NORDCities Untold – ManuscriptsLABEL © Cities Untold and the authors, 2023 Graphic setup: Karoline Thomine Eriksen, Aarhus Litteraturcenter Publisher: Forlaget ORDKRAFT Festival Cover photo: Dan Calderwood, unsplash.com Font: Garamond, Times New Roman Printed at Toptryk Grafisk ApS 1. edition, 1. print 2023 ISBN: 978-87-999976-5-7 Printed in Denmark IC SWAN ECO Printed matter 5041 0826
Cities Untold Manuscripts Marie Laurberg Nielsen Billie Meredith Silas Toft Selina Rom Andersen SAF-S2E Cassandra Marie Geyti
Foreword The book that you´re holding now - ”Cities Untold – manuscripts” - is a part of the international literature project Cities Untold under the auspices of The Manchester Collaboration. The collaboration is a joint venture between Manchester, Aarhus and Aalborg with the aim of exchanging art, artists and know how between cultural institutions on both sides of the North Sea. Cities Untold is the brainchild of Manchester Literature Festival, the litera- ture charity Young Identity in Manchester and two Jutland literature festivals in Denmark - LiteratureXchange in Aarhus and Ordkraft in Aalborg. Our common dream was to let two young poets from each city share their poe- try, literary traditions, work methods and finally – get to know each other well and form a poetic workspace that they can share now and in the years to come. The young poets hosted each other in their hometowns in the autumn of 2022 to look out for local secrets and untold stories as inspiration for new works. Works that they present at the three festivals during 2023. - Vita Andersen, Ordkraft
Contents 9 Marie Laurberg Nielsen 21 22 Billie Meredith 23 Manchester Law of Salvage 27 the day of tomorrow’s loss 35 Silas Toft WAVY GREEN LINES (SOME 43 DREAM OF A USED CONDOM 44 IN A PUNCHED POCKET) 45 - Manchester, Aalborg, Aarhus 47 Selina Rom Andersen NIGHTS IN MANCHESTER, AARHUS AND AALBORG SAF-S2E Untitled 4 7 am Aalborg Cities an´ dat Cassandra Marie Geyti
Marie Laurberg Nielsen the only thing i truly own is the tenderness i feel in a street where i was unhappy we’re walking alongside the big boulevard the lorries pulling their heavy bodies into the country grains and fresh milk, glittering bags of instant noodles, golden, red and green we walk by the cathedral unfortunately the tower is closed today the devotion leaks out into the street as i turn around staring at the old hotel i consider memories’ layers but somehow that is still too simple is there a girl on that golden balcony could she be me time is a blanket a duvet cover of roots, nail beds nothing in this city can be separated from a body which was once mine which still is dangling through the streets like a silly tote bag i wore until the straps disintegrated with time and all the living a city can so easily become a museum look! here i went and here i did in the evenings go to you kind like a glove our biggest wishes hands the cobblestones to the rain and the stream with crystals in her lashes a man once approached me right here, pointed to some seagrass and said look the river troll is sticking its head up today and a tree can seem so soft and green the water shivering by the wind i see that eye which is yours, only one of them glowing like a cigarette in the darkness of the station 9
the fog and the roadwork ahead seemingly unending one day we will be done and we will pull the men down from the scafold and fire the ones who plan to do the constructing and the executing what one receives from an eye isn’t always a look the spot on the wings of a ladybird are more like doubt which isn’t necessarily looking. but can be reading oneself into the rain meters and meters of wigs if we looked up we would see absolutely nothing on a bar, later written on the inside of the bathroom door: husk på at nogen også har elsket dig like an afterthought i am closer than ever to photographing my eyes the houses dream us forward like shields in the night the dark takes a bow and gets ready for its ebb i got a glimpse of the underside of the world the mechanics of it all i saw a surveyor in aarhus with his big yellow tripod i wonder: do they measure the hill often to investigate its rise, and if might collapse and flood the harbor and fill the gaps between the good ideas and the glass facades which currently are directing the wind like one would an orchestra 10
the course of oxygen: the runners are coating the world in verdigris everyday we buy more bottles and drag them home we measure the fire i listen to the radio a man says it’s trench warfare in europe the leaves along the pathway stick together the picture fades i wear out the fantasy the station is quiet, the warmth from the busses like the warmth from a wash house 11
alongside the gravel path on egholm chamomile grows what if we have no wish to be heard what if i don’t have a story a story is something i’ve often wished to get rid of i pick apart the little yellow buds the smell reminds me of my mom and the psych ward it’s sunday and like the church bells i make sure to ring a long time to insist on the being necessary the way light falls out of you like a small nugget of hash in aalborg i was too sober to lie down on the ground in the middle of the street and too drunk to call my mom crying shepherding a night the flock between the lips of the hydrangeas i want to wake up in my own bed and hear you snoring i want to wipe the condensation of the window sill that has been dripping from the window panes all night i want to dig up a time capsule near the local school find a picture of some kid i never knew and a piece of toilet paper with a lip-gloss mark on it in middle school poetics i was a drop of blood and I guess you were a football player 12
retracing my steps on google maps a premium solution ofering itself to me somehow only grammar sticks conjugating sadness: weeping, wept, sleeping, slept dido still grieving, me looking homely from one eye to another: i ran like an antidote through the streets home from the bar where no one smokes and the air carries nothing this has been my meadow report i bet stealing is difcult here i heard england is the country with the most surveillance out of all countries in the world but i am no one and therefore, have nothing to hide 13
i would really like, not anything the thing with tears: you can sufer in any city. you can never hide from anything list of crying or near-crying: in front of a church in a big square in a library on a walking tour on walking tour in a bar in a museum in an airplane under something turquoise (heavy, like stage curtains) then breathe, reel in the air lip: the railing of the mouth the permanent way you walk along to find the way home: newly planted gardens, the sound of a kettle if i were to be correct a man pulled a bluetooth speaker out of his pocket and started playing something that had to do with the street i don’t take in trivia but it was like a church beneath a church i know a summer and winter passed before now like a pair of dirty soles of feet running down the stairs i know the sounds of car tires get louder when the road is wet 14
which means that cars are louder when it rains i know the custom of beginning lectures a quarter of an hour after the advertised time is something i imagine loosely attached to church bells in cologne, which is not here and also very loosely tied like walking in the rain, a bracelet i know lysistrate might as well have ofended. there’s karaoke in the pub no voice can actively defend itself against the accusations of others. see: the man holding that mic with a quiet madness in his eyes that he does not want to go home people have their own problems and that’s important to understand “oh i don’t remember many dreams, only nightmares” someone said in a bar almost perfect meter 15
at the breakfast bufet downstairs i am almost home and i shall remember that i can see you in time and through time also insanity: deleting a sent message and that song: are we really happy here / with this lonely game we play i guess it should be understood sharply like mint the parody and its consequences juice and eggs “good morning” it says in seven languages written on the wall the men in crisp shirts head towards conference centres it’s raining and the limestone is growing heavier from it the books in the old library are falling apart someone is fighting to conserve them but skin contains oils someone (a man) says something is beautiful and the rain follows us to a chip shop where i see a poet buy a berry flavored drink drink it proudly but without enjoying it and heard a man refer to me as another mans missus that is an anachronistic confidence and another: a sex shop with white saloon doors when i place my room card into the holder 16
the tv turns on a yellow tram drags itself towards piccadilly the other stations sound just as silly and all look as yellow you can’t see the beauty of a city you know too well you have to be a stranger or very tired something with russian formalism and the fan in the bathroom runs untiringly the city feels so small and then and then another street someone shouting love! a whole quarter emerges, the city hides inside itself like a snail i cough something up in front of a greggs there are glaciers on tv i think my source is more potato harvest than ice yes! just grow so green from time i talk to my mom on the phone and she calls me pathetic in the original sense of the word hopefully i get it now. a city is time on the surface of itself like a system of coordinates it has two axes: misery and bricks time collapses it into a single point like me and green 17
i met sappho in the gallery she was tired of playing her lyre i get it, love i’ve also recently received a pleading look just before my stop during the hug i lent a bit of my cheek to this neck conscience is a bad starting point for action leaves are a bad starting point for bread and andromache looked so lonely in her night blue cape as close as one gets to anger like dead wasps inside the figs to hold oneself with the world pure eventuality 18
here we have a pub in a building from tudor-times and a gothic church where my colleague cries and takes a picture of the virgin mary we have a beer, browse through each other’s notes sigh and have another we talk to some swedish women who insist on speaking english even though we understand them when they speak swedish one of them is a policewoman how does one respond to that we stare at the church for a while there’s a big concert tonight: vivaldi’s 4 seasons i fear my notes (when read aloud) sound like sentences spoken in the confession booth its autumn the old buildings simply seem overlooked, like a bad shave the skyscrapers built on the smooth skin 19
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Billie Meredith Manchester It breeds our nature and shapes us Bricked womb Paved cracks Moulds attitudes of inhabitants with startling precision The freely running constant in its skyline mini miracles Glaciers of glass shadowing cornered kiosks A toy’s graffiti next to an artist’s spilled heart I’ll claim my beloved, in all its ever-changing glory It’s funny its forgotten that we built this city too Cotton is king The queen is quiet And oh how your money was easy Have your side-eyes remember that this city built you Manchester’s sky, pallid and lazy-wristed Tattoos know-how into the sleeves of every other stranger Crudely woven into the seams of what is home These old stones hold every memory of our one day summers The unity when the unimaginable implodes These bees can’t be barricaded by revolution alone My city can’t be reckoned with red bricked favourite legend’s pick Red blue, vintage beauty, powerhousing northern spell It takes a village to raise this Lancastrian hell 21
Law of Salvage Three months earlier, in a city not her own she wipes weary from her eyes the re-emergence of the early light, finds her pendulous over the fjord— black, billowing in the breadth beneath her, being ferried from her last mistake and first consequence. The lights of the harbour drifted away into the fog and with it, every warm smile, memory and overstayed welcome became a mist between her lids, as they tightened on themselves, finding each other in the confusion, stinging with the jaded air. Nothing was the same. Her home had submerged itself in a tar of the unforgiving. Before now, she had never known the languor of a repercussion, yet here, with silks of Nordsøen smeared between them, the weight of every choice, threadbare and pungent in the grip between her thumb and index finger, dangling over the dark rippling water, knuckles whitened, unable to let go. On the dock behind, making a window of her hesitation futility hauled itself, quivering to her shore, huddled and broken, holding a crude fist of forget-me-nots and lavender, craving once more, to be clothed. 22
the day of tomorrow’s loss in my city in the stillness Primrose-willow will grow here attracting moths to its beak like this starving artist to a patron flame the low rumble a train below humming through the beams of this viaduct will keep the cobwebs nervous the wildlife tentative invasive non-native the accent of Mancunia will keep their petals pink on the off chance they sleep too deeply unmask in the night and ‘displace themselves’ the British love a well labeled flower box a serif font of context and history for how its pollen came to be here in their purpose built oasis all muse and silent protest 23
the concept of ‘ending up’ will find me swallowed and regurgitated dismembered cycles will hold vigils for each other huddled together on canal floors, staring up through the rainwater hoping their owners feel the hole its absence left vines and I are too faint-hearted to grow here, unlike home where brick does not dare take up in a place it does not own I spent three childhoods watching limestone houses be devoured by the earth they dared lay waste to the low rumble a train below will flicker our resolve I am yearning for the birthplace of something yet to be pulled from it’s safer spaces until then, in the stillness in the quiet of a steel cage where its rivets here have not been molten in too long a time Primrose-willow will grow here in the flower box of the Buddelias 1000 feet off the ground desperate to throw itself to the soil below 24
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Silas Toft WAVY GREEN LINES (SOME DREAM OF A USED CONDOM IN A PUNCHED POCKET) - Manchester, Aalborg, Aarhus There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds. – Gregory Bateson I have this idea for an art work, I’m yet to realize. It’s to be a psychogeographic montage of city maps. Certain streets, squares, stations, flats I’ve frequented. An anarchitecture of hard to place places. But I keep staring at it. And at the rest of the city as seen through translucent hotel curtains, turquoise. The trams, creeping really, it’s the electric kettle noisily fogging up the mirror. I’ve been supplied with tea, and I and the rest of the cultural expedition, tomorrow we’ll go on a walk and be inspired. I feel, definitely yes: Now is the time to stop writing. I should be sleep-working by now. Not writing these lists of lists of lists. 27
28 It’s to start on Christiansgade in Aalborg, where I grew up to be this hefty child, you see. Then continue onto Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen, at the end of which the road would take a right and end up at that scary cellar door, which turned out to be a video arcade awkward date night place in Manchester. Then you retrace the cul-de-sac. In my inside pocket there’s this lemon tea bag I unknowingly stole from Psychiatric Centre, Glostrup ward 808. As I already told you, the city is quiet now. Earlier someday an army of away fans washed over Lower Mosley St. What were they protesting? Hapoel Nicosia, mate, said the elderly gentleman passing by. The green wave was dancing and marching, and I felt a pang of being right back home alone. As I’ve told you already, what I’ve told you is this: The city is quiet now. I could’ve fallen in love then. Somewhere in mid-autumn. This rather large leaf squashed on its pearly spotlight by footmen crossing St. Peter’s Sq. St. But this is my face. Foreign currency. I smile and leave the creases be. Revisit them later. I’ll be back and read this back to you. Bye now. Cigarettes without banderols. So last night I borrowed a transformer from the reception to access the power grid,
and in the morning it must be returned. Not really elegant, though, is it, having to return the whole system? When you sleep, this is how the systems reappear to you at first. A cathedral. Bone dry leaves flittering through the cracks between your knuckles. At a dry run in the church, they were playing The Four Seasons. A line across different sheets of paper. Afterwards we came to talking with a female Swedish police officer. When you open your hand where does the fist go? She was in town for the football. Manchester is always under construction; excavation is a kind of expansion of what’s possible, a rumble inside the castrum. Scaffolding keeping the city becoming. Take Factory International for example. I ate three kebabs today then it started raining, puddles of rain water glazed with illegible neon signage; even still I love the thought of it here. 29
30 We speak of a black mirror, but where it mirrors, it darkens of course, but isn’t black, and that which is seen in it, as through a pupil, isn’t dirty; but deep. On one hand it was completely grey. No, on the contrary glass offices explain away the sunshine in legal jargon. I stare out, in place of, naked tree crowns, even more of them. Descending a staircase. And come to think of another love: You were like a staircase, and I a stone. Though none of this happened in Manchester. None of what? In the past something’s always going awry. But today I stared you dead in the eye and thought: the colour of your iris: That’s how I’d want for this poem to be painted. One shard of a portrait. The sky seen from the back room of the Portico Library, the smoker’s room where smoking is now forbidden. Outside the hotel. Now the man with the detergents
arrives in his van. All the different soaps. He slowly unloads, local time is 03.24, I note, as if writing home. In the taxi we talk about football without saying much, as we slowly overtake an ambulance, silent but with the lights on. Chlorinated tap water. Held in cupped hands. Balance nerve. Even at the restaurant last night. An open fire on the heath! I dreamt of an open heart surgery just to put it out. And in the taxi I dreamt of you entering. Closing the door almost completely silently. Removing your socks and laying down on top of me. Today we filmed half an hour’s worth of video on the steps outside the library while the others took part in some workshop. A lonely police car parked in the middle of the square. Some kind of uni students protesting in jest. Dressed like robots. And here I was staying sober for the revolution. Then with half an eye on a statue of Friedrich Engels, with folded arms and triumphant, I eat and let Manchester Literature Festival handle the bill. I think 31
32 poetry might set us free. And that that’s either by listening, leaving or burning down all semblances of a school. And if you leave, you’ll never be welcome back. To hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic: Is this really the ideal of poetry? And continuing on through the cellar, you’d reappear in the Latin Quarter in Århus. Seen from the ground, these cartilage baroque streets intertwine themselves pretty easily with the old centre in Aalborg. Stupid drunk, I’ve walked these streets as if in a construction of a poem spewing politics with classmates, getting our feet wet in edifying vitriol, pissing ourselves listening to ourselves. As we returned home to different beds aplenty, rhyming adverb-forming suffixes like some kind of camouflage. I’m ashamed to say all I have to say or so I say as I lick the cutting room floor clean: Manchester is always under construction.
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Selina Rom Andersen NIGHTS IN MANCHESTER, AARHUS AND AALBORG POETS walk onto the stage. Archetypal noir dress-code. Trumpet. It might be variations on the Matador-theme song. With a lot of improvisation and dudelu. POETS position themselves in a loose line? A poet walks to the front of the stage. POET And then a cloud came upon the moon... and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it. No trumpet sounds when important decisions in your life are made. Destiny is made known silently. I looked upon a desolate shell... with no whisper of the past about its staring walls. We can never go back to Manchester again. 35
That much is certain. But sometimes in my dreams... I do go back to the strange days of my life... which began for me in Aalborg.... A poet gets a call. DETECTIVE-POET Yes. INSTITUTION We have a job for you Andersen. DETECTIVE-POET I’m retired. INSTITUTION we can’t do it without you. DETECTIVE-POET I can’t INSTITUTION this time it is personal for you. This time, it is something we don’t even know we don’t know. 36
Poet needs a moment and faces away from the audience. DETECTIVE-POET i knew only a few steps i needed to take to enter into this city once again, like a few steps on the carpet will dry your wet feet. but i could not take them. I was a retired poet. Not because words didn’t still get me up in the morning. Because they didn’t do that for anyone else. Rain. An old friend greets me as I pour myself a drink. It has been a long day of uncovering the secret of the city. I turn on the TV looking for clues. Today’s magazine will often give you more hints than years-long surveillance of your target. an old white man in an English gardening show – peak national reliability, I think, but, as I sip my drink, I realize I must dig deeper. The man was looking straight-ahead as he described a British garden. I moved to the side in the bed to better observe him unnoticed. I gazed upon this crooked mega-face of the face-altar that continually appeared in front of me I thought, life seemed a reasonable length to him he had lived every stage of life acceptingly i deduced that he felt young when he was young and he similarly seemed to feel old as an old person. Feeling at home in the pace of every passing second wasn’t that increasingly suspicious? A hunch made me jump out of the bed, grab my coat and run out the door TV still on, my silhouette stayed behind as the suspicious man filtered through the screen in my hotel room as fugazi filtered through the vibrating plastic inserted into a suited man’s ear holes I passed on my way through the hotel lobby as water gushed through taps all over the city I, a poet, searched for a bench. This city had none. people stood on the sidewalks to chat to each other As a poet I felt that everyone around me endured much to talk to each other in the street. To listen to others, I must be hand-fed fruit whilst on an outdoor couch. Aarhus is full of benches and people not wanting to talk to each other increasingly concerned about their current and future couches. i wish people would be weary of purchasing things don’t ask for money for a cigarette or a minute 37
this phenomenon is being described on a power point as a cause of the fall of our civilization in a hundred years in a textbook a series of images of human hands exchanging a coin for a cigarette on the aalborgian concrete peninsula is accompanied by elaborative text still looking for a bench, i told myself i can’t do what i am getting paid to do. ”At the round earth’s imagined corners, blow your trumpets, my angels...” people in Denmark don’t know their poets. In a Danish school you barely find a tambourine. So how was I supposed to find a secret in a Jutland town? ”Andersen here” ”have you obtained the secrets?” ”I need one more day” ”goddammit Andersen! Culture must be progressive, culture must search and destroy, in words. Remember, it is untold. Do not search in what has already been told.” svartone. STAR POET i byen Aalborg gik seks Digtere og havde deres liv de var trætte og de mangler en øl i 1983 kunne man hvis man havde sig et liv sætte sig i en bunke chips ude på bænken foran rådhuset eller i Kildeparken lugte til en gammel mands armhuler fordi han svarer desværre ikke på ens sms’er. hash var desværre ikke blevet opfundet dengang men chips var. det var noget men ikke nok, det var svært at finde på noget og lave men der var masser af chips spredt i løvet en sen efterårsmorgen hvor vores helte dér gik i lyset og havde tømmermænd og havde været på museum, men en af de sexy girls havde valgt at gå ud i parken for at mødes med en pusher i stedet der ville sælge hende noget her. BIKE POET hej, hvad skal du ha STAR POET de kører ikke tilbud i Aalborg? 38
B-P Nej det gør vi ikke det er 200 per pose. S-P Nå så du kører på cykel. B-P Ja det gør jeg. STAR POET Nå men skriv hvis du vil ses senere. DETECTIVE-POET it had to be a secret. It’s in the job description. I honored it. I didn’t tell anyone about cities untold. This guy was a lead, and I couldn’t blow my cover. All night I thought hard and long at the bodega....... I Aarhus kan man, hvis man er rigtig irriterende, give et blowjob ude på kvindemuseet toilet. I Aalborg kunne man cykle rundt og sælge hash eller gå på arbejde. Men hvad kunne man ellers? Hvad bruger alle disse mennesker deres tid på? It was that which the city didn’t tell me.... couldn’t tell me? DAD POET so, what’s it about? POET Uh, it’s a secret. DAD POET what, you can’t tell me? POET Uh, no. my job is to go and find out the secret. 39
Soon it dawned on me that it didn’t really matter if I wanted to tell anyone about this secret of the city.... I couldn’t! It was impossible to explain. I felt isolated, drifting between Aalborg, Aarhus and Manchester.... a half-eaten sandwich on a public transport seat, the unusual opening hours of the JF Kennedy Arcade... everything and nothing seemed a clue to me. I did comparative lists of the three cities.... colors, waving-nodding-smiling ratios, difference in curvature, likelihood of war parades, bus- and train schedules.... Despair came over me, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you. Like so many named places in Europe it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts- the intense desire to count other people, shoppers, workers, access roads to what specificity a city hangs tightly unto. The need to be known. I felt sucked in by this drama like an upper lip into a mouthpiece. I woke up the next day with a headache. ”a real man always swallows his vomit” my mom’s voice sounded in my head. I needed recommendations. Soon, I was mysteriously recommended a ”madperle”. More precisely, one of the city’s ten best mad pearls. I looked and soon found the Café Ministry. So, Denmark has a ministry for cafés. This did not surprise me, but I still did hesitate to go inside. The institution that was paying for investigating this city untold..... Weren’t they employed under the ministry? And did they mention which ministry? Follow the money. But first, I had to test the waters. ”Yes, hello Andersen” ”I was thinking, should we meet next at.... the Café Ministry?” ”Yea sure” ”alright, see you there” Wow! What was I supposed to make of this?! My investigation was burning hot. TO BE CONTINUED 40
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SAF-S2E Untitled 4 It’s funny how home follows you Sentiment becomes sentiment because it lives beyond the tangible, The smell of piss in alleyways becomes nostalgic And complaining of the weather becomes culture Full English brunches or smørrebrød at tower tops How fantasy can be normal and it makes me question homesickness How insults can be as comforting as a “morning love” accompanied with a smile My friends crafted disrespect as affection Politeness is both irritating and a precious lifeline Imperfections are just as satisfying as blessings There’s a sense of love in micro aggressions Just like the strength behind the foetus position There’s toxicity in indulgence and cures in toxins A double-edged sword The hero’s burden How stories of wet socks in the rain can be the mirror that bridges childhood And loneliness exposes the subjectivity of poverty. The appreciation of life through envy or the fear of A face is nothing more than the most positive version of the truth Depending on perception Biases create opinions Homelessness and thriving cities seem to be joined at the hip. Bitter apples at free food stands and unmanned kiosks Stared down by bike locks and sirens Loud city centres squared up to low skylines Picnic benches, at cashless bars to metal ashtrays and brown bars Dried reggie whimpers to stardogs and back strap rizla. It’s funny the memories of home live in relatable differences Like temperatures and air quality How signs of petty crime allow for comfort and better sleep Cities breed a certain sense of degenerateness and maybe that’s the best part 43
7 am Aalborg The air is clean, the birds are chirping The sky is blue but yesterday’s rain lingers on the grass It’s strange how the summer chooses its goodbyes I used to think autumn was summer’s condolence But autumn stands despite the leaves, Strong, bare and beautiful, beyond a mere transition It’s cold but it’s not piercing, it’s comforting like a hug But not the kinds I’m used to I wonder how culture affects bodily greeting I always thought the best hugs had to feel like a warm meal But sometimes they ought to be like a cool breeze at about 10 degrees. It’s so quiet out here it almost feels hostile I wonder if the opposite of chaos is mundanity. Or is mundanity just its precursor? Or maybe its mastermind? There’s loneliness in the cleanliness of breath Maybe that’s why these cigarettes taste sweet and I’m craving fruits I wonder if comfort makes it feel worth it to chase fairy tales To rebel in the name of love and honor “In the stories the heroes get lonely” Maybe artists are just afraid to admit cowardice Maybe confrontation is too much without a crutch Maybe comfort is too guilt ridden But they’ll bare the depression if it looks cool as fuck It’s strange how differences can create similarities How coastal rain beats blades of glass whispering soothing hellos While inner city drizzle clatters concrete turning grey to gold It’s poetic justice for our fears to be us. The day just started, Maybe I’ll figure out if exploration is a weaklings hope for honor The meaning of a true warrior? 44
Cities an´ dat The loneliness of gathering The city’s unpredictability incited comfort Safety and peace implied danger Implied fabrication Human nature seems to crave inconsistencies Suffering is life Subjectively our interactions are based on either selfishness or obligation Those who subscribe to unconditional love have a fetish for sacrifice Hero complex The concept of both sides of the bed being warm becomes gut wrenching Comfort over happiness Depression becomes home And hustle becomes nature Satisfaction pushed to secondary Imagery over reality The constant state of heartbreak becomes mandatory Love comes to serve only as a muse And self-love exists deceptively There’s beauty in the grey and mundane Poetics in the pain The city craves it While the country weeps with jealousy. 45
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Cassandra Marie Geyti cotton candy clouds in a city of glass trees, flowers glazed with lead paint, chocolate cosmos, wild strawberries. I present to you, Baby ! the first electronic computer with stored programs, or; Baby is a big machine; shines like the most beautiful cotton, shines like me in nylon, me in a textile gallery. and I just love material things; just want to buy twenty-four specimens of cotton just want to be angel! the surface of the hotel; things are glittering, neon. Baby, when we first blossom, we smell so strong, and then; you wanted me sadder, swaying in my yellow nightgown under pine trees. o toxicity, you taste sweet like dripping peaches, like cinnamon between the teeth. and in a Manchester church, the woman in a poem must sell shoes, me I must call for the virgin in my sleep; blue as I remember her she carries the child fatefully. o womb of marble, o embryo your sleep lies in the columns of the nunnery, in a hospital of dolls. the medicine stiffens in your hair, your coffin is a bar of soap. the pain you wake to is not yours 47
above the dresser hangs a picture of woman giving breast to a child the pastel blue pills you take and the headline today; birds collapse endlessly over Østre Anlæg. I think of the dove, that crashed against my window one morning in Aalborg, fooled by its own reflection, like a modern Narcissus. how I broke its tiny neck to end the suffering. the power I seem to have over life and death, it scares me, the fetal tissue of your laced panties. I am a child, constantly plucking snowberries or licking a sand morel. and I want to have a memory of this place, that doesn’t involve you. it doesn’t even have to be real, could be in Teglværksgade, one day in september; a pink thaimassage. the street smells sweet, perfumed of incense and on the surface; cherry blossom. or, at Nordre Kirkegård, a raven picking someone’s vomit of yesterday, it seems like such a natural reason to cry, the horizon that glistens, the crucifix of a newly found church. 48
my heart is a wreath of marble lilies and I imagine him; so much depends upon his face in the glassy light of my memory, or; so much depends upon buttermilk blue dreams. these silky nights in town I produce nothing much here, no poems, no daughters. a passion; to eat mcflurry in skinny jeans at Nytorv, smear the heart in sweet salt scrubs, kiss someone’s boyfriend in the bathroom of a bar. and now, somewhere, I foam to white skies on the sea; masturbating a glitter, sticky like pearls. I go back to afternoons, back to the boy who smells like tea cups make angels of my body in the snow for you; I am endlessly melting. carry the embryo on my eyelashes, this milky white, dream daughter that has been in the womb, now is a mouthful of lavender, a stuffed animal lost between the disco lights of Jomfru Ane Gade. And me, I can tell you about other things you can lose in a city; lighters with lemons on them, one of two earrings with freshwater pearls, a virginity. 49
sweat glistening men at the bar of le coq I am luminescent; sipping cherry coke. tonight the sky is a giant orange that I can peel the skin of, but I won’t. you can hang me on your candy necklace for I am a nun, never have I been so pure. he loves to buy me beautiful things; like lilies, lilies, and so many silks. me, all I love is; to run a finger over an Adam’s apple, foam up in the arms of great men, shine like blue glass in your memory. last night I dreamt of teeth growing wild in the cavity of the mouth where the tongue should lie, and today, today the hyacinths died; they were too purple anyways, they hurt me, like the four seasons in Manchester Cathedral the alliance of the gothic and the rain in a church filled with eggs of gold that blossom. I am the egg, definitely the egg, for breakfast, too soft-boiled not even the white has set. 50
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