the pirate cut his throat
and from that deep sea of 1930s romance
she arose headlong with sleepiness
with the gentle filmy wonder of a wife
Mrs. Irene Gosse
in sincere dedication to -
all this myriad adventure -
the park empty
she gathered her shoes
stretched her arms like oars
stood up from the trunk
the dry long-wrecked hull
she had rested against
and turned with all the silent reverence
of a sail
the man with the baseball cap
with the black dragon
the black sword on his t-shirt
held his penis
looked at her
a thin smile curling like pages
*A History of Piracy, Phillip Gosse
Livingstone St.
‘it is time the stone grew accustomed to blooming’ - Paul Celan, Corona
No word from the neighbours. One house
Gutted, the other audible at ear-height through the mirror.
Children scream in the morning, nothing wakes me.
At an acute distance, birds can be seen flocking -
Gathered to a solitary leader at their apex.
Love, I opened the box in my dream.
Gold rushed from me like Midas cashing his cheque
In the river: it’s over, the world has begun.
A great breath of glass at daybreak,
The sky half-shaken to wine.
The window weeping at the boundary of warmth.
I
Faith
beams down,
one bright shaft, softens
what is struck or breaking
in a slip of wine, given―
O Lord wash our tongues
with snow water
II
Faithfulness:
when you
come home with a strange rawness, ashamed
but not sorry, body quivering
from the hot darkness that took it,
and look at me blankly
as if I should blame instead
something dwindling in the sky.
The Visit
The black gate tolerates the key.
The light grows frail and wild.
Softly, like a fountain,
the only words: I don’t know, I don’t know,
I don’t know
You leave, the curtains part clumsily
and will not close again.
No great path: daylight, a window.
Charlotte Hoare grew up in the small village of Potterne in Wiltshire. Not much happened there apart from words, and they didn’t happen that often. There was a nice context of silence. She moved to Norwich in 2007 to study Literature with Creative Writing, with the idea that she was the only person in the world that wrote poetry. Luckily this insular world fell apart quite quickly. She has recently qualified as an English Language teacher and will hopefully start work in Prague soon. She plans to keep creating worlds that fall apart. She has a poem coming out in the S/S/Y/K (4) anthology soon.
Natalie Orme is a freelance illustrator, co-editor of Etcetera and recent NUCA graduate. Her work has been exhibited in various places in Norwich and London, and includes drawing, printmaking and lots of other non-digital design. She is currently working on expanding her portfolio, highlights of which you can see on her blog. Most recently she designed covers for Joshua Jones's debut collection, Thought Disorder, and King Laconic's first EP, Muddy Snow.
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