Poetry The apocalyptic old testament destruction of the mythical city of Gomorrah becomes a hedonistic mimesis of a sexual encounter in this poem. It hurts as we unpeel; This incendiary, this spitfire. Chaos rumbles from the clouds And swallows the entire city In bleach, in arsenic. Kissed lips dowsed in whiteness, Erupt outward from the …
Poetry By evoking Lillith, the first wife of Adam in Judaic and Babylonian mythology Stead offers an imaginative depiction of this classical figure. Spat from the tomb In wily procession – Angel hair And twelve heads. Levitate, hungry With the stench of Poison Darkness stirs In her throat, Out with a flame. Teeth bared – …
Poetry Jordan Stead uses natural imagery and a Romantic idealism in this poem from our launch to depict a turbulent emotional period in Doe. Immolate Like a dying star In his darkness – Moonlight stings This opened gash. I wander The back-garden woods Like some white pilgrim That you haunt The redness marks my skin; …
Poetry Depicting a particularly bleak part of the year and mirroring it to a bleak time in the life of the protagonist, November is short and dark. Stitched wrists And kerosene lips, Born from this death I plunge and sink In grey streets And strange bedrooms, Haunting like a ghost. I writhe. The November moon …
Poetry Hollow Bell describes a dream or vision lying dead in the desert and watching predatory and growing life spring from one’s own carcass. With sticky fingers he devoured And picked away – the vultures Bleached the bones. I was nothing Until flowers Grew from my ribcage. Yesterday I died And then I woke up. …
Poetry Reflecting on finding the carcass of a rabbit fallen victim to Myxomatosis, Jordan Stead uses classical imagery to ruminate on death. The moths have began To lay claim to this White Polypheme, A pale opus Gentle and quiet. This little beast Is now diseased and beat With soft kisses From a fetishizing God. She, …
Poetry Jordan Stead returns to our digital pages with a brand new poem with intimate boundaries and epic proportions. ‘Antigone’ evokes the image of the mythic gravedigger to play with ideas of symbolic death and tragedy but, through a juxtaposition of images, Stead creates a bleak space which is fringed with intimations of possibility. Here …
