Brooke Kolcow reads an excerpt from "Eat Your Heart Out", now available in Wrongdoing's first issue5/17/2021
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by Becki Hawkes. There is so much to relish in Carson Sandell’s work: these are poems rooted in both the natural and the supernatural, delicately sensual, designed to suck a reader in, bind them with sharp, vivid imagery—and put them firmly on edge. I loved the opening to “Poltergeist”: the way its evocation of longing and romance—“I sense your honeysuckle heart”—turns to violence in the line that immediately follows: “is ripped like ghosts from graves”. It’s both beautiful, and deeply unsettling—as is the poem itself, which combines the direct, lover-like address of its speaker (“I, your desperate poltergeist”) and their intense desire for recognition with an effectively eerie final image (“…lips and fingers extract ectoplasm”). Even when reading in your own head, you instinctively read it in a hushed, desperate whisper. “Crystal Carapace”, too, is a poem that comes alive when read (or whispered) aloud: the alliterative loveliness of the title —a phrase you just want to say again and again—is echoed by similarly satisfying lines throughout the poem, such as: “Fast forward to fall/And I’m fully flavoured”. As with “Poltergeist”, however, it’s the horror and strangeness that ultimately stay with you, alongside the considerable beauty. The poem pulls us through the seasons, images of death and lost Paradise lurking underneath the fecundity—summer is a time to “sprout, but autumn sees apple flesh grow “Crisp enough for Adam/sweet enough for worms”. The final lines, in particular are just haunting: As I’m immersed in ice My craved contents rot My sought-after blood Blends in with pale dirt And I linger as a crystal carapace The poem made me think of the pictures of icy “ghost apples” I’ve seen online—but while the usual reaction is to these images is one of wonder and curiosity, Carson’s work reminds us that, while the natural is often heartbreakingly beautiful, it is never safe. These poems, so alluringly lovely on first read, bring us back to our own mortality, and our own irresistible desire to “linger”. Grim stuff— gorgeously done.
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When the sun sets and paints the sky into a dulcet pink, the hue is a bit off. Just by a fraction, you think, so miniscule that you might be making too much of it. But the sky looks like itâs melting into an unnatural wax, and the cicadasâtheyâre loud. Theyâre *always* loud anywhere, but at night, you think maybe youâre just imagining it when their song sounds just a pitch higher than it should. The locals donât say anything when you ask. They smile good naturedly, and ask if the deer are giving you any trouble. The deer do get a bit territorial this time of year, yes. Tourists have problems with them. You decide itâs better not to mention that youâve never seen them eating grass.
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Your hills have been burning for centuries. Rise! Open your eyes and feast your bare guts on a white sun molting to black dwarf beginning at wildfire sunsets. Rise rise rise and draw up a tub for next lifeâs bloodletting. You could live in a moon colony. Find out which friends were imposters all along and invent new ones. Finish scrapbooking.
TW: suicide, self-harm
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Amy J reads an excerpt from "The Temple Yields Like a Lamb", forthcoming in Wrongdoing's first issue5/1/2021
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God says when i encounter a lion i must fold / myself under him & iâm like ok big guy as if but i do & i leave / a lily on the tabletop so the viewer sensing / my absence in the photograph will know where to look for me. God says fold / & i say into how many halves? a fragile / leafpaste slivering itself. God says be good but iâm worsted; iâll only walk / barefoot when you lay your palms on the ground Leonie Rowland reads an except from "The Dressmaker", forthcoming in Wrongdoing's first issue4/27/2021
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I met the dressmaker between the third and fourth floors of a museum. I was trying to make sense of it allâthe artwork, the architecture, my own inadequacyâwhen he stepped into the lift wearing a white shirt and a pair of jeans, and I thought, this man will show me the impressionists. âItâs like a labyrinth,â I said, gesturing to the map in his hands. He pulled a piece of string from his pocket and said, âUse thisâ. When I dropped the end to the ground it came up to my waistâlong enough to explore the lift without losing my way. I tied one end around my wrist and the other around his, and suddenly it was much longer, the length of the whole building. We stepped out together, and the ground stabilized. Ellen Huang reads an excerpt from "The Sticklerman", forthcoming in Wrongdoing's first issue4/24/2021
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I swear to you, they are preparing to sacrifice me at any moment. / I swear to you, they are impassioned with morphing language differently than me / to torture and confuse like the curse of diversity at babel. / I swear to you, mere boys and girls are defying norms of appearance, switching places, multiplying into theys and thems / a threat to my gendered three-in-one god of one body and many parts. / A concept beyond my grasp of spirits and angels and singularity where there is no longer male nor female. / Does no one hear me, in this wickerman theyâve built, burning up? / I know it looks like Iâm just comfortable in my own house with the same rights as always, marriage untouched, family unharmed, lifestyle allowed / but the way sweat drips like blood from my brow / I must be burning. / I see the walls melting down, I hear the devil laughing. / At least I think itâs the devil. / It sounds like children. â What happens when I am boiled down to just one individual? / What happens when what I know to be true is whittled away? / If I am not supreme, then how can the god in my image be?
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Have you found the lights of your small bathroom on at night and the mirrored medicine cabinet door askew? Upon further inspection, the tap might be running. When you creep across your studio to turn it off, the basin is full of mossy, overgrown sludge typically found in long-abandoned outdoor fountains. Are those lichens on the vanity? You spend the small hours cleaning pond water from your sink, removing the smell of algae from your bathroom. When you return to bed, all that remains is the sound of your faucet, dripping again, and a sing-song sigh from the reflection in the mirror you couldnât scrub away: oh, my darling, you cannot run from this in a way that matters. Come on in, the water is just fine. |