Claire de Luna


Claire de Luna
For Alex

Just found a sequin in my cup of tea
now stuck to the organ
grinding medicine of the morning 
after Claire de Luna declares it 
licking the inside shot
of tequila 
like antediluvians
lining the seabed with SSRIs
did somebody say “free margaritas”
I want to love the salt-rimming margins 
of reading the poem 
liquefied drunk lilac of loving

Smashed the disco piñata of my brain 
just to feel something
logistical about happiness
Blake says “eternity is in love
with the productions of time”
which is why we celebrate birthdays
for age verification under the name
of human nature 
like nobody puts baby on the carousel
ouch, taking half of the pill you are
horse girl summer.

*

Nobody at the wedding was on their phone.
I think we should get married more often,
why not do it over and over
licensed a la carte of loving 
lightning bolts 
drawn on James
that’s how it starts
surrendering mood to the iPod shuffle of the noughties 
what monoculture still plays in thine ears is radio
weight like watching your life salve 
lip-syncing grace of plenitude
tattooed on our ankles
tomorrow I travel 499 miles to witness 
meltwater
come into song.

Julia Cameron says god has a lot of money.
Did Kanye read The Artist’s Way?
Junk bond celestine of autumn goldenness
doesn’t glow like it used to, cash in my pocket
starts to burn ecological moonlighting ruins
on the basis of cigarettes in process
light nutrient water recycling
boosts the release of serotonin from the pre-
synaptic cell party hiya
stuffed pistachio cookie ether,
either way. Drink up baby.

I’m so in love with my friends 
it might become a problem
doing star jumps to 
‘Sugar We’re Going Down’ 
like holding sparklers too close
to the sky, they start 
to think they’re shooting stars.

*

Alex is a gender-neutral name of Greek origin
meaning “defender of humankind”
which is why they sent you to fuck
the anthropocene so hard it turns
to seafoam. 

O God of Wine
lush chromosomes of sleep adequacy 
fill my eyelids with orange
dreamt sexuality of star speak
Yasi is reading Kierkegaard and I’m crying finally
alien pixels of being dumb
emotional girl clutter
surfing the internet permafrost 
people called me a living sim 
supervised by Anna Tsing
I was salon assistant to the 
sadness device 
of forest massage.

It cost so much to let go 
of her leaving.

*

The apocalypse is stylised polyester.
You are wearing a dress of flame and
burning up that slay would leave no
fire behind you, white
hot praxis 
rats with necklaces
of satellite dishes
beam me up softly
to want Carhartt durable 
rent stabilised limbo
of being a work in progress 
touched luminous thot
climbing the ladder charisma

I was told a wild case of golden goose 
bumps a literal golden goose
prone to memorising pop songs
buying shares in Ethereum
stomach pain from the ice crush
of so many bruises.

*

Still going strong in the life morning 
beautiful four-leaf lovers
queen of the lit department
trying to learn 
Luna checking the pee mail of the neighbourhood canines:
Bruce woz ere,
Peanut sayz hi 
I ❤ Keats etc.

*

I mean the kind of snack that happens
upon you, loves you back
happy birthday
foreverie golden surrounds 
finish the cookie to keep the peace
trebuchet of personality
the shape of how I love them is inexplicable 
like math fruit of loving itself 
Cinderace soccer ball of kicking fire 
up in car headlights just to write this
adrenaline voice note 
of Caroline’s hopedrunk everlasting encore 
volcano of yasssified gender

our bar in Berlin translates as 
COMRADE
NEST 3000
playing disco vintage of parataxis 
like putting the word ‘no’ in a poem
as if to image the jagged edge of 
snowflakes snagged in my 
curriculum vitae of oesophageal 
rupture like
hi, a career.

I’ll add that 
to the ADHD craft graveyard 
of my personal sabotage
email embroidery
flavour of the meadow 
we’re in for a bit.
I like having a reason
to be a little 
invisible
dabbing the blue idea 
of what you said 
people should 
scunnersome
boycott
the grade device until they realise
intelligence is weather dependent.

*

I was my own sister
kissed forehead 
a server farm
of purloined bog myrtle
from which 
distress is the same 
gaping brilliantly not 
like a wound just a knot
in a tree made of cloud
as you said of 
ceremony’s gigabyte largesse
gone into orb 
tomorrow
wear something comfortable
and look HOT
out in the plasmatron 
reality holism. 

*

Happy birthday, but like
in four-dimensional waltz time
trying my altitude regret
I stay really high in the hero stage
doing Barbie parkour 
while someone smokes
blunts out the infra-
twilight of being alive
with y’all so much 
spinning around 
flowers in the 
pouring rain
getting lit
lit, lit, lit:
let them 
eat chips.

— September 2023

in praise of red trousers

A collection of photographs in celebration of the vibrant and burgeoning red-trousered communities of London and elsewhere.

Thanks for D.B. for the tip-off of this excellent archival gem.

http://lookatmyfuckingredtrousers.blogspot.com

Some highlights:

& finally it would be remiss to not bring Jack & Meg into this:

I myself am a fan of the red corduroy flare paired w/ white tee or ribbed tank.

Podcast on Samantha Walton’s Bad Moon (2020)

It’s been a while since we recorded an episode of Lunch Club over at SPAM HQ, but I was really excited to join Jac Common and Ian Macartney in the studio to discuss the 2020 spamphlet Bad Moon by Samantha Walton.

Further reading:

  • Un Chien Andalou, Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (1929).
  • Galina Rymbu, Life in Space (New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020, trans. Joan Brooks).
  • William Blake, Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793) public domain.
  • William Shakespeare, The Tempest, ii.I
  • Aiskhylos, Agamemnon in An Oresteia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, trans. Anne Carson)
  • Derek Jarman, Modern Nature (London: Vintage, 1992).
  • Daisy Hildyard, The Second Body (London: Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2017).
  • Fred Carter (2022) ‘`Crude Oil Shaping Forms of Writing`: Galina Rymbu’s Life in Space, Ecoes, 4, 56-65.
  • Esther Leslie, Fog, Froth and Foam: Insubstantial Matters in Substantive Atmospheres in Electric Brine (Berlin: Archive Books, 2021, ed. Jennifer Teets).
  • Sophie Lewis (2017) ‘Amniotechnics’, The New Enquiry, link
  • Max Liboiron, Pollution is Colonialism (New York, London: Duke University Press, 2021).
  • Stacey Alaimo, Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
  • Lauren Berlant (2007) ‘Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)’, Critical Inquiry, 33(4), 754–780.

Futher noise:

  • Funeralopolis – Electric Wizard
  • Copy of A – Nine Inch Nails
  • Sulfur – Slipknot
  • THE PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA – Lingua Ignota
  • Pet – The Perfect Circle
  • Welcome To My Island – Caroline Polachek
  • Save The Dream, Kill Your Friends – Pupil Slicer
  • Autoimmune – Pharmakon
  • Land Disasters – Blanck Mass
  • Enjoy The Silence – Depeche Mode

🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝🌚🌝

Official Bad Moon playlist:

Reading from infra·structure at the Govanhill Book Festival

video by Santiago Taberna, 9/8/23

Really lovely to be part of the Broken Sleep Books showcase!

This poem is from infra·structure, co-written with Katy Lewis Hood and available here:

https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/katy-lewis-hood-and-maria-sledmere-infra-structure

(from left) our big green pal, Maria Sledmere, Taylor Strickland, Samuel Tongue, Saskia McCracken, Annie Muir 💚

Thanks to the rest of the Scotland-wide Broken Sleep clan for your gorgeous readings!

In for pre-fall 2023

Asymmetry

Gull telepathy

Bloody cuticles

Rose pearl nail polish

Poetry that is pink-red

Velour sleepwear

Claire’s Accessories

Freestorming

404 error 🙂

Bunches

Amorous uncertainty

Noise cancelling

Overly zealous eyeliner

Broody for collie

Colour blocking

Alternative gelatines

Semi-sobriety

Handwriting

Smashing an electric guitar in your dreams

‘ayrshire smoke’ from Redmonds

Forget christmas

Chronodiversity

Shine conditioner

“Where are the afters”

Upgrade yr cloud storage

Purloined glassware

Table tennis

Springburn

Sorry muesli

Slovenly hair barrette

Speed-texting

FUCK SONNETS

Crying ???

Trams

Spreadsheets

Souvlaki

Stick and pokes

Crochet cliché

Petrichor

Giraffes

Workplace napping

Random gift-giving

Heliotropism

Aliens

Shoegaze

Typos

Virga

Revenge

Chaos Lizard

Daily writing prompt
If you could bring back one dinosaur, which one would it be?

“Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, darling.” — Heathers (1988)

A dinosaur known as the chaos lizard.

Sampled frill deviantart interpretation: deep in the same cretaceaousness.

If you could bring
one thing to the hospital.

wolf dormant bodiless clover

acid chasm metric

poem made of tins of peaches 🙂

Chaos control!

If you could bring one thing to the hospital.

Herbivorous grazers, cleft lizard domain of 65 million years.

AI told me the chaos lizard was just a vulnerable being in want of compassion and empathy.

I paid £20,000 to go blonde via time travel. Girl, eat your asteroid.

Weekend workshop: The Poetry of Somnolence

Hey pals!

Announcing a 2-part weekend workshop ‘The Poetry of Somnolence’ with Beyond Form Creative Writing.

Take this workshop to explore the radical, rhythmic & world-traversing poetics of sleep, whatever your creative practice!

Saturday and Sunday November 11th and 12th

1-4pm (GMT) via Zoom

​😴

This 2 part series of afternoon workshops prioritise the relationship between writing and sleep. Exploring cross-genre writing, visual and sonic art, we will look at how daily writing practice can recentre our circadian rhythms. From hypnagogic poetics to dream writing, nocturnal missives, dawn songs and notes on twilight, we’ll consider experimental approaches to writing somnolence. All creatives welcome.

Workshop format will combine reading, writing, listening, optional discussion and two nap breaks. Reading will be provided in digital format (pdf or weblinks) ahead of the session.

For more info, price and enquiries head here.

expandable pets

Daily writing prompt
Dogs or cats?

Lately they’d been doing this thing of pretending they were walking the dog. Which dog? Obviously the dog. The dog would appear alongside them kind of grown from original emoji like those tiny dinosaurs, flowers or anime characters you used to get in stockings at Christmas, the ones you add water to then they expand with superabsorbent polymer to become a whole other thing. Idk what the dog was expanding with, some air of affection. It was lonely to walk around the abandoned railway lines and through underpasses and along by the retail park and up by the meadowing verge of the motorway. It was lonely to eat litter. It was lonely to squish shadows into predators and gull cries into opulent music. Having a dog you were present and obvious. People stopped to say the dog was beautiful and so were you, pet.

Cats cry in the mouths of children and follow them home. They take the canal route without listening to father and collect tiny yellow flowers so to eat bitter all the more sweetly. Cats had a feel for waywardness. Poised for the kill. Whispered: don’t work. Cats hated the water and their orientation was always away from the canal and towards the city. Cats took upon the gulls at night, like the mushroom controlling the ants, and this is how they learned how to fly. You’re a child right? Ofc you’ll follow.