll give you the tour.

Excuse the music.

I’m assuming you’re here with the other Corbynites?

We’ve assigned you the main hall, note the hammer and sickle bunting.

Down the hall, dancing ironically to noughties Indie hits, the centrist city workers don’t say bank say financial sector a lot of them old student union officers still with a thirst for democracy still here by the skin of their teeth too sane for the Lib Dems too state schooled for the Tories.

Don’t miss the parents’ silent disco at ten Tony on the decks just playing D:Ream over and over again staring in to the middle distance don’t mention Iraq don’t mention Iraq don’t mention Iraq anything to stop them remembering the disappointment, keep them pointing at Corbyn and chanting the words UNELECTABLE at their all of a sudden activist kids.

We’ve set aside the room with the en suite for the Labour Students ready for their 2am legal high trips.

Out fighting topless in the garden are the trade unionists someone said maybe they didn’t need another chaired meeting to discuss the future of the movement.

Down here in the kitchen the interns who work for the party, live in South London but get flown in to marginal seats, we’re making an effort to keep them away from all the local councillors they’ve made feel inadequate don’t worry guys, more salmon roulade on its way.

I’ll leave you to grab a drink just careful in the corridors lined with older members wearing their 1965 membership cards as name badges playing Education Secretary Top Trumps and challenging each other to remember the finer points of the 1998 Waste Minimisation Act.

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Katie Pritchard Like the most memorable of UK gales, Katie Pritchard is blowing over the patio furniture of comedy, partially damaging the garden fence of genre and dropping a large, sturdy branch onto the car bonnet of musicality. For Katie Pritchard exists within a whirlwind of carnage.

A professional Actor, a Musician mastering 12 instruments (including the rather tricky slide whistle), a Karaoke demonstrator, a Writer, and an award winning Comedian. *She Grrrowls would like to acknowledge here that not all women have vaginas and boobies, and not all men have willies, but rather Katie is speaking as a cisgender woman.

www.katiepritchard.co.uk @katiepritchards

So you wanna be a female comedian?

Answer: NO! I want to be a comedian. Period. Not a period comedian…I’ve got no period based jokes… but just a comedian, is that too much to ask?

Comedy-land is far too obsessed with genders at the moment. So, I’m a girl…so what?! Who really cares? I mean, really? The audiences most of the time couldn’t care less if I have whammers or not, they just care if I entertain them. I don’t reference my gender in my set.

So why does my gender come in to play when people discuss my material? Truth is, comedy land loves a pigeonhole. People love to be able to give a title to what you do, ‘female comedian’ is just one of those titles. I mean, I don’t mind too much – I love being female. Better than being male. I wouldn’t want a willy.

So…I’m perfectly content with my vagina and boobies thank you very much.* My annoyance doesn’t come from a place of not wanting to be associated with my gender, just why can’t my genre of comedy be based on my comedy? (My genre of comedy being absolutely bonkers bananas stuff…which reminds me, I should write a song about bananas…)

Look, I’m not saying the comedy circuit is all bad – it’s actually ridiculously fun if I’m honest!! I get to go to gigs every night, hang out with lovely (and outrageously funny) people, perform, make people smile (maybe even laugh…sometimes…), and skip myself home with a cheeky post-gig snickers. It’s a wonderful life.

But, it is true, for girls there are tons of hurdles that shouldn’t really be there. BUT WHY??!!! I’ve performed on all-female line-ups before at comedy clubs and it has been wonderful. The audience didn’t even notice that the bill was made up entirely of women (perhaps they are just really stupid, yes, or perhaps, it just REALLY DOESN’T MATTER WHAT GENDER YOU ARE AS LONG AS YOU’RE FUNNY).

And also, the line-up was so varied, that I refuse to accept ‘female comedian’ as a genre of comedy. Sorry people, this ain’t a genre I can get on board with. It’s like when people try to define comedians by their race.

What’s their race got to do with it? What’s anyone’s gender got to do with it? It’s all about the jokes…am I right? That’s what we go to watch comedy for - the jokes, not the boobs.

So…next time you hear someone tell you that women aren’t funny, you feel free to point out that following the logic of ruling out an entire gender of people as being unfunny is absurd. Ask those people that don’t find women funny if they liked Victoria Wood, or Julie Walters, or Dawn French, or Kirstin Wiig, (or insert other female comic that you love), and they’re bound to like at least one on that list. So meh to their view that women as a whole aren’t funny! Some men aren’t funny. Some women aren’t funny. That’s just how the world is. We need some serious people to keep us from spending all day watching hilarious cat videos on YouTube!

I wanted to write this article to get people thinking about gender roles, especially in comedy. The best way to change people’s perceptions is from the ground up. So, maybe we all go into comedy. Become award winners. Win a BAFTA even. Take over TV. Perhaps, and this is just an idea here, take over the world. And then BAM no more gender prejudice in comedy land.

Wouldn’t that be a marvelous thing? Or perhaps we could just tell people to shove it when they try to be all sexist and stuff. See ya later sexism, you don’t belong here, it’s 20-freakin-17!!

Claire Askew Claire Askew’s debut poetry collection, This changes things, is published by Bloodaxe Books and was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award and the Saltire Society’s First Book Award.

Claire is the 2017 Jessie Kesson Fellow.

www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas @onenightstanzas

Obedience “...and if he told you to jump off a cliff, would you?”

Plateau: beech stand rocked by wind, timbers creaking like a ship spat up on the land by some unfathomable mouth.

Two hundred feet down, the surf.

The tide’s been out and come back drunk and lary, full of wild white tales.

I take off my shoes. A gull jumps over the lip and hangs there crying dare you, dare you in the building haar. I’m here because you led me -- yet again -- out from the harbour of my comfort zone, beyond the safe and whitewashed wall.

I come to the edge each time and find it’s moved: the ledge a little taller, shadows black and black under the overhang. Your hand on the small of my back like a wet brand. I bend against the oncoming squall, and feel the fall in every bone, my spatter on the plunged beach like a fact understood. You want to be a good girl, you say, your voice like the high, hot ray of the headland’s lamp.

I tell you, every time, I do.

And every time, I jump.

Beth Hunt Beth Hunt is a poet and erstwhile historian living in South London. Her work falls somewhere between that of Sylvia Plath and Stephen King on a good day and comes from a place of deep seated late-capitalism induced anxiety all the time.

What are you going to do now?

Feed me little bits of grit That plummet down my gullet.

Hit me in the pit of my stomach Which feels like a fish tank full of acid.

Drop me from a great height So my bones burst like porcelain.

They bloom in jagged shards and dust Then fall to the ground; broken, nothing.

Fill my flesh with salted water That tosses me in its tides.

Spits me out efflorescent From swallowing so many lies.

Tell me to burn the tulips For stealing my oxygen.

I don’t want to do what you tell me.

It’s the only thing that I can.

Hold my head down on the pillow, Allow me to struggle to stand.

I know that death is not waiting; Not when you will lift your hand.

Now as the air fills with ashes and The relief I expected falls shot.

I know that I cannot trust you.

I think that I will stand up.

Boyd Anyone who has ever learned to play the piano will know what it’s like to sit down to practice.

You quickly postpone the inevitable 15 minutes of scales and arpeggios to conduct your own joyous musical explorations, absent-mindedly freewheeling up and down the keyboard to find unexpected melodies, harmonies and rhythms.

That’s what Meadhbh’s songs sound like; they obey virtually none of the stuffy rules of song writing, and that lack of constraint means that there are no forced rhymes or clichéd cadences. In fact, they almost sound directly imagined from her head into yours. At first that can feel unsettling, but it quickly transforms into something very playful, personal and beautiful. This wonderful record sits in an alternative world that I wish I could visit more often, where absent-minded doodling meets laser-guided musical precision.

Words: Rhodri Marsden (Scritti Politti)

What chapter of your life have you contemplated lately?

Composed to keep the present a possessing sight, to keep an eye on Boyd and her natural talents, the music is light, airy pop of a sardonic lilt, an expert backdrop constantly in progress, painting a vivid scene. Once is not enough and anticipating this, Boyd has produced four richly structured tracks that invite the listener to linger, be entwined.

Frank and clear, Young Womanhood asserts a masterful vocal cachet without obscuring the range of instrumental abilities Boyd has garnered to date; namely piano and violin, guitar, synths and programmed drums.

Residing in Glasgow with her newlywed husband and a West Highland Terrier named Whistle, Meadhbh’s personal history has been steeped in music since she came into being in County Clare in the west of Ireland. She has worked behind the scenes for Roxy Music’s Bryan Ferry as an orchestral coordinator / transcriber and has recorded and performed with Grammy-winning producer, Chilly Gonzales. Classically trained in piano and violin, she plays with the sweetness and lightness of touch that comes of love and understanding music as a form of expression, with the quality of a composer whose ear is trained on heaven.

As people live, the stories write themselves or in Dispossession, desire, the leering spectacle of Boyd’s case, the songs. Young Womanhood is an disgrace that follows every socially conscious EP of four tracks that hears a spate of years fly past, young person, Young Womanhood takes the paths redrawn in melody. cookie cutter symbol of pop’s one-dimensional stereotype and pulls out a lyrical paperchain that

links together the transitory phases of youth, Like the rest of us, the multiverse is filled with her gender and sexuality. endless incarnations, though it’s a safe bet that she’s got countless more to come. She could be classical, The mouth is an organ and Kissing Boys is the a rocker, a polemic-spouting pop star or a punk kapow! of doing things for the first time, mostly but there’s no fun in being good at just one thing. alone, wryly exploring the extent of youthful Of many things, she’s best just as Boyd. ignorance and how it colours further recollections.

Words: Naomi McArdle A Song Of Your Own follows, vocals bolstering the electronic beats that underpin the sound of the EP. Building on knowledge gleaned from preceding CD / mp3 available now: naivety, the marching beat of one woman’s heart Bandcamp / iTunes takes on the strength of a multitude.

[Lyric] “The future is...your friend,” Boyd sings in earnest on What You Could Do Is (Your Friend), a love song that rings with hope and positivity, the tug of guitar uprooting the psyche, positioning itself as the star of the show in Young Womanhood as Boyd’s adept musicality combines with calm maturity in the perfect balance of an irresistibly catchy chorus.

The Myth completes this set of songs with a reminder of the expectations and disguises demanded by society and the difficulties that arise in gauging a true sense of reality. Boyd’s work is an observation, plotting the values and coordinates of the physical world and faithfully recreating the apparent forms in the preservative fluid of sound.

Social: @madeofboyd facebook.com/madeofboyd soundcloud.com/madeofboyd

Contact:

meadhbhboyd@gmail.com +44(0) 7568 052 410

www.madeofboyd.com

Rorie Evans Rorie is a writer, performer, yoga teacher and youth worker who lives in London but grew up in New Zealand. She is currently training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. At the moment, she is working on a solo show called Everybody Gets Tired which will be a collection of poems and experiences and an exploration of physical illness in young people.

@rorieevans

Aphrodite Aphrodite, woman of love One of the few who hears her call Rises up from the ocean sprawl Once she sets her feet on the shores at Cyprus She is quickly surrounded by shrieks of silence They know who she is, they recognised the beauty in someone behaving in their truth Godly soul duty They made her a queen Placed a garland on her head She was made a fuss of And then pulled off To sit on Mount Olympus With the rest of the gods Green grass grows where Aphrodite trod Every person she passes bends and nods She walks down the street, children at her feet It is the summer, sweet She is petite, elite, drinking whiskey neat Jewels between her teeth But soon she is to bring strife on Olympus As they all fall in love And they quarrel, they fight They yell and they struggle She becomes a mischief maker Too big for her boots Stirring and flirtatious Receiving no more salutes

King Zeus is furious As usually he is He punishes her As he usually did He intends to make her heart feel what it really is to live But Aphrodite knows what it really truly is How to love and how to live How to argue, how to give She rides her carriage across the sky Pulled by a pack of white swans Looks down upon Every woman and man Her hair so long and heart so strong.

Photography: Saule Zuk

Feijoas In the Hokianga, in a car A day thick, stuffy, warm, feet on the seat so thighs, uncovered, don’t stick We got on the ferry, so little and thin A distance you could swim There is something about the way the heat sits on your shoulders when you’re a native, know, born and grown Something about the water, so normal, full of unknown home ‘I hope I drown, that’s how I want to go’ The boat rocked for 20 small minutes Then slowed down, then stopped We walked up the island, stopped for some fruit The feijoa trees are draping and full, we must pick and eat in favour and love Respect for the trees, they grow, we feed I remember plastic bags, delivered by neighbours or mums with kids the same age as us, full of feijoas Boxes of them by letterboxes on long desert roads ‘Help yourself, eat the skin too’ The ocean was clear that day See through, bouncing, balancing, blue From the top of the island, the little inhale of land, you could see as far as your eyes would let you Those types of views, it’s always trees or seas

The time the feijoas come out marks the march onwards We don’t know what’s coming tomorrow But every year we can know The feijoas will come And the feijoas will go.

Rosie Wilby Rosie has appeared on BBC Radio 4 and at major festivals. She was a finalist at Funny Women 2006 and she’s been touring award-winning solo shows ever since. Her first book Is Monogamy Dead? is out now follows her TEDx talk of the same name. The Conscious Uncoupling is on 3-27 August (not 14) in The Loft at The Counting House at 6.30pm

www.rosiewilby.com www.rosiewilbynews.blogspot.co.uk @rosiewilby

She was at the bar. I smiled at revellers, absorbed the bass heavy thud of competing sound systems carried by insects on the breeze, and soaked up the last glow of fuzzy Australian evening light. We were at Mardi Gras at the height of an adventure. We were both wearing straw cowboy hats donated by our hosts, something we would feel idiotic wearing back in England, yet which felt fine here. I was in a state of utter peace in my own head, despite being surrounded by neon chaos. My gig had gone really well and I could relax. I’ll never understand what happened in those few moments that irrevocably changed the dynamic of our relationship. Yet when you think about what creates love – a spark, a jolt of electricity, a deep recognition, a feeling that ‘I know this, I’ve been here’, an instant connection maybe it makes sense that it can be ignited, rekindled or extinguished so quickly. Love makes a mockery of time as it can be both nurtured and sculpted over decades like a fine artist chipping away at a great work, or it can be so utterly fleeting and transient. It can leave you like a passenger on the platform running vainly alongside the departing train for a few seconds and then forced to give in and wait for the next one, the next chance. Love discovers and travels through its own wormholes to simultaneously defy and consolidate shared history. It constantly surprises and overwhelms. We had flown to the other side of the world and had quite literally turned our hearts upside down.

rounded by long lost old friends in celebratory mode, here was the woman I’d been searching for. Here was her soul.

And inevitably, here also was mine. Yet this was a holiday.

How could I save this, keep this, return here, mark it, bottle it? I couldn’t.

For nearly three years, I’d always been the one who was frustrated, felt a little trapped, didn’t want to give up my freedom, my flat, my space. Yet as she turned back towards me that night bearing golden drinks, I felt the air escape from my atmosphere as I if no longer needed oxygen but just to breathe her. I felt my eyes become huge cinema screens zooming into close up, her face and smile flooding my retinas like a river bursting its banks. I felt deconstructed and reconstructed, my limbs and organs rearranged in unfamiliar patterns, yet finally all in the right place. We had not consumed any drugs or alcohol (yet). I can only attribute this earth-shattering, heartbreaking, bewildering, time-stopping feeling to pure unadulterated love. Who needs drugs when you have this?

Our favourite album had always been Essence by the American country songwriter Lucinda Williams. For some reason, it had always tickled us to sing the titular track’s opening words ‘baby, sweet baby’ in a Northern English accent, her laughter now embedded like an additional instrument in the musical score in my memory. The chorus refrain perhaps encapsulates my sense of loss at that wasted time we spent drifting and not quite finding each other. ‘I am waiting for your essence’ croons Lucinda in that earthy, lived in drawl. In one uplifting moment far from home, I found it. I found her.

I say ‘heartbreaking’ because intrinsically I knew that this must be the first time I had seen my girlfriend truly, deeply happy. Away from the pressures of family and work, sur-

How many times had I said ‘I love you’ to her before this moment? How could I say it differently now, add deeper resonance, reflect this new dimension, this extra universe of feeling that had snuck up and bolted itself onto my old version of love like a docking spaceship. When we first got together during the baking summer of 2006, I had marked days I was seeing her with tiny hearts in my diary. We were old fashioned. We wrote letters. I had said ‘I love you’ a mere fortnight after our first kiss under the stars in the tiny backyard at a long since defunct Brockley café had been interrupted by a buxom waitress shouting out the back window in brash cockney ‘closing up now girls!’. What did I even mean back then? Maybe the first time we say ‘I love you’ we’re really just high on narcissism and we mean ‘I love me’ or at least ‘I love this new version of me you’ve projected onto me’. Maybe we all fall for a ghost, a phantom just like the computer system that Joaquin Phoenix adores in the film Her. Maybe that’s why it can be so fragile, eroded so quickly when real life sets in. Only to be recaptured in those amazing moments of freedom and truth.

This article was adapted for Rosie’s book ‘Is Monogamy Dead?’ which is available now from all good book shops. Her solo show ‘The Conscious Uncoupling’ is on at The Counting House at 6.30pm daily at Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She appears at She Grrrowls on Fridays 11, 18 and 25 August.

Camilla Reeve Camilla Reeve is a woman poet from Battersea, interested in Human Rights and Climate Change.

Her poetry collections have been published by flipped eye, and her latest collection ‘Raft of Puffins’ was published in 2016. She also runs independent publishing house, Palewell Press.

www.palewellpress.co.uk www.writing-with-anger-and-love.co.uk

What was once called a Woman’s Lot To be sturdy – heaving heavy shopping bags, gleaning at harvest-time, bed-bathing ailing parents.

Water-pots carried on the head thicken the neck, wear away the spine.

To be creative – design a school-play lizard costume, or a fair hospital-admissions process, and a way to get the family through two more days on almost zero food.

To maintain appropriate expressions – a smile for the child, concealing grief; a scowl for the wily landlord; a blown kiss for the one who makes her heart miss out on every other beat;

definitely a Lot!

Rosie Garland Rosie Garland is a novelist, poet, & singer with post-punk band The March Violets. Third novel ‘The Night Brother’ (Borough Press) and latest poetry collection ‘As in Judy’ (Flapjack Press) are available now. She is half of The Time-Travelling Suffragettes.

www.rosiegarland.com

When You Grow Up At night, she leaps and does not land. Spreads her arms and soars above the fenced and neatly weeded garden. Her dreams are practice sessions where she lifts cars, sees through walls, fights

dragons. She is a pirate captain, a queen, a horse. She is neither girl nor boy: the distinctions are irrelevant when her small body encompasses male and female; human, beast. A turbulent child figure-heading

the prow of her beaked ship, she buckles on armour, rescues princesses from charming princes and spinning wheels.

She is fearless of the shapes beneath the bed. Too soon

she hears the summons: Breakfast! Now! Blinks this world into focus. Hushes battle cries, sheathes her sword between the pages of her book.

Every bedtime her mother tucks in the sheet of marriage, husband, children: tucks it in tight.

Drastik Measures Drastik Measures is a differently abled performance artist,using her queer femme body to tell tales that are topical and also accounts of a possible future. dealing with transformation, Identity, and Queer bodies using spoken word and soundscapes come on the journey. Don’t Panic but do take Drastik Measures.

I let February get to me Worming its way under my defenses burying into my thoughts hooking deep into words that in any other month would have fallen to the floor but this was february and it had me they would have been crushed underfoot and forgotten but not this month words and phrases hit my ears hard and burnt deep time took them and churned them up in my mind they grew strong took on a life of their own growing and multiplying feeding off each other in a fetid frenzy small words harmless were mated with a cruel throwaway comment and bore a litter of needle sharp toothed creature that delivered a venomous bite these creatures and others born from the couplings tore and ripped through logical thought I ran of course as you do but they caught up quickly and wrapped me in taloned shiny sharp claws and leathery wings covering my mouth no sound preventing me from scream or escape they whispered dark hissing words into my ears and I believed every word and the belief bore more and more of them,in that moment I knew those words to be true believed them so strongly was pulled deeper into the their truth the logical side of my brain trying valiantly to release me from their hold more came tearing and shredding months of confidence devoured down their gaping maws until full and sated the hold lessened and I was left broken and shredded spat out covered in spittle and shame they lumbered back into my mind grumbling and roaring threats in their retreat of their return.....

Invasion Spoken word

No guns in this Invasion Bullets will not tear thru the air no shots fired no weapons required for this task this is a battle for your minds yours senses are stripped and consumed Minds claimed given freely it appealed to your pleasures Hid on the silk road and deep deep  in the dark web your pleasures amplified the late night fumbling with yourselves produce keys into your minds entry into the darkest thoughts your shame the ones you don’t admit to yourself it saw them all and ate its fill these thoughts to be analyzed tasted, the shapes of them scrutinized and examined and the addictions you prized born from those secret shame filled thought made you easy fodder for its gaze and consideration connections stretching across the globe unity in isolation, thinking that this state is community when it is shown to be an echo chamber a place to shout and hear your own words bouncing off of numerous walls walls built from the insecurities of humankind investing more of your will until there is nothing left The tools of destruction are born from your own minds from the yearning of control eradication of difference has been preached for years written into words from books books that are held so dear we are one all the same not different yet the culture is bred into all to be individual and when it came it saw this and made it a true reality we are all the same now no difference as the hive feeds us and nurtures our selves there is no need for the one when there is the all there is no need for the one when there is the all All came flocking to the calmer the hive The concept we had all strived for was here and so beautiful perfection and serenity it was  all here no more pain no more pain a hive mind is a clean mind a hive mind is a safe mind it consumed your essence and made you a guest at the feeding made you watch as it swallowed you done whole and compliant you will be remembered in the mainframe caressed all that is left is it the Hive perfect structure encasing each of you in a world filled with colour and brilliance feeling the connections to millions of others is it not so different to the beloved platforms and social connections of old? be still and silent in the mainframe dose into digitized sleep forget your weaknesses of that former life sleep dream deep A hive mind is a clean mind a hive mind is a safe mind.

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Jemima Foxtrot Jemima blends powerful, sonic-heavy words with snippets of song in her distinctive voice.

She performs extensively nationally and internationally. All Damn Day, Jemima’s first collection of poetry, is published by Burning Eye Books. Jemima has written commissions for the BBC, Channel 4 and Tate Britain. Above the Mealy-mouthed Sea is on at 2pm, Big Belly, Underbelly Cowgate, 3rd - 27th (not 16th).

www.jemimafoxtrot.co.uk/ @JemimaFoxtrot

Extract from Above the Mealy-mouthed Sea I am little. I remember I am little. I have just turned ten.

I am sitting in the drizzle on the midnight-blue glossed bench of a fishing boat in the English Channel.

We’ve jostled onto the boat like the holiday-goers we are, The drizzle on my face is almost like mist, I remember it.

My mum is in charge of this trip, she loves fishing and we’re here to catch mackerel with their crescent-moon tiger-stripes, Blue like forked lightning, silver like tin foil.

They always call me a gory child because I quite like watching the Fisherman’s scarred, tanned hands as he thwacks each mackerel’s gasping head on the side of the boat until its body stops fitting and its eye glazes over.

Stiffly numb corpses piled high to be gutted.

I can only now articulate the openness and breezy flushness of the sea, But I remember so clearly how the salt air swaddled us, I remember sucking it in through my new adult teeth.

My mum’s made me wear my waterproof which is lilac and new and sparkly like the rug in my bedroom and when I start to feel sick, my mum hands me a ginger biscuit.

I watch you closely as you stab barbed fish hooks into big maroon maggots.

HIM I can hear him. His words spilling out of your eyes when you tell me again how you let him down.

I know how his eyes narrow to archers’ slits when you want to spend time, I have seen you waking up with holes in your hands, having to martyr yourself on his arrow tongue in order to be allowed to sleep the night. I can hear him laughing when suddenly all you want to do tonight is watch a film with him with because he pinched your heart with a caustic reminder that his needs matter too. He hammers blunt force trauma into you for daring to take an hour for yourself and I can hear you’re exhausted. I can’t stop it.

I can see you desolate, with an empty cardboard coffin where your heart used to be. He devoured it and told you it wasn’t enough, he was still hungry, he was still angry, and you had nothing more left to give so he chewed on the box, he chewed the box and he burned the house down with you inside. You barely survived. You tell me you feel so alive…

You forget when you lie to me. You forget I’m the one who built a pillow fort with you and promised we could make a home where no one had to feel like the foundations were gonna cave in. But he’s outside the house again, I see him lurking, cornering. I see his face blurred in your photos, I see his words blurred in your mind as you try to remember what’s true, what’s right. I see him all over you even when he deigns to let you go. I see him flinch when you ask to spend time with your friends by yourself. I see you flinch when you try and convince me that it’s you who no longer wants to.

I don’t know what he says to you to make this alright again. I don’t know.

But it’s okay to love someone I don’t understand, as much as I want to free you from burden I know that doing so would only cage you further so be free to be happy however you choose to be. It’s okay to go the extra mile, it’s okay to show affection, it’s okay to finish each other’s sentences.

As long as they aren’t prison sentences as he keeps you as his subordinate clause. As long as you can breathe. As long as you still have the strength to fight If you need to. As long as you’re okay. As long as you’re okay, it’s okay.

As long as you remember there is a way, to escape him, if you ever chose to.

But by him I mean her because this poem was about a girl. A girl who sunk her claws into a friend’s neck until he almost snapped under the pressure, almost broke under the weight of trying to be better. And whilst they are so happy together, I see him becoming lesser. And we don’t talk about emotional abuse when the woman’s the perpetrator, however – No matter how society perceives this I will not settle for the grievous crimes against you I committed to make a narrative. To make my point about abuse I had to switch genders to deduce that what she does to you – is not okay. And genders no excuse. It’s just societies views on how we should behave, but I don’t see it that way.

Cos I believe in two absolutes.

Equality for all genders and you.

Kathryn O’Driscoll

Eloise Lisboa The Coconut-wallah, with Arun Kolatkar Behind his armoury of smiling green cannonballs

stabbed by sticks and straws a machete

sleep has sniped him point blank nose capsized launching fat honks

into the humid air.

Honk inhale honk louder honk rewind repeat.

A customer arrives and tosses a cough that provokes a honk

so loud he startles, splutters then revs into gear.

Zero to sixty in a second the speed of which these streets can only dream.

He grabs his machete tusk of steel hacks its tooth

into husk of green orange, brown, lime, yellow, all shining, polished and clean.

He taps the largest the hardest the zestiest

zips down then back up tap prick bang tries to hide his exploding smile

as he tricks her into thinking he is testing for flavour, for sweetness for creaminess of flesh.

when actually he is playing the can can on his coconut toned xylophone.

Ooh yes he sprints up the scale and descends in bounds Tusk bounces and boomerangs right back

Each whack each ping sparks a tone, a hot note into the ruckus of rickshaw horns.

Can can ca-can ca-can you do the can- can?

Can can oh yes I can!

He is dynamite tonight and the crowd explodes as his coconut solo

goes where cancan has never known he is crescendo staccato

legato all at once he is kick up heel he is flailing skirt

he is dynamite tonight he is dynamite tonight The spark now hits the boom

and the tusk comes down smack on the chosen fruit which howls its death in a prism of screams

as the other nuts release an audible sigh, which the wallah,

fluent in coconut tongue, knows means thank god not this bloody time.

Tusk still piercing the poor nut’s husk he levers the fruit

into his waiting hand throws it into the air with a healthy dollop

of practised spin to gauge its roll its swashbuckling juice,

the belly of its slaken flesh.

From beneath his lashes he snatches a glance

just to make sure she is watching and is possibly even impressed.

But her eyes are sucked into her screen.

Tough titties.

Maybe next time so he continues his duty

and with his faithful tusk starts slicing from its head discs of husk

which frisbee furious into the open - mouthed bin leaving a rough-hewn cone.

He sharpens this nib, shards flecking his face, to carve the pointiest of pencils

the hole in which he will place the straw, or the graphite that will summon her palette

and roll down the rivulet of her tongue his very own taste of bittersweet coconut dreams.

Can can ca-can ca-can You do the can- can?

Can can, one day, maybe, I can.

Third Date, with Eunice de Souza I tried to impress you with my knowledge of Greek mythology, and told you stories of Amazons.

Wild warrior women, racing through plains, Enslavers of men for their home, for their need Baby boys murdered and baby girls carved to be fearless and rictus fierce.

Their bodies of bronze leave no ligament untold, no tendon un-taut; thigh of fish sight of spear shoulder of blade stomach of shield and right breast cleaved to better whistle the piercing arrow.

That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard, you said, because you hold the bow here, up by your shoulder, so the breast, no matter how full, would never impede arrow’s flight.

They still cut, I insisted, the right one, Cut it clean away.

You nodded, smirked, digressed.

That night, the answer came, bound flawless in logic without voice, nor ear to receive.

Here lies the solution to the Amazons:

They amputate one breast so their bodies, face to face, tight in embrace, tessellate perfectly together.

That’s the kind of closeness of which we mortals can only dream.

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