JAIME BIRCH

Issue 8 contains a section from a sequence of Powerpoint poems by Jaime Birch. Click here to view the full sequence.

* * *

FRANCIS KIRSTEIN

* * *

RICHARD MAKIN

From Rift Designs

XX

she says, apropos of nothing in peculiar

that two people living together in one spot

replace each other over time,

it must be a nightmare

all that observance of shadow

(genes obviously stop in the family)

so she schemes alone in the hole

with chalk-tongue and lung case—

all you need to hear is the

creak and grind of the strata shifting

but now I want to get back to my own ditch:

sometimes we come across a sound too dedicated,

the first performance of the present into

which I hope I have the good sense to disappear

* * *

ALEC NEWMAN

Cultural Rape of Exeter Riddle 47

A moth, a thief

                         secreted in the darkness,

Had devoured words. A

                                       marvellous event,

Or so we said when we heard

                                                of that wonder.

Some bookworm had

                                    swallowed the lay

Of a dense academic

                                  journal in the library.

But the thief

                     that hatched from the pupa

Was not any wiser

                              for the words he ate.

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