Articles

Sir, a report of a stone, Sir, I found down at the creek, brushed with water like egg brushes pastry, dotted and spotted in drips and drabs, half-dry, half-cold. Sir, the stone was pebble-grey, warm, light -- rolled sweet fondant, speckling like a robin's egg, freckled ochre by the sun, with darker spots where the light fails to catch, Sir. Forgive me, Sir, I was enraptured, captured; the stone was bedding an eighth into the creek-sand, sat promptly, pertly, rightly, shaded i

To take us to the sky, We study the celluloid film, The oscillograph paper enfolded in our hands, The numbers are reduced again. Reels of paper pool at our feet, It requires careful observation, All that we are is a computer of women. We weave the punch cards, Gentle copper threads dance around towers of circles, Dancing in, And out, Forming a structure of strength, Of memory, Of information. We were weavers and spinners, Delicate thread between index and thumb, This copper,

Sat in eerie silence, the kind that suspends, borrowing grief from the future. Reaching through with sticky hands, to steal something I can call mine. In the same way, a sweet friend took the floor with him when he left. A souvenir for his struggles - will the feeling ever fade? The need to hold something close. To fold your palms tight, to write it all down, in a language you understand. Does the book ache to return to the tree? It can no longer lend its knowledge to me.

I stand before you, farmers kin, my mother’s green thumbed girl. asking only, for a gentle kiss to cheek. I’d fly to you– by wing or wind, simply for a glimpse. I have nothing to offer but the dirt bedded under overgrown nails. And a vulgar honesty. Words by Bea Butterworth, she/they

You ask if I am happy to see you Well, is it me that asks or you? I cocoon myself underneath you and plead Yes, yes, I have missed you, I am joyous. You are not so sure. Your mouth manoeuvres an upturning and eyes glisten in a way that says Darling, I believe you. But I am not so sure. Perhaps I do miss the way I used to throw myself into the air with a fearless gravity. The spinning and bending of body– Flesh as suspension, the air as a vacuum to move through. Perhaps

Far off, a flying stone’s throw from the burrowed hill we stand on, paint is eating paint and picture is kissing with words There are colours in slump and glassy glosses turning on eachother, making new colours: brown and orange Synecdoche is kissing with a tower Pink striped with a dull impasto white is rolling on down the hill like children in May A portrait of a grey veiled lady is kissing with with whilst the words in a tangle of hands and feet are coated in the soot of

I feel like I’m in a constant waiting game. Waiting for you to let me in Waiting to see you again Waiting for, forever. Time is suspended. Miles stretch like elastic Sound won't echo Foundations remain scaffolding and Everyone knows your name. The phantom I’ve framed my future around, Framed it for— Like a piece of unknown artwork, with an unwilling muse. Still, you hang on the interior of my mind. Is this a requited feeling? Do they know the artist or have I remained a frame

Pressed into my hands without consolation, already hemmed and labelled, size only guessed at. I learned its limits the way you know the seams of a borrowed coat: the stabbing pinch high in the underarm when I reach too far, the sudden gape when I bend, the slow drag across my back when I turn away. It comes with me regardless, clinging along my shoulders, cupping the base of my skull, settling over me with the dull inevitability of weather. Some days it is almost indifferent;

My mother once told me The sea has a way of attracting lost souls. It’s why there are cigarette butts between the sand. And the wind whips in wails, But when it carries me Away from the landlocked and lonely To a bed of brown tide. It feels a little more like being found. Words by Bea Butterworth, she/they