Nostalgia: TWSS Issue 22

Contents Editors' Note 2 I’ll buy New Shoes 3 Kate NuttalL No Other 5 Shannon Horace Nostalgia 6 Phoebe Trott Lessons 7 Cerys Gadsden Shower Drain Dreams 8 Yazmin Sadik Sarcophagus 9 Saskia Kirkegaard The Air’s Conditions 11 Yazmin Sadik The Rooftop 12 Shannon Horace A Storm by Any Other Name 13 Juno Ormonde

EDITORS’ NOTE The theme for this issue STARTED WITH the 21/22 committee as they were reflecting on their time at university.

As many of us approach the last term of our final year, the 23/24 committee are proud to be able to share the finished project with you.

We’ve collected the poems that were submitted by students and now alumni alike. They draw on memories of childhood and experiences at university.

Learning about love and relationships, our sexualities and our sense of identity.

WITH LINE DRAWINGS BY ELLA GRIFFITH AND SASKIA KIRKEGAARD, AND PHOTOGRAPHY BY FLORA GUILDFORD, tHIS SCRAPBOOK-STYLE ISSUE CELEBRATEs the beauty of nostalgia AND the comfort of remembering in life’s liminal moments.

The issue reminds us of nostalgia’s power to evolve as we do, to make us long for a time we have moved on from. nostalgia is to be revered.

We’d like to thank our contributors for their patience and for sharing such wonderful work with us. We hope you enjoy issue 22.

LAUREN, SUSIE, AND THE TEAM AT That’s What She Said Magazine x

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I’ll Buy New Shoes When I get the money from some menial job burning my fingers on metal pots inner arms aching from lifting some heavy box I’ll buy myself new shoes I’m the same girl as before who cried silently to sleep and yelled and screamed to be heard from day dot now avoiding puddles so the water doesn’t leak into my split sole I’ll buy myself new shoes because childhood faded in an instant some years or months ago once everything meant nothing a leaf was a puzzle piece the early morning was for watching TV Now everything means everything early mornings mean I am alive a leaf is an inconvenience a puddle is a threat money is the root of all evil, etc, etc, and I need new shoes My family are down the phone now hidden in a little screen the shoes are down to me to carry my remaining youth across the city day after day until I need another pair

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But let’s try not to think that far ahead early mornings mean I am alive now I have to support myself I’ll buy myself new shoes Kate Nuttall

no other

cocaine nights, the city sights, persian rugs and all the drugs golden grins and endless sins, toilet fucks and feeding ducks.

watching clouds, sweaty crowds, soft skin, a trip to berlin great head, take me to bed, captain’s rum, gums turning numb.

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Shannon Horace

telegraph hill, i’ll get the bill, tongues intertwining and energy aligning, cigarette smoke, being broke, seventies style, stay for a while?

NOSTALGIA the hiss of the velvet steam: it is hot salt; ocean perfume. it is throbbing with every palm-held bugbreath; it is the air of marble-vast men and their lies.

listening, like growling, is sacred; self-need heals all poisons; and we are born with a bark in our eyes. remember coffee?

remember caramel dazzle, and ice-red sky? you are embedded in the millisecond: haunted, fevered embracer. there is brilliant cake; a grass-coloured cup; a sister fishing for joy.

blush blue; bleed desire. our soft hearthome is always liquid steel; you wet-lipped and wild fool, porcelain and glass and the dog-hot fire of your smoke belly, you came to me concrete and away.

Phoebe Trott 6

Lessons He loved film but hated music.

He would tease me, sometimes too much.

He didn’t know I even I existed.

But he did, yet neither of us persisted.

She was too shy and failed to reply.

He was dressed by his mum yet paid for my cake.

Him: sweet but not a very good date.

Him: wrong person, right time.

Her, the heterosexual queen of rejection.

He was rogue but held strong affection.

He liked me lots but not really himself.

Each love offers a test: will they go, will they stay?

He didn’t really like me but loved himself

But love is a risk, it’s best to do it anyway.

Cerys Gadsden

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Shower Drain Dreams My shower drain is blocked, everything we left in there stays swimming in that room and having caught my dreams, still wet in the canal of your ear, you’ve drained my violent meanings.

In yours babies start surfacing, maybe getting in through your mouth where you’d opened it before to coo.

As I sleep your kicked-in shoes rise with gaping tongues of hard sole, like puckering fish they come to kiss and wake me.

Yazmin Sadik

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Sarcophagus I cried the first time I visited Room 63 in the British museum.

They lay in rows, or shelved on planks, trapped on their backs, staring at endless cold ceiling or nothing at all.

Swaddled in cloth and eternally uncomfortable, their organs kept neatly labelled in jars they thought would never see sunlight, they’re peered at by those annual foreign millions.

Their shabtis lie beside them discarded like a tired child’s toys, humiliated by the constant glass of total failure.

That dusty gold of long-dead kings is trapped under Salt and Carter’s clumsy fingernails, them who always sleep in their private dark earth.

They are allowed to have eternity.

Osiris stays patient, but the pharaohs only met me and my mother that day, feet hurting from our own hubristic steps.

Who were we, to weigh their hearts?

Saskia Kirkegaard

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Art by OrlÀ brachi

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The Air’s Conditions Here I fill more space, feeling grander than these houses I know no attachments too.

Attacking, sofa leather cracking the peaceful air’s conditions.

These temporary bodies are wearing pictures of me in their pockets, I don’t ask from which room they’re stolen from.

The bookshelf’s rock-face kiss the only comfort in them now.

Even my mother, having to pull herself away from the clock to greet me, only dances with these wallattached-hands as a goodbye finale.

Can’t help but perform a last hissing fit A climax for the stages conflict.

Yazmin Sadik

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the rooftop

I start my day with my bare feet dangling over the edge of the world. in my hands sit a cup of coffee and a cigarette. his thigh touches my thigh. on my neck, a bruise of lust; his too. behind us, in the loft, the record player sings with Bobby Womack as a layer of bluesy harmonica infuses the room. but outside, though, the cars rumble, the clouds soar westward, the commuters commute, and my bare feet are tickled by the breeze, about fourteen degrees.

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A Storm by Any Other Name On a night so still the air settles on the floor Until it came and swept open the door.

With memories of a time I lived and lost.

So I got out of bed and watched the storm.

In a place I call home, Where I exist alone And stitch my desires into the thread Of a tapestry laid across my bed.

My mosaic mind lights up in pieces Drifting my thoughts, it softly reaches For the memory of peach sweet brine That flickers on the tip of my tongue Like a name I haven't spoken in so long.

When the dawn broke on my last day I followed the horizon and still now The ocean I crossed boils in the heat Of the anger left between you and me.

No matter where I go I remember where I took my first steps There are things a child never forgets.

I fade to a life where I am held in sunlight And hitched my breathe around sea scented air My thoughts run as wild I did back then, When I came back your voice cracked around my name And our roots rotted under my proud gaze. How dare you make me miss you just to walk away.

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ART BY ORLÀ BRACHI

I shatter in place The storm spread to my face My mind sharper than ever before You can’t tell me to shut up When I'm screaming on the floor Cold fire melting my skin Watch me yell for evermore.

Banish my mind through my throat As I lie across the lies I told.

That I would be free if I left hallowed ground That I could find peace in the fucking profound.

That I could run without you by my side.

Live a life and never pray to die.

I breathe through broken window pain Gather my thoughts into my brain, And listen to the beating rain; That sound that always stays the same.

I slowly feel the warmth again As blankets cover my shivering frame, On a night so still it broke through time Before settling down to close my eyes.

Juno Ormonde 14

CONTRIBUTORS

Phoebe Trott Kate Nuttall Cerys Gadsden Shannon Horace Yazmin Sadik Saskia Kirkegaard Juno Ormonde Ella Griffith Flora Guildford orlÀ brachi

CURATORS

Lauren Power susie long Ella Griffith

TWSS 22/23 Millie Pick Caitlin O’Donoghue Saskia Kirkegaard Susie Long Nancy Taylor Charlotte Carpenter Esme Ingleby Cerys Gadsden Shannon Horace Lauren Power El Davies

TWSS 23/24 Susie Long Yazmin Sadik Rae FErner-Rose Tara Bell Ruby Smith Ella Griffith Lauren Power Esme Ingleby Saskia Kirkegaard Emily Jordan Anna Thompson Flora Tomlinson Ella Wilson-Coates