The Church of Dante

Enter, feigning nonchalance, the French tour
group to hear Dominum Jesum Christum
crossover the enshrined new sound system.
They amassed like it was 1034.
Electric candles. My eyes swept the floor,
my head hung penitent that her renown
should have reached me only through Dan Brown,
a Ser Brunetto counting his tresor.
And then the mounted canvasses I browsed
where Beatrice and Dante were espoused
with Simone de’ Bardi and Gemma Donati. On
a doorway lectern, eurozone and slot,
parallel text invited me to not
abandon every hope but leave a small donation.

-Harry Cochrane

 

The Photographer

Idyll - still -
The chill of autumn sun cuts through
The knit, sit,
Fit it into the frame and cut
It out, shouts
About the pitch, the team, the clack
Of sticks, thick
With sandstone schools’ archaic joys
With thrill and fight and dying glow
That I will not now ever know
The moment stretches, snaps, and so -
A-part - Idyll -
I capture every still.

-Loïc Desplanques

 

Licking crumbs

“You know, your skin is actually the perfect shade. Not too dark and not too pale."

At this, a young girl has snorted her first line of pure whiteness -
consuming it, licking its bitter crumbs.

Being what it is, a drug,
Whiteness leaves you less whole.
It bulldozes over the 3..4...no,
the infinite dimensions of a self
that wants nothing more than the permission
to be complex,
contradictory,
confused,
unique -
speaking for no other voice than itself.

But the problem is,
Whiteness is not pricey (nor Columbian).
It is cheap. Freely available.
Floating, but heavy as fuck, somehow in the air.

Consumable in most minutes,
Shoved down her throat in most minutes.

And like the walking cliche she now is,
Weekly - she steps out with her cigarette.
Never so desperate to seem so nonchalant.
And English boys with their Englishness
glowing with their whiteness
teeter about: licking rizzlas and mumbling:

"no, but where are you really from?"

-Husna Rizvi