Suzanna Scott

Here are some photos from our good friend Suzanna Scott. Follow the link to see more of her work. suzannascott.arloartists.com

Some poems from Samizdat #5

Duties included:

Unpicking a knot of walking sticks,
Zimmer frames, and suitcases
Containing lifetimes
To be loaded onto a red fork trolley
And pulled through the wards to the dump.

Saving some pens, a leather bag
and a photo-album:
1926 -The General Strike,
Bournemouth Pier,
Charlie The Jack Russell.

Humming along with the trolley wheels
Through the beeping ward, where they beeped,
The groaning ward, where there they groaned,
And the tea-rooms
Where they called out, ‘taxi!’

-Sebastian Rayner

Luck

Hate suppressed in everyone
should lead to envious zeal
basking in shaudenfreude.
Naturally we put the luck on others.

When actually, we wish disaster
only on ourselves.

In the best health, on the safest day
I’m waiting for the unrelated
but close, to find my number
on the back of the kitchen door
hesitate,
then call me.

-Sam Buchan-Watts

Lying Together

We started out the same. In equal rows,
straight and even lines, we sat. Men
on the left and women the right, shoes still on.
The dull background ache of bleach stained
the beds. Each of us divided, though
the curtains were open their isolating potential
severed us just as well. Except for the smell
the air feels more like a library in here, or even,

perhaps, a church - that nervous silence which
only the staff feel free to break; here
it's the nurses' feet, walking from bed to bed
that fleck the awkward tension with their busy,
punctual pacing. Yet even here, while I sit
alone to wait, I see your eyes have met.

By early afternoon you're sharing a bed.
It's chaste of course, in a room with twenty others
and hourly vitals checks, to fuck would be
more than impressive... or not, if you got away
with it. So instead you watch Sex And The City
and lie together on the single beige mattress.
"How novel you found each other there," I hear
your friends and family say, "that place of sickness

and death, it's ever so romantic". But as
the noise of your DVD fades to a silence
saying more than you ever could, my jealousy
fades with it, safe in the knowledge that you
are as isolated as me, alone on my bed;
I've just given up your pretenses.

-Andrew Parkes

Impact

She tells you then begins to count.
You've seen her do the same before
and when you asked she told you
this way she can judge distance,
anticipate a fire or structural collapse.

You watch her mouthing numbers,
but it's just a re-enactment.

Shout and she will stop.

-Sophie E Collins

Separation

At first the wrench is too much:
The fisherman trawls his catch
From the sea, watches it searching
For breath, panicked and flapping;
And the gardener’s green-fingered touch
Pulls weeds from his vegetable patch,
Casts them traumatised and parching
In the pile of unwanted prunings.
But the fish, although dead, live on,
In the cells of the bodies they’ve fed,
And now that the weeds are gone,
It’s a healthier vegetable bed.
So though the wrench, at first, is too
Much, I am happier now, without you.

-Jessica Wren Butler

this is from Josh Davids, a Samizdat reader. it's clearly indebted to William Blake and The Doors (who were big Blake fans). to me it's a nice twist on Blake's engravings. also fun to pick out the references.