In this week's episode, we spoke to Sylvia Christie and Andrew Griffin about the latest issue of Aviary, the zine equivalent to a Christmas stocking full to the brim. The podcast also includes original readings by two Aviary poets Clare Mohan and Jack Belloli.

You can listen to the podcast here, and read the featured poems below. 

Copies of Aviary are still available. To get one, just send an email to aviaryeditors@gmail.com.

Parenthesis

by Clare Mohan

How is it that (I)
cannot speak am -
Unable, Unthinking
(of it all) my stone
mouth-gape is empty
un-willing, un-worthy un-witting
un-wanting. (I)
stand
on the edge of the breathing in
with an (i)
Unbroken ego unblinking ergo
the monotony of this startling voice
on the stillness. Kickstart! Me
into an anguish of anger and if (I) smile
it’s only a momentary movement of muscles,
the twisting of zygomaticus major and minor, or risorius,
the tasting of tongue,
it’s a jump into (nowhere) from (nothing)

This is a poem about tadpoles kept in a jar

by Jack Belloli 

(and I apologise in advance

for what I’m about to say).

 

I’m writing it because I’m sick to the core

of my usual charade of praising kings. I’ve turned

whole verses to measure out their steps. Once their campaigns

were over and they’d undone their boots,

I’d eulogise each blister on their soles. I arranged their empires

between the lines, expecting someone to fold the atlas out

and pin it down with upturned cups. But this got dull.

 

Besides, I’d always felt something of a fraud. I’m not au fait

with princes. I pinched bits, instead,

from guys serving coffee, over-excited types, drunks

snatched from the other end of a bus, and those men brave

enough to tell the same joke every day.

The royalty spiel was a glitch. My hippocampus

clearly works like a prism – and all those unfortunate souls

got caught in the flashes, and came out too violet to be properly known.

 

Unable to sleep last night, I read these old epics out into

the ansaphone, then played them backwards. My voice returning

belonged to an eight-year-old boy who’d scuffed his heels

in too many orangeries and assembly halls. He whined

for a little dominion of his own. So things shifted.

 

At this point, I’d have liked to request your consent, or

at least assure you that you’d still be distinctive

for a brown smear. But I’m already staring,

filling your thickened eyes up like a moon. You must realise

now that the curve of your horizon

is my finger. Stretch for it and I grin; it ripples

and melts my face.

 

Please don’t attempt to answer now, little

thing. All I need you to do is to kick and breathe in.