Category: renaissance (Issue No. II)

Shakespeare in Camden, 2019

Ellora Sutton

down the street to the smell of sizzling plantain
and the tickle of spilt almond milk he walks
and as he walks he sees stanzas in the clouds
and in the clouds he sees the face of the boy he loves

there’s a girl in the lock in the beer-coloured water
and none of the people are doing a thing to save her
and her hair floats like vomit over a drain cover
and Shakespeare knows she didn’t die to make a pretty picture

past the statue of Amy Winehouse to the raw poetry of the hawkers
and he takes a moment to rub inspiration from her holy palm
and all that comes off is pigeon shit
and he laughs because maybe it’s the same thing

Shakespeare can feel the rumble of the underground in his knees
and his knuckles the judder of metallic slugs
and all the people in those tiny airless lungs
and it makes him think of the laughing gas he did last night

with the boy he loves on a rooftop in a jungle of washing line
and how he stopped to make notes on his iPhone
and how the cracks in the screen became part of the poem
and how the moon became as superfluous as punctuation

he checks his Instagram to the applause of 40,000 followers
and he thinks of kale or maybe tinned sardines for dinner
and then something to smoke with the boy he loves later
and then dreams of obscene minotaurs drunk on midsummer

along the Thames in the dark but it’s never dark in London
and the queue for the water bus is a fading stain
and he wonders how many bones are in that black water
and he wonders if it will ever completely freeze over again

he googles flights to Italy maybe Venice or Verona
and knows he’ll never book one he needs a deposit for a house
and there’s a nice row of terraces a few miles out of the city
and the boy he loves has always wanted a cat called Orlando or Ophelia

the tasselled cushions on the sofa are wine-mottled
and he enchants them into the Northern Lights
and the static on the telly is the Bermuda Triangle
and this is all of the world right here

in a Camden flat with a blood orange door that belongs to the boy he loves
the world in his pocket his palm his throat and the boy he loves
watering cacti that Shakespeare had thought long dead but the boy he loves
doesn’t give up like that even with just pennies in the ‘leccy meter
and only old defunct pound coins in the jar
and like that Shakespeare is happy
ardently happy
happy with the boy he loves like a summer day

Ellora Sutton

she tells me to imagine a place of peace

alyssa hanna

i can’t think of anywhere the wind won’t reach me.
all i can see is a river, babbling brook, winding through the forest
of the summer camp i went to as a child; she tells
me to close my eyes— look around,
ground yourself, try this next time you wake from
another violent vision. she says another because we both know
that they will never stop coming. an
orchid grows and dies.
in the stream i feel the stones beneath my thumbs, the smoothness enough
to make me run river myself, raining morning and
night, listen to the sounds, what do you hear? can you engage with your
surroundings? can you take
a step forward?
gorge and canyon and valley. the rays of the sun sift through
the trees but never reach the bottommost places. and at the mountain peak i am
still buried beneath the bodies
of landscapes, the night terrors crawling edges along my spine, my knees,
the feeling that in this peace i am going to
die— what i want to tell her is that
the place i am calmest is still just a panic attack; that
in this place of peace, i am only reminded that i have never
even had a place i have allowed peace to find me.

alyssa hanna

Feedback to the Director

While studying to play Viola in Twelfth Night

William Conelly

Don’t showcase me.
And while you leave
my brother’s corpse
adrift at sea,
don’t twist a knife
in listeners’ hearts
pronouncing on
the drift of life.

If there’s a lock,
that can’t be it.
I can’t walk back
initial shock
ignoring how
a fate that killed
—and may again—
is my fate now.

Likewise the song:
faint instruments,
in minor keys,
are simply wrong.
Engage the lute
in firm accord
with a silver, lightly
mastered flute.

This is the tune
Orsino feels
as nourishment,
not soulful wound,
its phrasing neat,
its charm at once
the fanciful
and clear concrete:
What country, friends,
is this, to rise
from slashing seas,
through failing winds,
and proffer us
renewal—there!—
its shore a fluid
radiance!

William Conelly

Sunday Morning

Rachel B. Baxter

Sunday morning,
parts of me are peeking out
from under my nightgown and
my eyes have not yet opened fully.

so sweet

He whispers, and I think he’s referring
to the giggles and coos that are echoing
off of the wood floor from down the hall,
shooting up from the crib and sprinkling the new day
like holy water shaken from a pine branch.

But, he isn’t looking to the crib,
no, he’s looking at me in my slipshod nightgown,
breasts full and heavy with milk,
eyelashes stuck together with a forgotten day’s mascara,
an attempt at beauty.

I open my eyes and smile at him smiling back,
kiss him and say goodbye
before picking up the baby
who is calling after him,
da-da, da-da,
as he waves, breathes, and closes the door.

Rachel B. Baxter