Writers' Bloc Journal 25: RHYTHMS

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WRITERS’ BLOC JOURNAL 25 RHYTHMS


Welcome to RHYTHMS, the twenty-fifth issue of the Writers’ Bloc Journal!

Twenty-five issues may sound like a small milestone, but it’s taken the hard work and enthusiasm of many different people to be reached. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the Journal this year - whether through sending in submissions, helping with printing, or simply picking up a copy and having a read. (Thanks especially to Charlotte Nicholls for this issue’s wonderful cover design!) RHYTHMS features eleven poems by Writers’ Bloc members, and is coming to you shortly after our AGM. I’m excited to say that this issue’s opening piece - ‘The Pink Orchestra’ - is by Writers’ Bloc’s next President, Emma Thompson. This year Emma has been in charge of Online Communications, and has done a great job promoting the Journal as well as submitting some wonderful pieces. I know we will be in safe hands with her leading the society! Meanwhile, the closing poem is by our outgoing President, Alex Hamzij. Alex has seen Writers’ Bloc grow tremendously this year and has been very generous with his time regarding the Journal - without his help the Guild would probably be overflowing with back-to-front, misprinted booklets. It will definitely be sad to see him go, but I’m sure he’ll stay in touch and we’ll be seeing a lot more of his writing in the future (not just in the Journal!). I’m also pleased that RHYTHMS features work by our new Literary Events Officer, Jonah Corren, whose infectious enthusiasm for poetry is evident in his writing as well as in person. 2


The brilliantly surreal ‘Chopping down trees is fine…’ is by Anne Gill, our outgoing Secretary, who will sadly be graduating this year. Anne’s organisational skills, creative minute-keeping and terrible puns have made a lasting impact on the society, and she is definitely a name to watch in the poetry scene. Shoutouts should also go to Anita Solak (who answered a desperate plea for submissions despite having returned to Australia after completing her year abroad in Birmingham), Chloe Bettles (who has achieved her goal of submitting to every Journal of the year), and to everyone else who has fought the end-of-year fatigue and contributed work to RHYTHMS. Finally, I am pleased to welcome in Sierra Malia Fransen as the next Publications Officer. I know she will do a fantastic job and I can’t wait to see the Journal thrive with her as Editor. Although this is the final Journal of the year, submissions are now open for the Colletti Collection; I would highly recommend all members enter. Have a look at the back cover for more information! For now, I hope you enjoy RHYTHMS.

Editor Hannah Ledlie

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Contents

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The Pink Orchestra / Emma Thompson

Encore for The Man in The Back Row / Chloe Bettles

Earphones / Jonah Corren

Rain / Emily Hana

Twitch / Tom Caffrey

My Fingers Don’t Feel Like Fingers / Liv Franics-Pape

At the salmon factory / Lara Wickenkamp

Chopping down trees is fine… / Anne Gill

CBT / James Thorp

Dwell / Anita Solak

Breaths / Alex Hamzij

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The Pink Orchestra Emma Thompson The Hammersmith and City line

is an unwritten symphony.

It curls itself around my veins

like a friendship bracelet,

sets the tempo

of my metronome heart.

A blue card slides against the play button.

Song begins

with cracking of barriers.

They do not chime in unison--

staccato beats cascading

across a row of turnstiles,

spliced by grumbling of commuters

as someone’s Oyster is voided for entry.

The rhythm takes its shape

in the hollow clack of footsteps

treading border lines

into not-white, not-grey floor tiles.

Keep Left.

The voice from above isn’t needed.

We know the lyrics by heart.

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Baritones and saxophones

wash in with a melody,

punctuated

by irregular chimes of pennies.

A child hits a high note

somewhere in the background.

No one is impressed.

More grumbles.

Crescendos creep along

the whistle-rattle-whoosh

of trains in motion.

Necks crane, eyes to attention

as rails screech beneath momentum.

Doors beep frantically in greeting

(mind the gap) and I step into the chorus of you.

Announcements cut through

haze of displays that plaster your skin.

Providing context:

a way to read the music.

You reverse the start to create your end,

faster this time--people have places to be.

The song stops where it begins,

at the turnstiles,

and my ears mourn the loss,

until the next refrain.

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Encore for The Man in The Back Row Chloe Bettles ‘This town’s well known by nobody.

The only thing that happened here

was when it got found out the plant

dumped a bunch of shit in the water

that turned the frogs gay or somethin’.

Casey Nicholls got dared to drink

a whole glass last spring but he turned

green instead of gay and they pumped

his stomach so good he got cured

of diabetes. They say his mum won

ten grand after that lawsuit, ruined

the local economy that’s what they say,

so next thing you know there ain’t

nothing here but a Tesco Express

and that crappy Loros on mains.

The end of the world as we know it,

all over a glass of bloody water.

Least that’s what they say…

people say a lot of stuff around here.’

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Earphones Jonah Corren something about today's background noise

feels somewhat incomplete

there is something missing from its texture

a music-shaped gap pouring out of the shop-fronts

gushing from the tailpipes

and glaring from the faces of passers by

a gap between my earlobe and my temple

sucking in the wind at a rate only satisfied by one thing

a thing that snatches the quiet from its hiding

surging this sleepy town into new meaning

surging the shops into film-sets,

the cars into planes and the people into moving in time with the music

surging the squares on the pavement

into lighting up like an eighties dance-floor

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Rain Emily Hana earth wrings out the last of its dark days.
 droplets against my window pane.
 a four am symphony.

the morning unwinds itself
 like a spool of copper thread.
 it tangles in my hair
 and pulls me into the garden.

wet grass on bare feet.
 droplets run into the cracks
 of my skin, my pores.

the soft haze of the first
 days of summer,
 as though this morning
 has been dipped in gold
 and hung out to dry.

days will get longer and brighter.
 moods will get lighter.
 you can smell it in the air;
 the fresh afterglow of rain.

you can hear it too; birds gifted
 with rainwater open their throats
 to chant

'i'm alive! i'm alive! i'm alive!’

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Twitch Tom Carey There is a twitch in my eye.

persistent

erratic

aggressive.

I wonder if one day I will be all

twitches.

If my legs will be animated

spasmodically,

if my arms will jerk food

into my mouth,

if my hands will tremble

words across the page.

my heart already seems

to operate like this.

perhaps the rest of me need not

not.

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My Fingers Don’t Feel Like My Fingers Liv Francis-Pape Nostalgia is a fusty,
 heavy-handed, bulging at the britches bastard.
 He grasps at the little houses on
 your lungs,
 sparking up forest fires that span
 miles until you remember the taste
 of the playdough you weren’t meant to eat.
 Hands, on thighs, you weren’t
 expecting. Clay spread, clad, over a
 prepubescent body on the
 Jurassic Coast.
 He’ll lull you into the smog,
 enticing and sickly and delicate and rich and
 temporal. But nothing
 about him is temporal,
 he’s infection and jelly and no
 molecular integrity.
 He’s the rape alarm of dusk, when someone tells you that your philtrum
 is the most attractive thing
 about you,
 he’ll spark back up in the churning chimney
 of your frontal lobe.
 He’ll machete his way
 through that
 time that
 you were called a cunt.
 That time you promised you could go one day
 alone. That vibration of traffic in
 your sternum.
 That lichen clawing through
 your rose-tinted glasses.
 Maybe he’ll tell you that manipulation
 and shame are the oxygen
 you needed to respire. 11


Correction: Need.
 He’s a bastard, he’s all you have,
 he’s a bastard, he’s all you love,
 he’s a bastard.
 Hey now, change is a lie he tells you - you merely modify your inability
 to maintain homeostasis, to maintain solid, in stasis. Being frozen is simpler,
 no algebra to decipher - just icicles on your memories,
 scrubbing at
 your cerebrum
 until you’re bleached.
 He is the opposite of bleach.
 Or, rather, more abrasively sanitary.

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At the salmon factory Lara Wickenkamp Stare at the catwalk where fifty of their school meet

To wrestle and cuddle and die

All of their names are Nemo

The blue overalls listen to Despacito

While ironically

Yanking the red

Ripping the white

Sucking out the black

Forty times per minute

I got used to the wet iron smell too quickly

Try to prevent the cold snot from running

Thoughts slow like resin

Drip dripping gone

Like the blood on my boots

Ten hours

Before the machines stop

And I look at something other than the clock

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Chopping down trees is fine until you accidentally mistake your uncle for a tree Anne Gill Trees are okay. When they’re dead (or dying) in the back of my truck they earn me money

chop

chop

chopping down trees gives me muscles and pays for it so I get paid to be fit, so I get paid to look hot, so I get paid to have people fancy me (and why wouldn’t they) so I get paid to have sex. I like trees. Trees are okay.

Bob cuts trees

Bob is Bob’s actual name

Bob’s my uncle

Bob cut trees until he read a book (don’t read a book) and then he sat at home all day talking about the ooze layer. He punched me for chopping down trees. I punched him for being a lazy shit. One day Bob stood in the forest to stop me chopping down trees as a protest which would be fine but it wasn’t fine because I was tired/ hungover/ high and thought he was an odd shaped tree/ a bear/ I was tired/ hungover/ high/ I didn’t think.

Trees are okay and

I’m good at chopping them down and Bob was good until he was shit.

chop

chop

trees are okay and

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accidentally.

I am good at chopping them down and

I am also good at chopping Bob down

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CBT James Thorp 1: We’re six sessions in. So, how do you think you’re progressing?

2: [Inarticulate screaming and crying]

1: I think you may require either more or less frequent sessions, although I am unsure. What do you think, given your progression here?

2: [Inarticulate screaming and crying]

1: Well, everything seems ok here. I will schedule a check-up appointment in three month’s time. Please do remember that if your symptoms change or get any worse you are welcome to be referred back to the service at any time.

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Dwell Anita Solak Got that glint going, one he gets when he’s teasing. He’s provoking

most times. Knows how to draw out a reaction.

Been howled at, slapped, punched in the gut, kicked down and they kept

kicking. Pillows held over his head. Shirts bled through,

stains don’t always come out. He’s never been a fighter. Says he’s a lover.

Not sure he knows what the word means. Goes through motions.

Dating, fucking, cheating, fucking, never lingers long. Jolts back and forth

in town, finds a city gal, parades her on his arm,

in his car, or hers if it’s worth more. Right now he’s got Rosa and her red

Mercedes. Finds some other man’s girl and

talks smooth, buys her champagne he can’t afford (puts it on his friends tab),

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makes her laugh, acts the fool, takes her too,

till the next one walks by. Says it’s the way of the world. Nothing new.

He’s no worse than the next man I’ll meet and

at least he’s honest with me, so I know not to trust.

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Breaths Alex Hamzij It’s the breathing:

that’s the thing that

always gets to me.

Those bated breaths

speeding up in

rhythmic antici-

-pation. The lies

we tell, revealed

in exhalation.

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SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR THE COLLETTI COLLECTION In honour of Sean Colletti’s incredible dedication to the society since founding it in 2009, Writers’ Bloc will be publishing the second ever Colletti Collection - a pamphlet of poetry or prose from one chosen member.

This is a fantastic opportunity to see your work in print and have your work judged by professional writer. The winner will also be invited to perform a feature set at the Grizzly Pear poetry night in Selly Oak.

Guidelines: 10000-20000 words worth of prose (double-spaced)

OR

20-40 pages of poetry

Submissions must be sent to writersblocjournal@gmail.com with your NAME and COLLETTI COLLECTION written in the subject line by 11pm on the 30th April. You must be a paid member of Writers' Bloc to enter.


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