About the author.

Kurt Truant is the alias of a Goldsmiths student in the Media, Communications and Cultural Studies department.

He writes — mostly prose — at a Substack (kurttruant.substack.com) and is interested in gender, masculinity, and vulgarity. His influences range from Paul B. Preciado and Georges Bataille to Machado de Assis, Nick Cave and Nate Lippens.

Editors note.

I really like this. It is beautiful, touching, and all-consuming—a defiance against a parental figure, a lover perhaps, a violent growth spurt. A powerful portrait of emotions and growing pains; abstract and moving. - Keisha Hubbard (editor)

Issue edited by Isabella Valencia Zapata.

Taking Stock

You rise mechanical, stupid, beaten.  

I will not dine with you, me laboured,  

you laboursome.  

I am the son of many suns —  

like phallus, like grease,  

screaming hands, silent spine.  

Your back to the moon, folded forehead, drunk and  foremost, indignant foreman.  

You craft me proud in defeat, and  

with a clenched fist I remain losing.  

You remain starved. Your chest huffs and puffs  for the smallest nothing.  

And like a murderous child, with Oedipal plights  and your world to ruin,  

I am teething.


By Kurt Truant