Fault Line

If you look really closely at me
you’ll see the seam;

there are things needed to make a world:

vinyl records
icebergs
telescopes
short crust pastry
maps
retractable pencils
silver birches
kissing with tongues
ships in bottles
ibuprofen
rock-n-roll
blue whales
handwritten letters
denim
naked dancing
small garden birds
paints
dishwashers

-but these things camouflage
the crack brilliantly.

You could believe
there had never been
that late summer morning
in Chalmers Street, Edinburgh,
when the lady came in
and removed swaddled-me
from your arms.

Christine Marshall is in her first year of the Creative and Life Writing MA, she writes poems and memoir about longing, family and romance. Rock n roll references often creep in. She studied fine art and lives in London.

Hol(e)y Morning

Waking up to presents
Presents you don’t want
Presents you don’t need
Presents you don’t like
Presents you’ll have forgotten by midday

Packed in boxes of fake smiles
Shrouded in wraps of pretended forgiveness
Tied by ribbons of hopes for redemption

Presents you don’t want, need, nor like
Presents you’ll have forgotten by midday
But that might somehow - in their superfluous beauty -
Fill in the dips of your mental landscape with materialism

In a bite, may you give some crunch to your plain life
In a gulp, may you counteract the bitter aftertaste of your yearly failures
In a mouthful, may you shut the deafening tattletale of the emptiness of your life up
In a popped open button, may you soften the edged corners of your sins
In an unbelted buckle, may you tie up doubts of your worthiness of others’ generosity

Soon there will be no leftovers remaining
Soon your spit will have cleansed from justified indulgences
Soon everything through the hole will be gone
Soon nothing will remain but a hole in your wallet and an inflated belly-button

Buy more, consume more, spill more
And spill it over your neighbour who’s got less on their plate
Oh, silent capitalism, holy capitalism…
All is calm, all is bright.

Agathe F. is currently doing her MSc in Music, Mind and Brain, having graduated from UCL in neuroscience and philosophy of mind the year before. Passionate about the human brain and mind, Agathe enjoys writing as a way of exploring these subjects. To her, poetry allows the passage from the abstract world of inner mental processes to the tangible world of paper and words. It brings one closer to their perception, emotions and cognition - and gives insight into the mysteries and wonders of the human psyche, as well as a therapeutic outlet.

Picnic

för min Svenska lejon

Fell asleep on grass-

empty bottle of bucks fizz,

a box of strawberries,

to then wake and talk

about Sweden, sexism

and bad practices,

hidden between sheets

of good, bright, bold history,

damasked in yellow.

​​Then it’s

ice cream and pound coins,

the promise of a month left.

I wish you would stay.

I wish you would stay

with me and them and bucks fizz-

I’ll give you berries

if it would change your

mind, but boxes of fruit won’t

even convince you.

​​So

instead, I’ll dream you

stay here, and count down minutes

in old strawberry tops-

I’ll watch you beaming,

your mouth filled with red mush and

wet with cheap bucks fizz.

Chloe Vaughan is the first person I met in London as small 18-year-old Goldsmiths fresher in 2013. Despite her love of Autumn, everybody who has ever met Chloe agrees she is literal sunshine in a pile of scarves. She is currently based in Manchester where she is widely regarded as the best living bookseller to have graced the Earth. She is Goldsmiths alumni and founder and former president of the Creative Writing Society. Her poetry feels like home. So does she. Find her recent work at MISTRESS Journal and The Manchester Review.

Words by Daisy May

Ode to Redamancy

O redamancy, the act of loving in return,

Last winter you approached me in stupor,
Pouring down hiraeth,
Reminiscing the time I last kissed you playing Earl’s Luper,
My feet tipped on the edge of a train platform.

We bathe in Mare Tranquillitatis, levitating, high,
I breathe in nicotine and pretend it’s us in the past,
Holding steadfast, no questions asked,
But as the smoke curls under my nostrils, your presence fortifies.

Mother says in work you find freedom,
Echoing ‘Arbeit macht frei’, prying like an ulcer in my mouth,
Sweat stains on my back, carved across my arm: Supersede him,
The man strives towards no couth.

The lobster grows out of its shell because of discomfort,
I think I must admit, I am in denial that you are no longer in love with me,
Shedding locust-husks, floating arthropods in the Dead Sea,
Have you ever heard of suffering in rhythm?

Why do we throw ourselves in the eye of a hurricane

and kiss the havoc gently?

I’m on the brink of something incredible,
I’m on the brink of fucking up.

Restless young hearts shout,
Opposable thumbs evolved to swipe,
Tweet the hype,
Chances are it sparks or we washout.

And we’ve learnt to walk through road works, gritty,
Landslide, won’t you dance with me?

You see, redamancy,
The act of loving in return,
To be true you must not be cruel,
Or work seasonally.

Those who don’t understand you claim waiting equates to pressure, equates to limitation, equates to sets,
But time is still ticking,

The Persistence of Memory beats
With an insurgence, kicking.

Adoration: a celestial light in Hieros gamos.
And awake in petrichor with the idea of undying,

Yet,

I hope it rains in your city,
Every day of the week.

A current MA Filmmaking student at Goldsmiths, University of London, Anna McNutt recently finished her BA in Media & Communications, specializing in Creative Writing, also at Goldsmiths in 2017. Though she mainly works in prose and script form, Anna also writes poetry and has contributed to many Goldsmiths’ Zine and Creative Writing Society poetry pamphlets. She has recently started her own zine collection titled MCN exploring themes such as Adversity, Sensuality, Identity, Femininity and Masculinity.

141016

2:35.

In the calm,

The systematic locomotion;

Morning fractured into

The clean, white minutes -

Washed over by the

Sudden sea of serifs.

Poetic expressions

Bring no lasting

Impressions:

Only the meticulous certainty

Of sensory memory

Marking those moments,

So softly.

The broken hours

Passed unnoticed

Under the static

Scheduled structure,

Weekdays' anaesthetics.

Hard to imagine

The numbers it had numbed,

So many. 

by Nicharee 'Milk' Phatitit