Articles Available Online

Small white monkeys stretch around in the dirt beneath a tree but do not get dirty They pick themselves up and dash away across the concrete plane, bobbing out of sight They are silent   …   The following evening is my dinner with the curator I wear a fresh white gown   During le plat principal my left bell sleeve slides through a rich sauce as I reach for my glass, but when I retract it the sauce slides right off I bother the sleeve edge with my fingers for the rest of the evening   The white monkeys watch me from a pylon, far away — ‘The Engine’       CAR SICKNESS   The past should go away but it never does… And it is like a swimming pool at the foot of the stairs…   – Poemland, Chelsey Minnis     About three years ago I sustained an injury, a significant injury to my body, and in the wake of this my mind did something both for and against itself I experienced what is sometimes referred to as an ‘unfreezing’ – that is, I reaccessed a traumatic experience, an instance of sexual assault, that had taken place six years previously, in my early twenties, the current flesh wound acting as a catalyst for this sudden thaw Shortly, I found myself in hell I began writing a long poem in order to manage, though I did not yet recognise the significance of this activity ‘The Engine’ was a poem about another world Inhabiting this world was a brood of small white monkeys that moved around like injured birds, like furtive healthy birds, like monkeys There was no pretence in the poem, though it might sound impossible…   In ‘friday’, Anna Mendelssohn, an important poet of zero pretence, writes,   Poetry can be stripped Racketeers compromise advantageously Unracked by the objects of their disquieted attention Work is too much trouble to those who don’t love their subject And