from Issue Eight, November 2025

from Issue Six, April 2025

the living body, which is the concern of the administrative apparatus of the state, is the tangible sign of a still-unrealised power, the simulacrum of not-yet-objectified labour

a sunrise was slick with scars. state forest: juicy fruit & genital petroleum. itch above hole leaking again, ass anonymous, dick burrowing into the mattress, it’s for pissing. sky the colour of the noise of the atlantic. labour-power: fish-heads on ice & scotch bonnet in plastic. there was a prettiness to waking up, dazzle ships cavorting off y rhiw’s upright twilight, fathoming how you can stretch fabric, watching her suck him. pleasure like seagull shit. exchange-value: maternity dresses & waist-trainers. a pyjama-frosted newness, u-boats swelling frigid in botallack’s lichen-tendered austerity, harbouring getting the strap from this girl, cock in silent condensation. the window is cold as the heavens are bruising. general intellect: empanadas & josey wales. a rimmed-out de-flowering, trawlers frisking with morvah’s cowpat-disembowelled dew, plumbing the late-dawning effluent of perfumed armpits, hoping the screen shows that she wanted him in her butt. you could say good morning. phoneglow: elephant & castle. a distended form of knowledge, traffic derivatives guttering through a sterile carthage, concreted puffins cuddling the assumption of vulnerability, asked to believe that someone would need to hold this form, fuck it, long for it like they had known it before.

having become nothing more than a place for immediate self-affirmation

               you were
              sharing,
 newly underworn

in its feline
anti-climbed
808-rattled

   leather turf
for leslie feinberg
in healing steam, nude for

oversized & 
 itchy & kiss-asking, 
        your aftershave

dreamworld.
frostbitten
philadelphia

an exodus
  & envied, teased
scores unacrobatic,

          an aporia
& soft, spit-swollen
dozes

sunlight
bleached
norwood park

  your becoming
in old autumn fingers,
      my physical void.

Susie Whittaker (she/they) is a writer of poems from South London. She writes from a queer Marxist perspective about alienation under capitalism in the urban environment. They are currently particularly influenced by Paolo Virno's The Idea of World: Public Intellect and Use of Life and the music of Giggs. She enjoys using obtuse basketball references in her work. They have been published by Passion of the Weiss, Impossible Archetype, Ouch! Collective and Fifth Wheel Press among others. They can be found @acidsynthline on Instagram.