Counter Culture
We called it ‘Preacher House’. Though the preacher that once lived there didn’t do much preaching within the curdled beige walls, preferring instead to commit sex crimes against his congregation. Or so the story goes. Preacher House was, this threadbare winter, rattling with Newtown hipsters, who drank oat milk and shaved their eyebrows clean off. Without them, they looked foetal and pallid: amoeba fermenting in a draughty womb, holier-than-thou vegans preaching polyamory. Where once sermons rang, the tinny drone of online lectures and oh god prayer of Tinder hookups reigned.
Shed Your Skin
Hello cemetery road, you with your
Long gravel tail that stretches endlessly
Towards some vague expression of peace,
There amongst the tallest trees.
You are rotting
Nautilus
In this dream, I don’t leave for months. Time is the same, a silvered, ever-present light that filters through our house, through the windows, through the glass doors. I trace the corridors of this house in a memory. Cherry-wood floors, white-washed walls, linen curtains that breathe in and out with the breeze. The house is rich in warmth, it cocoons and slumbers; at night we are rocked, as if by a mother.
Ballad of the Rebel Angels
Shadowed figures crawl o’er the hills —
From what crevasse they came
No creature knows but may distil;
Eternal furnaced flame.