Kathryn Hummel

South to north—obscurity to objectification. Each river crossing away and towards— why are you here? why do you stay? Really, it’s where that carves you up like a carcass quivering under the blade

You lie in or out— somewhere or nowhere. Purpose has a postal code— or a complex direction

The images of your self in the bodies the road follows detach through the clash of air and current spread out dissolving in the sun clouded by lucidity

Soothing stalwarts the trees that conceal you requiring no consumption—

the real mournful period has begun

laden down with gifts & favours

: you can’t take the givers with you.

your integrity’s gonna finish you soon

: the transit is brief : the descent slow

Rounding up 2023, Kathryn's latter-half publications include 'Shark Week', a creative non-fiction piece in issue 68.1 of Westerly and the poem 'Sharom, baby' in issue 27.2 of TEXT. Earlier in the year, 'Birds Don't Care' and 'The Hearth Series' appeared in Issue 2 of #Ranger Magazine.

In the grime of the city, under the great, startled lark of the city who are you is less than why you keep running to the post office.

Rare is the splendour of eyes that see more than regard. Why don’t you invite me out with your stylish wife? The social is supposed to be crunchy: our gifts consumed like the political statement of red wine.

Make no plans; eat no fish. No-one becomes gorgeous deliberately. We grow into bodies if fortune: our own, and later the cartridges of others. The one intimacy more peculiar than inspection; than tasting is being allowed beyond a stranger’s front door, feet unrestrained.

sober & bored—burrowed & sober from the space beneath the refrigerator I swept out the cork from a bottle we’d emptied a week before

it wouldn’t be out of character to admit I long—a little. Realistically. Read me deeply on the margin, far from proximity—

presence & absence—abscess & distance compressing the rapid change of a country in kineograph fractions of shared sleep before the call to work in solid circumference

a tune someone outside us composes though the lines in my head stay unsung what, if anything does, will it matter?

loving & leaving—in repetition mostly pre-determined, often a matter of will. The rebel root of a mocking seed sprouting through the charnel—

Acknowledgments to Thom Sullivan

You’ve left the conversation and nothing remains but a quiver of solitude. Sources of warmth are untrustworthy but your breastplate blushes like the sunrise from your neckline— the most reliable piece in your suit of armour.

Isn’t it grisly to find yourself chained and mailed to the dart line you never wanted to chase again? The complicated relationship you bear isn’t with borders but with life.

Renounce the heart, that shoddy sugar cast exploited for Valentine’s. It has a hammer of contempt; nails of sentimentality.

You’re not here to consume cups of tea as if the past didn’t rent holes in the petit point of your divinity.

The light tread over your words is identical to the campaign used to remove your skin; to detach your mind from the purpose of living with light or gas.

Everything is spoiled and the pages stick together

real gold doesn’t tangle but a ring of pearl and alloy can be posted with a single stamp no confirmation of arrival

we are all nice people here, innit? still harbouring compassion in the abstract, leaving it unframed set against a dead corner in the white hall of our arriviste imaginations

the boundaries you hold until hungry

what I notice most is how few people stick with you as if your present is all that validates your quick, resentful incarnations

what I notice most here is how often the average passes as extraordinary with enough cash as its filler

it’s hard to have an active sex life with a domestic labourer in the house

I may seem quiet, akin to dead I’m not going to bed

If bei mir bist du shoen means that you’re great

then kar sang ahap is hazier surréaliste

honestly can’t remember a time when things were pretty or felt good

do you mind

do you mind if things stay the same

Whatever it is that you want it’s unlikely to be found at the door between the second and third stair— the blinking button sticks at a floor you might claim to have loved more, elevated—

Promise lives there— not of homely meals, bright lighting or a full-length settee to couch every body as firmly as they demand

but of plenty rich and strange the menu only limited to your own budget and bag size— decorated, occasionally sanitised with a nest that bears my name and a suitable chair

a bend in the atmosphere so cunning you have no way of guessing its next turn—all you have to do is take or discard

towel, kettle, candle for your numb senses— the invocation of any random godlike thing to protect you during your stay

linen—clean pages fanned out into a yawn and temperate ceiling fan speeds

Come calling make the journey and you’ll never be denied—

anything you need is not everything on offer but there is strength in the welcome— the hostess mimicry began at a young age— a skeleton still remains

and enough space to dream you could do anything— even beyond the rich, the strange

Wind down like a music box until your melody plays in retrograde, until your boundaries can be traced—

the journey back is nothing compared to the comfort on your inside and the rate, it’s always fair—

I don’t know what it is that keeps closing, then blowing clear : I’ve run out of masks to assume for the time between the rains : between the time of waking and realising wakefulness

a defiant reel projected in a dark room housing no-one : the fullness of knowing almost-happiness : the roles we reluctantly play now: their indistinct subsidies of a future mood

I clutch : these assignations : from habit like the hand of someone distant or some small key of understanding I embody : somehow: for people or places : encountered for one instant :

For Gabrielle

Ritual sets us onto ourselves gellid in procrastination

replacing not fulfilling definitions

the empty cartridges of a bulleted list

that neither sees nor hears

our instinct for preservation

killing’s simply the opiate everyone is doing

like the long hems and long hair

a prescribed pastiche of femininity

here we are finding instant news with the help of convention and gin

embracing distance has skeletal comfort

though its bones are the bones of our kindred

a long silver of hair clinging to a dress worn there

I am weakened without your brazen spine

bracing us both

There's a clown in every town --