Gilded Dirt #4: Bermuda △ Sadcore

Listen to the official BERMUDA ▲ SADCORE playlist:

Table of Contents
A Room Underwater 1
Nude Lamprey 5
The Sea 6
Billionaire Hubris 7
Phototropic Octopus with Lemon Wedge 8
Listening as Reading 9
caught 10
still 11
sing. 12
MARINE TERRACE 13
Grief Sings Louder Than Death 14
Sea Time Lullaby 15
In the Auroral Aquarium 16
Quantum Waters 17
the sherbet aria 18
Dolphin in mid-air 19
The Jacuzzi of Despair 20
siren at the lighthouse 22
Jellyfish /Trauma Coagulations: 24
Self Portrait in an Aquarium 25
My appetite wears metallic face paint 26
gavage 28
imago, after Christine Ernst’s choker w/pearl 29
baggy bodies 30
Whale matter 32
Splash down 34
I think I feel see 35
A lineage of seaweed 36
insel/berg 39
Poem Written Through “Music Geek Track of the Week: Cuushe – Sort
of Light” by Matt Grosinger, 13/09/2013 42
Teichreflexionen 43

Lines on the Lake 44
Fever Pitch 45
Laguna 46
Redundant Frequencies 47
Lollies 50
Drookit 51
The Opposite of Water is Zephyr 52

A Room Underwater
We hover the vague, triangular region. A place frequented by
tropical storms and shipping traffic. Laced with histories of
disappearance and drowning. The deepest point in the
Atlantic Ocean is tucked below its surface, over eight miles
deep. There is a place down there which is the safest place on
Earth to cry. Nobody will find you there. Believe me, we’ve
been.
This issue of Gilded Dirt takes a slomo plunge into the
ocean in search of lost cities, cephalopods and that selkie we
made friends with in 1993. Sadcore, also known as slowcore, is
a genre of minimal adornment, muted tempo and doleful
lyrical performance. To experience it in musical or literary
form is to let language haze over you, to eddy into sonic
clusters of meaning, to listen closely, empathically. For this
issue, we invited writers of all stripes to contribute work
which sounds out immeasurable depths through a poetics
inflected by watery melancholy. This ‘oceanic feeling’, as
coined by Romain Rolland in a 1927 letter to Sigmund Freud,
refers to ‘a sensation of “eternity”’ and immersion in the
whole world. Might such a solvent state of being be
ecological, given its sense of spontaneous spiritual immersion
in something bigger than ourselves?
The ocean is a treacherous place for mere human mortals,
as anyone who hears the word ‘submersible’ in 2024 will
know. The writing collected here plumbs the depths not to
dredge scientific findings, but rather to turn the self insideout
in an act of soft exposure. Let salt in, all the better to
cleanse your wounds. In these pages you will find auroral
imaginings, critters of the deep and shoreline, attunement,
metallic face paint, slime, whale matter and sensuous
encounters with the sea.
Our title, BERMUDA ▲ SADCORE, embodies the vibe
theory of oceanic feeling. The word sad, in its Germanic
origin, connotes ‘weighty, dense’, eventually replaced in
Middle English with the sense of ‘steadfast, firm’ — later
‘sorrowful’. The ocean is at once weighty, dense and
everchanging, temperamental. We love the doleful,
consonant insistence of the ‘d’ in ‘sad’ and ‘bermuda’. In
recent years, the ocean has been toxified by microplastics,
literally set on fire, forced to house massive, heat-generating
data centres and scraped for rare earth minerals. If anyone
has the right to be sad, it’s the ocean. And the ocean,
historically feminised as sailors did with their boats, might
herself be the Anthropocenic siren in the night everafter. Our
original home and eventual disaster. Stop me if this sounds
like an emo lyric.
1

What would it mean to be sad forever? Or to be steadfast
in sadness, like the great eighteenth-century poet Charlotte
Smith: who would wander the cliffs of Beachy Head and later
write her Elegiac Sonnets from a debtor’s prison. To be sad
forever is to forever be facing the sea. The vibrant imaginaries
of the poems, essays and fiction contained herein will
transport you to bodies of water whose sumptuous power to
surprise, query and upend our bodies of knowledge is
remarkable. The only way in is through surrender. In the
movie Triangle of Sadness (2022), the rich are punished for
their attempts to control, own and influence everything. With
virtuosic abjection, we are witness to them literally vomiting
the poisoned fruit of the ocean.
At some point in the Covid lockdowns, I started to feel like
I was in a fish tank. Every computer window was just another
fish tank window to look out of. It felt natural to be a fish. I
circled the same four walls and ate the same food and
flapped my tail in despair or flirtation (no one could tell the
difference). Everyday, people saw me zoomy and googlyeyed.
It was genuinely through poetry that the flood gates
opened. I was sucked out to sea again. It was harsh, so
beautiful. I was all these other people.
Long ago, I used to drift off to sleep dreaming of a room
underwater. Sleeping with the fishes meant more than death.
It was the humming peace of coexistence. The painkilling
promise of salt, then alcohol. Eventually, I’d Freudian slip this
room into George Orwell’s ideal pub, ‘The Moon Under
Water’ (see his 1946 essay of the same name). Then I
discovered a record which crystallised this feeling in its
adolescent ardour. Of the artwork for her 2019 album Titanic
Rising, which pictures a bedroom underwater, curtains
shimmering like seaweed, Weyes Blood told Stereogum: ‘it’s
kind of like the waters have risen over this bedroom which to
me is symbolic of kind of a subconscious altar that all young
people in western culture create for themselves. This kind of
altar for whatever they worship in their sacred space that’s
just theirs’. Why not worship the water itself, giver of life?
When navigating this issue, we encourage you to seek out
that sacred space. It might be a jacuzzi, a loch at twilight, a
pond surface, a fluid stanza, an archipelago, the colour blue —
or simply a current pulling you irrevocably into the
supernatural catastrophe that hasn’t even been named yet.
Go forth and swim!
— Maria Sledmere, July 2024
2

The high meridian of the day is past,
And Ocean now, reflecting the calm Heaven,
Is of cerulean hue; and murmurs low
The tide of ebb, upon the level sands.
The sloop, her angular canvas shifting still,
Catches the light and variable airs
That but a little crisp the summer sea,
Dimpling its tranquil surface.
— Charlotte Smith, Beachy Head (1807)
3

4

Nude Lamprey
The phone is an octopus
Hee haw
Seventeen times running
Off automatic boot
Green pincer in profound tub
Sixth level a levity
Inapposite sponge
Faint squeezy
5

The Sea
It is not
Brimful
Treasurehouse
It is not
Infinite
Bathtub
It is not
Mirror-
World
It is not
House
Of Finned Beings
It is not
Giant Tongue
That Laps at the Sand
It is not
Moist
Mantle
It is not
Wine-dark
Metaphor
It is not
Laughing
Sun-kissed
Pond
It is not
Repressed
Mermaid
It is not
Old
Song
Rahul Santhanam
6

Billionaire Hubris
The stock tanked after the Titanic fiasco. At a party of the
sort he was renowned for, Crance, the self-styled tech-bro
Gatsby, but with a fouler sort of dust floating in the wake of
his dreams, announced between waves of high end canapes
that he had tokenised the Titanic.
‘Now anyone can own a piece of this legendary
shipwreck. From a single ceramic tile from a guest suite to
the grand staircase immortalised in the iconic film, it’s all for
sale on the FactsCorp NFT Exchange’, he announced to
cutlery clinking on plates. Governmental and celebrity
condemnation soon followed.
Adam Fraser
7

Phototropic Octopus with Lemon Wedge
All the basic activities of life occur in water-filled cells bounded
by membranes, tiny containers whose insides are remnants of the
sea.
—Peter Godfrey-Smith
Here we are again
benumbed by the flow
of the world showed up
and, Hello, we’re—in it—
beating down garlands
of a nervous sucking bloom,
the octopus that frets its colours,
and—mistaking them for suns—
reaches for the thumbtacks
that pin the WHACK—we belong to
—WHACK—to each other—WHACK,
to the steady shifting void of night.
And here it is, unearthed.
A heap. A drowned bulb,
side-heavy, all herniated gloss.
Its roots of clung rust convoluting
like half-forgotten faces
phased together by a dream.
And here we are, beating-blunt-beating
a crashed cloud’s vaults of heaven
on its rock’s held breath—
they’ve been together
for who knows how long—
signing the guestbook in star-matter-black.
Still, miserable to do him like that,
in front of his oldest friend.
Oh well, we pit the stone
and finitude’s soft purse
opens out like a carpark at the end
of a hike’s wrapped sandwich.
And never-not-hungry we wonder at
the shameplant-wince
of limbs on the fire and squeeze
a lemon wedge to the shape of a beak
and suck the roots, detached and fleet
as a cat’s tail vanishing around our door.
8

Listening as Reading
Dee cliffs. Alone. Distantly,
garland children spin a centripetal splash
of evergreen inward, evergreen out,
a chorus of wise thoughtless laughter; the circular breath
of an unbroken season. But I sneeze if I look
even a moment at the light. Please, don’t bless me aloud.
Late again this year, the bridal pearls
of a common daisy—its pupil poaching without heat—
fall to the rock, like the adulation of vulgar men
whose eyes roll, same as those of bolted cows,
up in the gods at the close of a movement.
Late again, Autumn guesses the weight of the bird,
and detonates around it, mid-squeeze.
The birth tone of winter apple-bobs in its throat
sings oubliette, oubliette only to announce,
that here on Earth—the renowned house of gems—
the bezel runs over with speechless crystal.
Holding a white petal—a trace of wrapping thought the
gift—
the bird tilts its crown, and braces before the sea. A wave
another dull wave flattens and re-joins the back of the queue.
At the cliff-edge, the children pick thorned berries by their
lips,
purple-chinned and faithful to the sweet, the free.
Ideally, sugar lasts forever. Tomorrow is too long.
Andrew Hykel Mears
9

caught
crest a far fell of scar limestone.
in a grey smudge of windbreak wood.
take a stand made of mist. and spider web.
stir with fungal rot. dot with snow drop.
cover with moss. and lichen.
fill this air with wet noises.
drip. blue tits.
drop. robin.
and the loud.
of rooks circling.
stumble eye over. clouds of sheep sleeping.
in the green. of middle distance.
and rabbits burrowing.
in the brown. of near.
cut with a rush slice // cut with a river knife.
cliff with topsoil // loose with bank.
tangle time and material.
winter light. caught.
on reef limestone.
coral fossils. caught.
in pebbles. caught
in tree roots. caught
in cobbles. caught
in boulders.
rush river over.
the bed. rock bottom.
of an ancient. lime-rich sea.
it was warmer than this.
in the lower carboniferous.
a dog crashes.
down to join.
we.
wet and sniff.
slip and shake.
fine droplets.
split // prism.
and halo.
all around us.
10

still
listen to the feral corner of grey matter.
that says just keep climbing.
eyes are not for finding.
toe holes. in hoof prints.
this is a path made by grazing.
hunger on up into sphagnum.
and the abrupt lack thereof.
everything tender and squelch.
ending in pavements of limestone.
deep ocean sediment laid down slow.
over a basement of greywacke.
a scar ground down silver.
by a tongue of glaciation.
ice moves more.
rain carves faster.
deep grykes offer.
rare habitation:
hart’s-tongue fern
holly fern
limestone fern
rigid buckler-fern
bloody crane’s-bill
green spleenwort
common rock-rose
and lily-of-the-valley
eventually.
there’s still. in the lee. and near wind.
and here on the tops. of the sea floor.
we see fresh snow. there on the peaks.
11

sing.
sing. how the river sings. about liquid.
and how even when distance. sky is part of surface.
and even when solid. stone is part of water.
and even when fossil. coral sings. a central mouth opening.
and even when speculation. let’s say bioturbation traces
ancient absence.
sing. how a sea worm sings. a path set in stone.
sing. how a wagtail sings. I am yellow. even when grey by
name.
and how light sings. even when winter.
sing like we haven’t been.
sing for some time.
J. R. Carpenter
12

MARINE TERRACE
Voices crashed in world above. Swimming into a
littoral sea-cave I found Plato ‘n’ Nietzsche discussing
triple-O theory. Blackness, glitter, surrounded
them. Dark Academia. Get me outta here. Splish splash
onto land & I shook off my fish-half – easy! Humans <3.
Plastic trash-wrap & washed-up sliders dress me;
I sing, happy siren, along the shore. ‘Ariel!’
yelled Eric from the promenade, his shanty-ears like
salted shells. He’d bought us bières, and we spectacled
hot sparkling ocean as yachts & liners burst to flame on
horizon. A message-in-a-bottle appears at our feet.
It says: BE READY AND HOLD TIGHT.
Amy Grandvoinet
13

Grief Sings Louder Than Death
Those supine bad-girl beauties, draped languorously
across their rocks, spilled cacophonies
of lecherous noise. Scintillating squawks and coos
cast lust-filled lures ensnaring even wax-stopped
sailor’s ears. When Orpheus thumbed one climactic
note that stunned those siren throats to stone.
His deft stroke stupored everything, stilling even
moving time. Later he learned to charm death…
His lyre-sung love song of longing loss returned
his wife, cold dead Eurydice, back to life. Yet
one stolen backward glance, severed the enchanted
spell, and she returned to grief’s forever hell.
14

Sea Time Lullaby
(After a phrase by Auden)
Butt through waves and choppy seas
on the bent backed pull to paradise.
Suck in salty tastes of brine, deep
to nostril hilt again. Becalmed
after storm strewn frenzy, bathe
in quilts of tranquil aftermaths
Then, unfurl topsails, sail again
cutting shear through heaving
seas to haven, in Eden. Then ease
to sleep, ‘shorn of all iniquities’.
John McCutcheon
15

In the auroral aquarium
algae bloom / atoms accumulate / purple stalagmites amount aslant /
immersed / gelatinous genies bloat / burst / set diasporic drifters /
neon symbionts afloat / in warming oceanic aquamarine / gravid
globules collide / congeal / embryonic pin-head polyps sprout and
sway / submerged / on thread-thin pink pedicles / shape-shifting /
cells divide / self-implant in vitro / or evolve ectopic / newborn
nuzzlers birthed blind / in slippery shoals / phallic phantasms erupt /
magenta magma spumes slacken and slump / hump-backed polar
bergs breech / protean / ghost galaxies / come and go / slow / with the
flow / meniscal ellipses eclipsed / in lava-lit marine metaphor / a
miniature multiverse / mutating
Kim Crowder
16

Quantum Waters
It is full of aquatic song because it said so in the quantum waters glossolalia of
choirs #1
it’s a total wave form function man
the energy level is a screeching anemone so loud it can’t ever be
heard in this deep blue statethere is a criterion in terms of energy your
effervescence is a fixed state chorus line
I will bite off your fish lips your tongue if you speak in this total spin wave function
of scattering shark states make more mixed shark states out of words and
then sing them like when
a wave is called a crustacean harmonic in the purest state of sound an operator
is satisfying in the tone of #A in an entanglement of spoken clam performances
that are square integrable in their stage fright mass density coral chamber its an
entangled state in my throat my jugular is a separable state from the inequality o
f fringed limpets singing along in an aria - in a spin / rotation momentum like a
whirlpool dependent upon the absolute exquisiteness of total and utter elliptical
echo boom it’s an (underwater)necessary principle specific to bound states
gagged with oarweed super staccato selection kelp with its feathered lips barely
moving
#1. quantum waters are a fundamental entity in quasi-vocal energy that fails to offer an
instrumental definition of the cerebral properties of non-planetary liquid systems at the scale of fish
and sub-fish - like monthly fish subscriptions, in order to demonstrate that the decisive choral
submarine system is wholly and completely lacking in salt comprehension of all and any known and
unknown sea faring languages, ringspun water songs, or downbeat voice fathoms.
≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈
Sam Francis
17

the sherbet aria
the deleterious effects fragment the quarry hysteria
some almost groan and suffer by arrangement
while we wonder faulty in light
just to avoid dust for an instinct circling back
to the great mouth of mixed visions. out of it
divellicated hearts urticate and give rendezvous insights
but never get to the crux on the ropes with all the
emotion interior and because life is fleeting: spreadsheets.
the only thing you can say is that while it lasted it was magnificent
and in a mélange as admin I am no one
squinting all future movements and leaving the shore
the ascent is translating so that you can be saved the intervals
where we go fugue state drawn into a dance to keep martyrs awake
blood mending. too far apart to call each
other some aesthetics reading miracle reports like proper
hell in half possession growing fabulatory it was alcohol
waiting up one evening when many people went through with
one day before feeling dank and losing corollaries no one can die
with such eyes the nerves sing no one can live and hold here
lethal and finish the loss dissolve a deuce a sea so
violent turned on the pillow quick because lip rich our amorous
recollections can count caparisoned and vexed
here are quality of glances corresponding heavy you should have
believed solid brow endures the mouth bored to death I am a world where
Daniel Ridley
18

Dolphin in mid-air
Eco, as in echo ,
the dolphin in mid-air
spinning above a sea
of sparkling water
‘ ,
sparkling as ‘to spark’, to
ignite, to generate, burn
like sunlight netted
in water
like a shadow
seared onto shapeless water
‘ ,
waves break in silence ,
each crash a stuttering vafra,
‘to waver’,
each wave a flicker,
shimmer, spark,
a rise and crash –
‘ ,
the dolphin
turned full-circle
face-to-face
with its rippled reflection
plunges
through itself
then disappears
.
Dan Power
19

The Jacuzzi of Despair
Abandon all hope ye who enter The Jacuzzi of Despair. Forget
hydrotherapy or water massage, there’s simply not enough
H20 for anything like that these days.
This tub of gloom requires human (or animal or any living
creature’s) tears to fill it.
Ha! Only kidding. I mean when did you last see a human cry?
It’s a preposterous idea.
Yes, yes. We know. Fresh water is not in plentiful supply, but
if you have enough cash to spare we can send out our special
convoy to source some for you.
No need to ask or enquire further about the details. Just enjoy
yourself. Enjoy yourself!
We insist. You deserve it. Don’t ask questions when you are
on valuable leisure time. You deserve this luxury whatever the
cost.
Should we be unable to locate a natural source of water, do
not despair (haha) we will fill the melancholy pool with
bottles of Evian or your choice of mineral water. Still,
sparkling or hybrid are all available.
Really? Are you kidding? I do despair. Of course there’s no
water here. It’s not called The Jacuzzi of Despair for nothing,
you know.
You see the problem is we have no idea what to fill this
jacuzzi with. Our imaginations are as dried up as our water
supply. (I don’t know about you, but we find it so terribly hard
to actually imagine anything these days).
So we asked AI to lend us a land. Always on tap (teehee), the
words came flooding out. (I’m sorry I just can’t stop).
In the heart of a decrepit mansion, nestled beneath shadows
of forgotten memories, lies The Jacuzzi of Despair. Its waters,
once crystal-clear, now swirl with sorrow and regret. Legend
whispers that those who immerse themselves will confront
their deepest fears.
Well yes, the odd lazy adjective or two, but we rather liked
where this was going, so we asked AI to continue.
20

One moonlit night, Sarah, burdened by loss, sought solace
within its depths. As she sank into the abyss, faces of loved
ones appeared, accusing eyes reflecting her pain. But amidst
the darkness, a glimmer of hope emerged. With each breath,
Sarah shed her anguish, rising anew, cleansed by the Jacuzzi's
tears, ready to embrace the light once more.
Alas too late, we realised its limitations. We couldn’t take
anymore.
And so all we have to offer you is our lacklustre whirlpool
filled with a few litres of regret-tinged Highland Spring that
has lost its fizz. Our rubber ducks are repurposed lemon
bleach bottles, and our one peach flamingo can only stand on
two legs.
It’s so sad. I can’t stop crying.
Carolyn Hashimoto
21

siren at the lighthouse
my beautiful lighthouse keeper
sleep eludes her, stolen away in the night
by the roaring call of the sea
the howl of the wind over–lapping
my siren song for her,
a restless longing
she keeps the flame lit
its glow passes over me into the endless dark
I am untouched by the warmth of her vigil
that she keeps for the man whose shadow
is at home in her door
whispers of stillness and daylight come, overdue
the mouth of the sea laps in lethargy
at the fortressed rocks of her whitewashed tower
I sing for her and hope
her legs will carry her to me
I wonder at the feel of legs
what must they be like to stand on?
how might they feel
wrapped around a waist?
hers or mine –
how fortunate he must be
my tail has left a glistening trail of blood sacrifice
from where I have pulled myself across cliffside rockery
to collect a sprig of sea-thrift
for her braided hair
softened sea glass for her ears, to match her eyes
to match her tears
I know she cries each new moon when she bleeds
washes the blood from her linens on the turning tide
somehow I know,
she bears no visible wound
only tears rushing through
a clavicle rock pool
he kisses the slender line of her throat in supplication
and crushed in the undertow of grief
like sea-pink blossom
22

she bruises brown, a secret love bite
I know her secrets,
which she pours into the sea
they spill through my fingers
fine as sand
and settle like cursed treasure on the ocean floor.
India Bucknall
23

Jellyfish /Trauma Coagulations:
Note: this encyclopaedia entry contains Stories
[see also: The Score] instead of Facts.
Jellyfish immortality was discovered by Coral van der Kolk in
2570, amidst a deadly jellyfish plague. Scientists couldn’t kill
them.
Coral was chosen to receive the message—we’re
unsure why. Some say it’s because she’s a descendent of a
famous psychologist. She would say it’s because she loves the
sea. She sliced the jellyfish open. While it bled, it spoke:
“I’m a God-piece.”
“Die,” said Coral.
“I keep the score. Trauma is like love: everlasting.”
“Oh my God,” said Coral.
“Yes, exactly.” said the jellyfish,
healing herself.
Victoria Brooks
24

Self Portrait in an Aquarium
I have only ever seen a moon
jellyfish dead washed up
on the long island shore before
today they are floating
organs and my eyelids have stopped
fluttering the only threat
to the glass catfish is the flash
photographs captured
by innocent tourists
what is necessary
about ‘innocent’?
does intent make a difference?
would it be better for the tiger
shark to attack face on?
check the facts the octopus
has a brain in each limb
no skeleton and three hearts
the starfish have five eyes
you are right beside me
like the small schools of fish
we all travel more closely at night
Rose du Charme
25

My appetite wears metallic face paint
(Excerpt from a verse novel)
May never
not be waiting for you, may never not
be leaving you. Around me are these two
factual elephants with bristles and hair
on their bodies covering nothing. Both
the names of both elephants – for they have
names and government names – these are love
and grief. Whichever way around. I can’t
say. These living. Peel off beyond the cease
of leaving and of waiting. To say. To
abstract impossibly the world’s holy
immanence which even you cannot kill.
O elephant in the sea. Who you are
not. How you have set me out of language
and a bit of me remains there. Who you
are not.
Who I am sure I am leaving.
Who comes as memory to me within
the memory factory where I am
doing my breaking but as a liquid
in this pouring un-brittle sort of way.
Utmost herbs lie upon the surface in
the flooded room which is every room.
The origins immaterial or
repurposed like so many dreams, dreamt while
26

sleeping naked.
The years after you that
it took, what was desiccated,
the good
alien I was. With my overnight
projects. My body’s humanness a trick
of the light convincing in varying
degrees,
context dependant, falling to
earth, tilt of the ground, plunging
distance. In the memory factory
there’s no rebirth, everything already
has happened and I lick it free. A kind
of thunder.
No lightning, for it would be
drawn terribly to my golf cart at great
personal cost to the hound at the wheel.
Ali Graham
27

gavage
Slit her slender & she takes it so gratefully! Break eye contact & tilt her quack head, as she beaks back a reflex for to
gag.
Prepare - aged slices so rich & meaty; lay over mounds of rice turned emerald
& cilantro stacked; caramelize spurious nourishment & sloppy emotion
An orange rubber deity wobbles atop the dashboard, plucked from a slit in time of dirty little secrets, saved in the
feathers of a bird, long dead.
Spoon - chirimoya custard, inside a slippery apple
Whole bird specimens: late 20 th century soot preserved on feathers. Mark me nymphly maquette, little grey deity, for
this is the way it is. Female bellbirds lack a wattle, sing no songs. The dirtiest birds flew tiny particles through skies
dusted velvet, once. Birds now dead play a part in museum drawers, void context from their collective avian cloaca.
Fix - black-trumpet champignons, tart; drinkable giant crab on a pedestal
of sticky rice, buried beneath a crinkly rice cracker
Mouth sores from the knife-edge lashing of butterflies, legion, up from her stomach. The tumult drags unspoken
words stuck in the throat as they upward fly. She cannot escape lips sown shut in the pink dark. Fetid rows of
crooked inturned teeth; their wings were the first to go.
Arrange - delicate little chicken, flat sand tarts of noodles & bouche d'ortolan;
feathery capellini d'angelo w/a pesto'd gesturing
Leave behind colors: catastrophic mouthfeel melts her tongue around scrambled letters dredged up an esophagus by
wings effete. Pollen sits heavy in the sleeping gut (this is where real taste lies.) A rogue strand rises to the back of
the throat tickle.
Heat - mustard pickles thick, no more than 4 inches, scalding turmeric stains -
reduce the 2nd belly of an ox in a separate skillet w/butter chopped very fine
Sneeze! Blow lip stitches & undissolved colors spew. Drop on unsuspecting surfaces, tangle up in lone letters light
enough to be borne aloft. Again, the dark-eyed junco scent.
Finish - trouble the tripe to cheat the offal, w/violets in the salad to rid dyspeptic complaints;
take care not to overheat the monstrous oyster opener
Big-mouthed bird, wattle dangling from her beak nadir. Struck by the girth of its abdominal wall. Amplitudinous avian b-
tch. If they didn’t have that kind of protection perhaps their guts would blow out. She has the bioacoustics of
a pile driver. Sexual selection keeps pushing the song louder & louder.
Feed - stuff her little bird-mouth so it hurts you as much as it hurts her as teeth scrape along your
member's pinking; replaced w/a pipe the teeth knock out nicely, turn her warbling wail into a whistling
memory
28

imago, after Christine Ernst’s choker w/pearl
I have not met the Minister of Loneliness, I hear she is a Baroness.
An unbowed mouse paralyzed, but for a whisker quiver, before the door.
The pantomime of her mother’s tongue carries on over symptoms iridescent, to a violet slit
waxing above a marche aux puces moonstone w/neither man nor hare in that jaundiced mirror,
cycling. This slit is her dugout. Locked away in the oubliette behind her quince-coated lips, she
carries nymphly on. When dragon’s blood became the mother’s milk she bent to suckle at her
own dug, back now bent from the contortionist’s complaint. Yoke head & heart together at the
throat & let the pearl-sunk flee for only frippery awaits! Speak her in fire pushed through cracks
pickling w/brine. Slurred garlands of betel-stained little teeth make violet secretions of the
mouth. On they sludge luminously round cul-de-sacs of evenly ground nubs that numb.
Let the air out of sky-limning day. Round bezeled mouths crisp about one another, as lips scale
the heights of pages prised from the other side of her skin.
We swallow swords of violet fire & self-soothing morbidity mounts, haunches raised. W/a
pugilist’s grace does the mouse step forth from the ordurous orb, imploding between us.
Lauren Kalita
29

baggy bodies
At this point hags are
aspirational, edgy and i’m sure a
-core’s been pulled out of them
i wave my apple branch, hoard seeds
galore, roll my eyes at patriarchs and polos.
Finding authenticity’s hard, though,
beyond a 6-digit code
everything’s written on pixel skin which
peels off which
reveals a
dopamine dupe.
I set out to find
the one who didn’t choose its name
begone, phone, let me concentrate on the
hag, incarnate
immediately got lost without
Google Maps.
I staggered through
fields of disconnect
until
a whale, long dead
from eating an island of
plastic
polished by the latest waves of
feminism
lay on the blue curtain of
wet salt, surrounded
by detritus and
filters from the
Barbie Movie Marketing Campaign.
I grabbed hold of
the putrefying
portent
together we traversed layers of ocean
a pickled onion, salty and
immanent
an epiphany of tears, until
skull-crushingly old
mud rose
to meet me.
30

petals of pulpy flesh
a halo: i mix them with
my prayer for my
prey
i wait in clay
in clay
in clay.
There: the hagfish, blue-purple-grey
a ladder in a sack
slithering towards
death
that singular starry nostril
mystifying barbels
its slime explodes
threads are
bulging duvets
a universe from a
teaspoon
loose skin full of
body, the preserve of
hoary infinity
knotted itself a promise to
forever escape
uncatchable,
deep in a corpse
its other name
myxmeans
slime
yesterday I went to Myxa Berlin
and asked my friend the translation:
Snot Berlin.
Descent knows an
astringent enchantment
another baggy body a
fleeting truth an
assortment of
onions and
oceans and
potions.
Lizzy Yarwood
31

Whale matter
at the VR beak of a great Golden Hind or Galleon or
Dutchman with your VR huge / crannied heavyringed hands
clenching at the lap of the prow / they were egalitarians you
had told me of the pirates for me everything that was how
you told me / inspired by the vertices of your bookshelving
units / and when they moved you to speak you spoke to them
not to me / like about killing a whale in VR I watched her fall
for days I went all the way down with her she was looking at me
the whole time / I love to try to keep up close my eyes whip
my brain like a steed / other things came to watch, fish that
should have been there and fish that shouldn’t, pondfish that /
shouldn’t newts and later deeper octopus and isopods like
stopmotion / and other things / looking with some kind of
impulse at the bookshelving units they were well made / the
rot set in before she reached the floor. Sharks came I held them
off one of them / left its tooth in me and I found it was / an
orange foamy earplug / after weeks she touched the floor and
there wasn’t even that much left / I made coffee for you and a
blue mug I mean put it in a blue mug the coffee I heard / she
took me to the floor and there were bone buttresses the size of
architecture / of cathedrals I took some time off after that / you
were taking time off when we met at the bagel shop, you
were / time off as in put the headset away as in grab coffee with
friends and listen to music on headphones / you listened to
noughties indie in loafers and I thought about the whale /
whale’s eye that followed you down as you went down for
weeks / and one day out of the blue you said with a matcha
in your / fist that thing was a part of me by the end her eye was
on / me the whole way down, all down for weeks. You weren’t
exactly / aquatic you liked to control / everything including
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my control issues you never joined me in the bath / not liking
the floating of limbs like overboarded corpses / like
something you’d seen down there in your / virtual reality
trauma, and if I asked you whose corpses you pouted / if your
ringed avatar stood uneasy on white sands then you were
uneasy on / me when you took me / downtown / bagel shop
we met at the / bagel shop as I told your parents. Over coffee
on the settee in front of those vertices you / I stayed there for
weeks you told me of the ocean floor beneath those buttresses
and she rotted / and later the sharks came I was confused by
the / sharks they don’t live at the bottom / pearly sharks
yours were you told me pearly and for all your pearls / I could
try / some toothy virginity / in the way that they bit into her
they bit into her and I wondered / what you were trying to say
if you were / saying anything they bit into her and I was the
whale for a moment / and somewhere downtown there were
eclairs with / sharks on and I was the whale for a moment.
Grace Marshall
33

Splash down
Whisper me a secret.
For I too have fallen
from the sky.
And these mirrors.
The darkness
of these waves.
These days were –
The difficulty –
All we can do –
I’m not sure how
we were supposed to takeoff
with all those satellites in the way.
Never mind.
Float a little my darlings.
Please.
I want the salt water
to hold you at the surface.
Always.
Al Crow
34

I think I feel see
Poseidon’s melt trick sends me out of my nous,
eyelets size from my mobile’s speaker, the learnt
phenom’s felt first, backing to all those eyes
an unseeing pareidolia, mimicked with intent
in that sparkle-glazed clay murder pot I’ve got
with old phones hauled in its hollow dolphin’s head.
Such active sensoria practiced hands once hot,
dusted and dun past looked by, douse now in Med
their rudimented feedback, sockets cooled
still scope down perceptual sea-wynds found intactly
leading to last year’s judgement seats where the old-school‘s
welcome’s primed to dissolve submersive pingback;
unconscious reader, conduit courses on,
sourcer to hadopelagic destination.
Iain Morrison
35

A lineage of seaweed
The soil is porous on the island.
Seamus Heaney’s surfacing again and again, the otter of
memory
The wetsuits welding a boundary between skin and salt
Our wetsuits touching the memory of freezing algae water
And warm wet skin
The week we slipped in and out of protective layers
buoyant against the elements
covering the fire in an ash at night that keeps the desire
alive
Careful not to suffocate it
seal skin socks, I start bleeding
searching for the tide times
The tide never cooperated and I feel attentive, tender
as the steam rises from my body
as I shed skin
A friendship A perforation A rock so covered in moss that my
fingers sink into
it
and I can’t see where they are anymore but they want to stay
there
A secret home
A wetsuit should be seamless but I see the thread and the joining of
the pieces forming a suture across my ribcage my gut
So I locate the seams
Forming a second skin is tense but I welcome the welts
Then, the dust inside my bones rattles the residue forms droplets
like water on wool
Not waves, no, but layers of sea lifted by the wind, one on top of the
other, swelling chiffon tugging
The soil is porous on the island because of the limestone.
The bones sink in faster.
The quarry sounds come from below and the bones hear them
The people of St Kilda had claw-shaped toes to scale the cliffs for their
sea-bird diet.
The bones that rise from Lismore have the tide times etched into them
36

They will know the seaweed closest to the shoreline is the freshest
And the seaweed tangled around my ankle and stole my shoe I
wanted its limbs to be mine and ours ankles and stipe and shins and
frond and ankles
it remembered me.
Ruby Eleftheriotis
Strong southerly winds I arrive and you do your best
A generous portion, sun smeared just how I like it
It’s easy to be here where the sonic sub-surface does not cast its
radar for risks
across the sea
it’s the wrong coast I realise but
across the sea
where my body disintegrates and joins the bones
the wool and lichen and rock and algae
I scour for your trace in my bones and in the bones of this place
scraped from under my crusted nails - your soil? Show me your
dirty makings
My claw-shaped toes long to grip to bite to clench into
Fill to its edges and spill and overflow but don’t try stop it
stone oozes no residue and seal skin is a balm
the trouble is how to hold absorb contain not repel
The chain you gave me is at the bottom of the second sea
I hope it came to you splayed on the yellow furred rocks I
hope you take it with you
Where the sea holds you and tells you it’s secrets and the tide
leaves nothing to question and the water melts over bones and my
thighs feel strong and Heaney’s otter is strong and steadfast and
palpable and could lose it’s shape but wont, could conditional might
teeming with possibility
37

it might
I go check the sea is still there.
It’s hard and tough and someone needs to be the first to
unfurl
I gave you my artefacts a history
I opened my pores
Ruby Eleftheriotis
38

insel/berg
Inverted temple in the ice, clouds
darkening at the cusp. There are
worn forms; the moment
of recognition comes too late
if at all. Rotten stone,
banded and friable, gladly
piled in front. Without
ripple, they emerge from the puddles,
sedge stirring in the developing
gust. Articles. Sympathies. So that we
might get the picture, the taste.
There are possible chained
inequalities, possible for all infix
comparison operators. It’s important
to distinguish expressions from
statements — we can’t say “I’ve
had enough”. We can’t say “no
way but onwards”. The old man
referred to is Old Nick, so called
on account of its hardness. The
old man gathers the stones
to the focus-point. He builds
the lodging-house from the ground up.
It was attentive under sky, the
workings-out feeble so I
wipe the slate, time and again,
break off from where
started. Get things in the
right order. Profit genuinely
is the beginning of chaos,
at times, it won’t even break
in a way that makes sense to me.
Splinters flake from the gate.
In that case, name the argument:
more verbose but more lucid:
by nightfall the lodge was complete,
the ice gone, faltering
calls as it spread down and
across the lake. There wasn’t
39

much to see that you hadn’t
already, but there was electrical
provision via a generator. The
LEDs brought the scratches
into a kind of significance. You
looked at the marks until
your eyes became too tired
for an opening.
the following year, the lodge
was moss-velveted, a
sprouting thing.
harts-tongue in the gutter,
mould in the dark corners
spreading fingers thru the interior.
when a traveller passed by, they
rested only briefly. A
starred expression. They left,
taking their packed values.
they were away a while. Mists
and planes passed overhead.
Minor kingdoms rose and fell.
There were the usual accusations:
ingratitude, impiety, impatience.
There were deaths, certainly.
There was nothing glib
about it. The rock head
was shifting, skeins
slanted in the downpour
and the lodge began to slide,
slowly at first. Expression
syntax is straightforward.
“Don’t worry”. Switch
sides too easily and they’ll
think you’ve never been held
responsible. When the traveler
came back by the same way,
it was not the same way.
For this reason, be careful about
your profession. Dominions
and sinkholes.
Blinks at dawn
40

in the dewdrop, or the
rattle of seedpods.
Where the lodging-house had been,
deep cuts in the earth
green over. Occasional
celandine. So stick
to the ground. Feel
your way by them,
the sweeping lines
mark a path to the sea
the traveller follows, greedily.
Gull-cry by ragged gully
rasp of sea on shingle.
Anyone can give
the thing they don’t want away,
but not everyone.
It’s incessant. There,
beneath the overhang,
there are nests, a
tumbling flight. No
samphire, but sea kale.
The traveller sits on the
ledge, exacting the
cheese sandwich, the thermos.
Yes, to observe
the loop of wave on rock
is to know something.
It’s a hard cheese; the
butter and crisp lettuce
give variety, interest.
The traveller belches
softly. It’s a calamity
to be fond of being a
teacher. Eyeing the
scraped grooves of the lodge
as they disappear
into the pebble level,
they recognise
no way but out.
Alex Grafen
41

Poem Written Through “Music Geek Track of
the Week: Cuushe – Sort of Light”
by Matt Grosinger, 13/09/2013
Distinct appreciation registered yesterday
while running beside a channel
of lake michigan
A squall bent the topmost ripples
off all waves
Uniform in the same direction
Their submerged currents were undetectable
For a moment such small gestures
conjured an interface with some inscrutable entity
A small part of a wildly vast
unpredictable mess With each textured
crescendo i felt a little nearer
to grasping the essence of a feeling
i cannot quite
1846975493
42

Teichreflexionen
The water lilies’ stems split into dozens of mazy veins
that stream toward the rim of the lily pads’ undersides
like a drop of colour on sample paper,
a static race to a finish line.
The pads populate most of the pond’s surface area,
leaving only narrow straits for the ducks to float through.
They’re the gondoliers of this Venetian system of canals,
maneuvering around every bend,
careful not to upset the green sentinels that feel every vibration they send through the water.
But even the strongest paddlers need to rest their feathered arms every once in a while.
And so they offer themselves up to the whims of the water,
the blue-black enveloping their brown-feathered wings.
The silent, calming vacuum below the surface is contrasted only by the ducks’ palmate feet
that fidget about in a mixture of joyful abandon
and a residual fear of handing over all control to the water.
The frenetic movements paint onto the pond’s surface a topographic map
whose symmetry would make every cartographer blush.
Converting circles into seconds,
an avid spectator could probably determine how long the bird’s been underwater,
the same way a woodsman can determine a tree’s age
by counting the rings that the years imprinted on the stump.
Further away from the epicentre,
the curved lines straighten into parallels,
like a net being dragged through the water,
until eventually it reaches the lily pads
who rustle at the disturbance with incensement.
But, bound by a blind kind of rapture,
oblivious to the water striders
whose ghostly dances leave behind rainfalling patterns around them,
the gondoliers couldn’t care less—
they’re off duty after all.
Fynn Köster
43

Lines on the Lake
A boat lies in a narrow lane of water.
Oars tuck and dock in a road of reeds.
A rod droops, a line drops, a hook pierced a bed of
sand.
A couple sit content.
Legs and arms crossed as knots.
A dry day dull.
A yawn drags.
A slip into shallow slumber.
Awakening.
The lash of salt on cheek and lip.
The spell spoiled.
A dark sea the eye can no longer sea.
Sunk at shore.
James Andrews
44

Fever Pitch
I am chrysalis.
I am falling star
burning, brittle veins
pulsating with visions
of untidy purification.
I am become communion.
I am gobbled up, hot
blood frothing to wine.
It forms a sea—come
sail in it without me.
45

Laguna
Mimicry, landing without
clear colour, all crests and aided ending,
we are made of light, a blinding
sacred horizon, bridging then and now.
Not one exists without the other,
calling, a finite wave which
dies and dissolves when
it has almost begun; already
it is something else.
Mattea Gernentz
46

Redundant Frequencies
after weeks of walking
in a light dappling of mid-march rain
there is a warren of small newly built houses with tiny
windows
and faux red brick facades over inches and inches of fibreglass
foam
the lobster possesses the physical means to unhook
the latch on a lobster trap
what it lacks is comprehension
of ‘the lock’ or ‘the trap’
a common enunciation
somewhere too deep to get at
chucking ribbons of pale bile into the kitchen sink
of a small newly built house
some spring day years ago
whatever boy I loved upstairs with a girl
my face was a purplish colour
the sky
not really a sky
a sky
supplemented by hospital lighting
It’s never dark, that awful feeling
that abolishes every corner to hide in
I feel about average
close to something awful
the fullness of a sun you meet only
when wrested from your quiet sea
In German they call it
frühjahrsmüdigkeit
In English I can think only of new builds
newly built grotty
47

with bad water pressure
and constricted air
a drunk teenager trying at the melancholic
heaving over a sink
drawn into the polyphony
of cultural sepsis, of rank poésie
of God, whatever
The library is an elegant cube
of concrete and green-tinted reflective glass
sitting alone over English marshland.
The archive lives beneath the cube a sea of
steel-grey carpet on and on beneath LED lighting.
There is a sequence of clear plastic boxes.
One named ‘of letters’
which contains ash.
One ‘of childhood’
holds a bit of wood
covered in chipped aqua-marine paint
possibly a table leg.
In ‘of poetry’, heaps
of advertising slogans and I
sometimes wonder if this
is the cost of having met an angel so young
a heaviness of eyes and flesh bubbling up below an
ancient chapel
somewhere on this side of the Irish sea
she had no name but the long dead druids, in their
lost theology
named her The Tired Angel, it was stupid of me
to hope for anything more from this archive, or life
I have stared into a million tired eyes.
Gosh, thinking in shifts again, neither temporal nor
48

waged
I am presided over by a heartless silver disk.
that sits in the sky and never resolves itself.
A great eye sans brain.
I am one of many objects it thoughtlessly scans.
Try to conceive oneself real
I am nothing if not an instrument of your presence
a tundra wide as the twentieth century
a man in faded revolutionary fatigues rides a chariot
‘Run, you horses of war’ he says
‘We hear you.’ say the horses.
Al Anderson
49

Lollies
Crystalline smithereens of glass are strewn in a winking constellation on the warm tar
A beaten football, its pleather panels flaking and curling to reveal a proud skeleton of
stitches, has assumed its final resting place behind the neighbour’s fence
The vague murmur of the M8 seems to petition for calm
We scoff ice lollies, their rainbow hues fusing in a purplish fog around our mouths
Now, peering back to apprehend timeworn fragments, our attention stretches taught:
screeching like duct tape across a thousandfold scraps and concerns
Now, numberless options bedevil us
They do not include the option of fewer options
Now, we tilt screenward, pawing through scentless streets
50

Drookit
If, this moment
You leapt to answer a knock at the front door
And, opening it, felt water weaving coolly about your ankles
And beheld Excuses in the form of a deluge
With all that’s familiar soaked to ruin
And all future a raft expedition
You might notice the trees whisper relief
And your heart gladden
As you drift through quiet seas of erasure
Matt Pollock
51

The Opposite of Water is Zephyr
I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer:
—Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile
yourself,
Million golden birds, o future Vigour?
— The Drunken Boat, Arthur Rimbaud
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Atlantis is the opposite of Athens. It is the failed sibling to the
highest peak of ancient culture; simultaneously its reflection
and inverted tomb. The pillared temple of Heracles toppling
onto dark sea beds beneath a billion tonnes of gravity, a
statue of Hermes covered in lovemaking stingrays, rusted iron
railings looking out across blank vistas of ocean.
As I walked through a local aquarium, I thought about the
collapse of modern western civilisation. Fredric Jameson
writing in a Mayan water temple. A silver surf rises across
London, its glass and totemic financial district—Canary
Wharf.
The south coast of England. Before Mark Fisher took his own
life, he quite soberly agreed with Jameson that it was far
easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of
capitalism. What can we learn from the sea, realm of endless
dreaming?
In Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris, a spaceship floats above an
oceanic planet that warps and manipulates the minds of its
astronauts. A doctor onboard summarises, “We don’t want
other worlds; we want a mirror.” Reflections of love like fish
lost in silver expanse. After the island of Atlantis sank into
darkness, what did its kings think of themselves? A medieval
effeminate prince, his thin wrist covered in topaz jewels,
brings a scrying glass close to his own jealous face.
*
*
*
52

*
Glasgow in 2024 AD. The water in my bathroom sink is as
thick and solid as envy. I wash myself in bright foam
burnished on the lips of the hallucinating dead. As Ursula K.
Le Guin famously wrote of capitalism, “Its power seems
inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.” I am like a tower
of skin on the shoreline of a vast dream.
I look up the Wikipedia image of Arnold Böcklin’s painting
The Isle of the Dead. Evergreen cypresses rise from the black
waters. My love is like a boat I send out into the night, a
single candle guiding it north along the equator. Tropic of
Capricorn. It follows two stars in the sky above. Opposite
sisters burning alone: hope and sorrow; water and zephyr.
*
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Matthew Kinlin
53

Gilded Dirt: issue iv (2024) was designed, edited and typeset by
Douglas Pattison and Maria Sledmere.
Cover design by Douglas Pattison.
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