Poetry – The Poor Print

Looking at trees again

by Tom Saer You have bad taste in encouragement She tells me how to eat The swan dipping in the water narwhal face She tells me what to eat The feathers on the ground She tells me not to eat The chaotic glee of the universe The tone that rhymes with all your curvature

Poetry

Arpeggi for the New Year

by Tom Saer Forgetting this is what my time together knows, considering [I hit the bottom and] the way that darkness has been put to use since goodness knows BC. But now the bonfire substitute illuminates the shame with preset ambiguity: Are there any ways to warn my friends About the Fallout […]

Poetry

Requiem for the Intercity 1-2-5

by Tobias Thornes They’ve given him his notice, They’ve settled on a time, To disappear who forty years Has trundled down this line. The window-wipers dry his eyes, The air-brakes sigh and hiss, As round the bend once more they send The friend that we will miss. Hear him hum as up he starts, Feel […]

Artwork, Poetry

Everybody Cares – We Promise!

by Tom Saer

Poetry

Poet’s Detention

Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art? Is this art?

Poetry

Stay Behind the Yellow Line

by Chloe Jacobs I don’t know why bitterness is my mother tongue Why my readiest tools are sharp Biting Where I learned to be so cruel Who schooled me in dead-eye dead-pan Spoken-word violence Who taught me to pick fights Take names, break kneecaps Bite to the elbow the hand extended To feed me I […]

Poetry

Lines on a Flag that Means Freedom

by Emma Gilpin Lines on a flag that means freedom, The same freedom that lets A kid walk into a shop and stand in line To buy a weapon. Lines on a page from centuries past Enshrined in a mythology That says this is freedom, This wild west, Hunger Games fantasy of a kid In […]

Poetry

Get Over It

by Tom Saer She said I should process my feelings before destroying other eyes To the point that they laugh I tried to say I wasn’t less-than-one-week-old love leftovers But maybe that wasn’t so convincing There are tears in my ear still Soft salt in the morning at least They came I think from Orphean […]

Comment, Culture, Prose

Fragm[entary t]houghts

by Caroline Ball Imagine yourself years from now, when by a freak coincidence all recordings of the Star Wars films have been lost. All that survives are brief extracts…from the prequels. Sounds horrifying? I’m only just getting started. Not only have you lost 90% of the original material, but no single surviving clip is longer […]

Poetry

my prisoner’s dilemma

by Michael Leong you’ve done my maths and i’ve done yours, so put your exes into my whys and back in again and let’s see where we go. follow the pencil, dot the lines and I’ll slide down your curves, my regression, unintended equilibrium decision tree yields mutually assured destruction but we’ll rest where our […]

Poetry

If You Feel Hollow Inside

by Soo Yi Yun If you feel hollow inside, Embrace those fragments of light through your curtain slit. You will be alright – Day by day, bit by bit. If you feel hollow inside, Draw out those fragments of love From the darkest corners of your mind. They are like the dove That brings you […]

Poetry

‘Language Acquisition (1 Corinthians 13)’

by Joel Fraser These couplets clang as cymbals These gongs resound their rhythms We crash in tearful frustration For all of our creation Amounts to no more than this: A lip-locked struggle for air And words. Must we choose? Tongues of men and angels, we can master But I know that they are jars of […]

Poetry

‘The New Epicurean’

by Tom Saer Breathing binary air loss In a separate dream about top surgery I guess rhetoric wins in the end Maybe the water’s taking a bank holiday And your side is pierced With one collective neck and my hands around it Or maybe that was the other guy Rhythmic tarmac accompanied by the band’s […]

Poetry

‘Worship Yourself’

by Sophy Oliver I enter on a whim So quiet and so still Deafening with judgement To be accepted by Him Here I sit and I wait In this unknown called peace Yet still feeling a fraud To be accepted by Him I do not know how long Minutes, hours or days One has to […]

Poetry

‘Other Gods’

by Tom Saer Do I forgive you for your animals in a fury of cigarette pavements? Neptune’s lieutenant rarely if ever evident acted out of nothing but a carbon paroxysm Give me a pen pot prophecy about some lighter worry something along the lines of the lines of the the sugar made me forget what […]

Culture, Prose, Reviews

Ishtar: A Review

Poignant, dark, and fun – Ishtar is proof that age does not matter, and that some stories are timeless. Bringing to life of one of the oldest poems in the world from Ancient Mesopotamia, Ishtar tells the story of the eponymous Goddess of Love and War (Leela Jadhav) as she ventures into the underworld to […]

Poetry

untitled trio

by Chloe Jacobs 1. We work in silent tandem as I, A spray of warm citrus, work open skin and you Lick sugared History from your spoon 2. “I mean, is it worth it?” As I work life back into my hands, you, the sheen of rain on a cheekbone, nod towards them, long limb […]

Poetry

‘The Charges of Patroclus’

by Cora MacGregor He who once, child-like, wept, seeing needless Death, now, clad in bronze, attacks a fourth time. Ablaze with another’s glory, heedless, Like something inhuman, like something divine. In costume, playing once the hero, but already The god. And dormant ambition is freed: Instinctive, his spear in his hand steady, As he […]

Poetry

‘Shorter Every Time’

by Fanxi Liu DREAM THE FIRST There’s a man in your soap bubbles, you notice on Wednesday. You almost swirl him down the drain with the rest of your day, but snatch the suds out in the nick of time. Indigo-gold-dogwood membrane films his features; nonetheless, you get the distinct impression that he’s addressing the […]

Poetry

‘Weather (or not?)’

by Alexander Walls The night is dark. The rain – it lashes down, Its persistent pattering, dolorous To my ears. The dull, sombre sky has drained. Hearing the downhearted drops of the rain, I think of such boundless, untold concepts. But, like the rain, I find myself discharged, Resigned to the asseveration from Above. Now […]

Poetry

‘Washing Cycles’

The rhythmic hum of the washing machine reminds me that not all metronomes are perfect and that water smells like flowers sometimes and that sometimes it smells like mud and that you are still in the room. You sent me teardrops in damp envelopes and poems you didn’t write. And I realised your voice doesn’t […]

Poetry

‘Mind’s Eye’

by Tom Saer Please, my deer, sell your tiger’s hides and Harvest my empathy I promise it’s worth it? In an anxious Greek murmur of the brazen-clad I found your stone antlers Weeping words from a cherry tree In a fucking dance I will grind you into a paste I’ve met you before synthesised waltz […]

Poetry

‘Hypnogogic Waves’

by Michael Leong hey! what are you doing begone, the night should not gather here disperse your images of me clutching you tightly, arm wrapped like saran around your waist, warmth […]

Poetry

‘a threesome’

by Fanxi Liu THE DIFFICULTY OF DISENTANGLEMENT Girl holding your hand. I dreamt of empty dormitories last night very quietly, Henan summer blowing in through the open door. There was a drought that year, three reservoirs drawn dry, despite which the evening air was sharp enough to cut my thoughts in half: upturned faces touched […]

Poetry

‘Evolving’

by Tom Saer I have apparitions of a pillowcase Stuffed with lion feathers I have fifty pence from grandpa To buy slow motion food On the vibrating bus seat by the bus stop I have pins and needles in my face Dripping with autotune I have a citadel of hair and glasses Made from […]

Poetry

‘Grey Morning’

by Sophia Smout You left in a grey morning. It’s funny, now, The bits that I remember so precisely: How the faint clouds brushed together In the damp, smoky air; And how the sun hung, palely hovering, Against the granite sky. You left in a threat of storm clouds And hail, in rain and thunder, […]

Collection

Highlights of 2017

A selection of some of 2017’s most popular articles on our website. Featured image by Max Clements – see more snowy pictures of Oxford here. Fantastic Trumps – and Where to Find Them: On Fantasy Tropes & Political Narrative Alex Waygood ‘Dwindling’ Tom Saer The Saturday Ritual Michael Leong What’s New About Fake […]

Poetry

‘Transmission’

by Max Clements As our eyes touch, my mind elapses. Your intimate complexion is pallid, your radiance extinguished. Your expression is lifeless. Your hands are frigid, your fingers callous. You possessed me. Your departed vitality lay dormant within me; and yet it drained mine. I devoured your beauty; I touched and tasted yet attained no […]

Poetry

‘Yggdrasil’

by Tom Saer Resurface from your lampshade Watching in dislocation Threshold of earth Plastic tears of a shaman Welded onto my accomplice Decoration on our perspex Hope transported The sand in your smile My dusty Neptune Evolve Cough up your skin like a man and Show them you’re made of blood Out of the whirlwind […]

Poetry

‘Go’

by Angus Forbes STOP. You don’t want this. I said STOP. It’s not worth it. You don’t need to Prove yourself. Every second you Hurt yourself more. You could Stand up. Walk away. They won’t think Less of you. They want to do it Too. Want to STOP. They’re too Scared. You have Other things […]

Poetry

‘The Past We See Today’

by Simon Norris Hello old friend, Remember me? You know me not, But all you see of me Is a memory There is no time like […]

Poetry

‘Train Station Tear Tracks – On Trauma’

by Aaron Cawood Lights up. The bench at the train station; we sit. Only, now, in Act Two, I smile, In spite of the crowd – I feed the first line. And because you are there, I smile throughout the Act. As, because you are there, sirens pass in quiet. And, because you are there, […]

Poetry

‘Remembrance’

by Simon Norris For your tomorrow We offered up our own. We lay ourselves down Under a torn quilt of poppies Across the rift of war. We let you walk upon our backs To peace. We caught the bullets And shells With our bodies. A wall of resolve And flesh and blood. The poppies […]

Poetry

‘Circle’

by Tom Saer We saw her near The empty drain She’d lost her pieces In the rain Her ankles wept In morning’s earth She went to sleep In beetles’ birth The flies are here Their tethers sink They filled their cups She did not blink To celebrate We found a wreath Its whispers made A […]

Poetry

‘Doubt’st Thou the Stars Are Fire?’

by Caroline Ball Those waxen wings Born of a father’s best-laid plans Weaving some ethereal scheme From an old man’s foolery And you – Borne aloft on fragile fancies Revelling in your flight Your freedom As kingdoms and cities and mountains and oceans and temples and tombs Pass beneath you Sky-born Godlike In the twinkling […]

Poetry

‘Gravity Gone’

by Joel Fraser We beat in time to a rhythmical pulse Attracted to permanence, after all Yet in time will come a rhyme that rings false And the well-built walls of life start to fall Gravity gone, I simply dissipate Innate need for form, now unsatisfied Ground yourselves, cling on, avoid what awaits With gravity […]

Poetry

‘Collapse’

by Shay Vera-Cruz It has a sound: the wide solitude of gravity in the breath between one star & the next. imagine suns, scarce […]

Poetry

‘Hollywood’

by Tom Davy Simmonds is on the stage for Whiplash, a film about drumming and abuse. The academy is giving him a thing which entails the usual sing song about the wife and the crew and sometimes the kids and some trite account of charity and, in the same breath, Hollywood fondlers with some charming […]

Poetry

Sonnet Composed Inside Bristol Temple Meads

by Aidan Chivers As I wait for my train I watch thoughts and strangers roam In two centuries of litter where I stop and bathe my mind; I trace the seats, the tracks, the stars, to see, or maybe find A moment for myself in this place they’ve all called home. I step across […]

Poetry

twenty-eight point three

by Jennifer Potter Clutching at cold tea, Recalling regurgitated emotion. A toast to our former selves, Sipping to transfer sentiment, Ease past pain. Each taste transporting to a coffee shop Artificially lit: maroon and sawdust and stilted conversation With a cup cradled in my hands like a shield, Anticipating effort echoing in emptiness. Every swallow […]