This is a small selection of recent writing.
Strawberry Catharsis
Today I boiled berries sweet sticky stovetop alive with splatters. Sucrose!!! Big bubbles suckle saucepan walls, too hot too hot, burn my hand on berry sweat. Wooden spoon stained red, I rub the residue into my eyes. Tiny seeds seek moisture, drink my tears out. Pink blood on the walls, jam in the fridge now.
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Sleep Bees
I dreamt lung collapse resting respiratory revolt. Two tone polka dots swarming my dream vision. Big buzzing orb-bees I swallow them like air. Lungs swell and melt, my throat is sinking into my neck a snake in the mud.
I tell myself I AM AWAKE through hypnogogic fog. The polka dot bees have settled into my skin sting. My lungs explode!!!! I wake with lips pressed against the spinning bedside fan.
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Galleria (groan)
Trapse trap through shopping centre Plodding groups spread themselves across maybe linoleum floor Slow oozing wound
Dystopian imagination built this place on hot ground. I sweat thinking about the outside world.
Bag nearly hits a man walking too close. Bodies aren’t meant to move like this I square mine up, and make route for the bus home.
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Dress Distress
---- Why am I wearing such strange skin? Femme dress on masc body is masc dress on my body.
Soft Armour
----Whose body is this?? Return to sender I shove myself into the post box
Only one hand gets inside, nails snagging letters addressed to someone I’ve forgotten.
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Waterbird Solo
Duck sleeps alone in CBD wetland. Pile of perfect feathers- where are your familiars? Is your slow, sloping bill a motion of loneliness?
I hope you are content, small bird. I hope what sadness I feel from your hunching form is my own projected pain. I wish you a big green lake one day.
You will outgrow this concrete hole. Webbed feet like circus tents and feathers like sails and swords. Oh sad duck, powerful duck! I see your wings twitch miniscule shivers and imagine you flying away.
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[DEL]
A rejection email challenges fragile grip on my own value. ((I imagine their fingers on the keyboard)) Tapping my knuckles into soft mush.
Stretching, tired of trying to fit myself into the cracks between systems. ---- Subsequent spillage.
My mother tells me she has always felt the same. Home nowhere but hungering connection to too much. Hunger silences me.
I am harbouring a lot of sadness. Drifting like a stone would drift through space. A stone made its home in my chest, I can’t get it out.
Shaking digits, I move the email to trash.
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4
I dreamt of four bodies, and my own.
A body I begin to know I see this one soft but powerful You make me nervous, but I don’t know if it’s the good kind. You don’t touch me, or I you. I watch you kiss
A body I had known before. I said “I’m sorry I didn’t know how to touch you then” as your hand lay warm on my skin. I press down on your palm
I wanted this third body for my own. I envy sharp lines and smooth muscles. We are more similar than I know, insecurely I keep this body at a distance. You run angular fingers through silk-hair of
A body moving through the others like syrup. Too sweet but I drink it down by the jugful. Your arms firm around my waist, I used to know this body too. I remember this closeness, I inhale and you smell like my pillowcase.
Four bodies, and my own. I’ve never seen my own body in a dream, well.. I’ve never seen this body but maybe I have see mine.
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Whilst being tattooed (dinosaur).
My feet are numb. I lie face down on cling-wrapped bench. ---- If this shit only sticks to itself then why is it stuck to my face? Crinkled skin peaks-valleys mirrors its plastic shield.
I wonder if it will leave a mark? Will eyes meet eyes in mirror and glimpse face wrinkled and worn?
I pinch my skin and it stands in soft spikes stegosaurus spine across my forehead.
Cheek grows tired of its position in plastic ---- I roll over blood-rush back to feet, my skin self is still twenty three and suffering, and the stegosaurus is extinct again. I bring my other cheek down to meet the cling-wrapped bench.
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Crucible Needles.
Needles actualise me. Buzz buzz tattoo shop, machine neon light show buzzing sun. Warmth makes grazes in my skin feilds. Buzz buzz baby! I’ll shave my head clean bald tomorrow.
Needles put love in my (skin) arms. Strike, strike through numbness (Administer numbness) General anaesthetic! Oh please!
Numb my shell and rectify it. Rectify this body. These … Parts. Apart. Needles bring me closer. Poke holes to fill void. Make marks to make peace. I can’t get home yet but, needles make home in haystacks until they are found.
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Dream Chest.
I danced with a queer man’s body, and my own. Hands on his chest, shoulders, waist. What powerful want (he’ll never want this body) Muscles moving through shirt like tectonic plates on pangolin back. (I don’t want this body) This might be a queer man’s body dancing with queer man’s body but these bodies never touch away from drunken dance floor. (Don’t touch me) Touch me! I sleep remembering his flat chest, with my hands resting on my own.
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SAM HUXTABLE 