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Jonathan Gibbs

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or the Painted Grape (Galley Beggar Press).



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Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Sight’

Book Review

February 2018

Jonathan Gibbs

Book Review

February 2018

Jessie Greengrass’s debut story collection caught my eye with its delightfully extravagant title, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to...

feature

May 2016

Cinema on the Page

Jonathan Gibbs

feature

May 2016

Film is a bully. It wants to make its viewers feel, and it has the tools to do so....

DEDICATION   Flamingo, urchin, bestiaric beast: Paroling city matters, you re-form From pigeon’s dirty feather to a quill   A parlour game: we reach the dovetailing Between those singing spasmic pities that We summon, and the dank urbanity   You wreak It comes to punish this reserve Love: whether zoo, circus, menagerie, All matters of a name more so than form,   Let us rush towards autowilderness, Strifed with wet, chaostic humours 1 Erotic prescience : I sense us : one   We’ve taken flyte, so let us rest in shelter, Into the original of the world, Nothing can stop our loved country from mattering   ONE   *   There is a woman turning a woman turning itself on   Sick hydra starting up    I dream of sea becoming seaworthy to sea   The sea drownsy    in its offensive capability   Drownsy Baby        thirsting in its sleep        Hush now   Totemic fetish or mnemonic logo    :    her offensive cheep    :    untid’ly starting up for the tide    :                cheap   *   You cannot scry in your own silver when its ripples split the vision   They cannot peer into a depth they’ve mined        and filled Selfsang in their own gags        Dull drams overfilled —spilling unward   Eat your eyesight, bastard            Ring yourself unfit   *   Q: Where has this water gone? Why disappear?   A: Add an arch to the middle of valour There’s your answer       In the mean time, build a city        Then build a countryside for balance   Now, not sea at all                They become   ardor’s coldened shoulder            Ardor eccentric Radiating inward   Throttling at different purposes and speeds   *   TWO   An altared state urned in a loss of verse Severed then served with coming of the morning My love has earned this insurrective swerve That seeks to crash the calming of his mourning   *   You rest inequality   If I was embedded in a painscape, it’d be different   Q: Where do you rest? A: Camped out in the bedazzled house of his runtish fantasy   His House Believes   As it is now, there is an asterisk to every kiss     Let me rest in that nest of those pink, electric branches   There, there is safety   *   THREE   To have a handle on something is to have the capacity to turn it on or off   *   What I    cuse him of I    cuse myself   *   When they are together, their shape is endless and content   The sea drinking the sea                    The sea is drinking the sea   *   The vulvic octopus dies with her young Meanwhile, I:    waste    with my    youth   The staggering dear does not accept my hand, fawning

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or...

The Story I'm Thinking Of

fiction

April 2013

Jonathan Gibbs

fiction

April 2013

There were seven of us sat around the table. Seven grown adults, sat around the table. It was late. We had eaten, and we had...

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poetry

February 2014

Promenade & Dinner: Two Poems

Joe Dunthorne

poetry

February 2014

Promenade I was pursued by an immersive theatre troupe two of whom lay on the textured paving and performed...

fiction

Issue No. 17

Harmless Like You

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

fiction

Issue No. 17

Interstate 95, September 2016   Celeste sat on the front seat wearing her black turtleneck sweater. She had three...

feature

June 2017

Oberhausen Film Festival

Tom Overton

feature

June 2017

Such film festivals – those extraordinary clusters of images, transports of light, of virtual worlds scattered across a real...

 

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