welcome

…to Samizdat #5. This issue sees a brand new cover image by the
talented Sarah Preddy, as well as her artistic impressions of the
poems; photography from Suzanna Scott and sickness from
Flickatron; illustrations and poetry from guest Americans Thomson
Guster
er and Josh Davids respectively plus poetry from high-in-fibre
high
residentes Sebastian Rayner and Sophie Collins, our
clinicpresents.com homeboys Sam BW and Andy Parkes, and
Jesssica Wren Butler - more than enough to drown a cat.

Samizdat is growing but it still

till needs feeding! Our next issue is out
in one month’s time so get down to samizdatzine.blogspot.com
and get submitting to samizdat@live.com.

Soap & Seb

23/11/09

five
SUZANNA SCOTT JESSICA WREN BUTLER

Separation

At first the wrench is too much:

The fisherman trawls his catch
From the sea, watches it searching
For breath, panicked and flapping;
And the gardener’s green-fingered
green touch
Pulls weeds from his vegetable patch,
Casts them traumatised and parching
parc
In the pile of unwanted prunings.
But the fish, although dead, live on,
In the cells of the bodies they’ve fed,
And now that the weeds are gone,
It’s a healthier vegetable bed.
So though the wrench, at first, is too
Much, I am happier now, without you.
you
SAM BUCHAN WATTS SARAH PREDDY

Luck
Hate suppressed in everyone
should lead to envious zeal
basking in shaudenfreude.
Naturally we put the luck on others.

When actually, we wish disaster

only on ourselves.

In the best health, on the safest day

I’m waiting for the unrelated
but close, to find my number
on the back of kitchen door
hesitate,
then call me.
SUZANNA SCOTT JOSHUA DAVIDS

A Note to Self

Ash falls gently on the town

Over the heads of all of us

Soft street lights illuminate

Black mounds rising like
A long cold winter storm

What was that thing out there?

Lost now without care
Buried in the putrid snow

When smoke chokes out

Warm lights embrace
What friends emerge two
Lead us to the right?

Be wary whom you trust young man.

THOMSON GUSTER
SEBASTIAN RAYNER SOPHIE E COLLINS

Duties included

Unpicking a knot of walking sticks,

Zimmer frames, and suitcases
Containing lifetimes
To be loaded onto a red fork trolley
And pulled through the wards to the dump.

Saving some pens, a leather bag

and a photo-album:
1926 -The General Strike,
Bournemouth Pier,
Charlie The Jack Russell.
Impact

Humming along with the trolley wheels

Through the beeping ward, where they beeped,
The groaning ward, where there they groaned,
And the tea-rooms
Where they called out, ‘taxi!’
She tells you then begins to count.
You’ve seen her do the same before
and when you asked she told you
this way she can judge distance,
anticipate a fire or structural collapse.

You watch her mouthing numbers,

but it’s just a re-enactment
enactment.

Shout and she will stop.

JESSICA WREN BUTLER SOPHIE E COLLINS

little neck

that last time you were someone else

my eyes were closed ‘in pleasure’

aegis afterwards you stroked my neck

‘so little’ you said you didn’t know
how it could support my head
we lie on the grass, just touching arms,
and the ceiling is unadulterated blue.
it’s hard to believe it could be this calm,
but it has never rained in company with you.
we fasten like a press-stud and you hold
my body in your shelter, screening like
a greenhouse protecting from the cold,
but I still tingle with the memory of frostbite:

he said, no-one will ever love you like I do;

trust me, you have no need of a cover.
and I wanted so badly for it to be true,
but a lover can harm even more than another.

feel the sun, you say, it’s been perfect weather

for weeks – do you really need that umbrella?
ANDREW PARKES WWW.SAMIZDATZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM

Lying Together CONTRIBUTORS:

We started out the same. In equal rows,

straight and even lines, we sat. Men
SAM BUCHAN–WATTS
on the left and women the right, shoes still on.
The dull background ache of bleach stained JESSICA WREN BUTLER
the beds. Each of us divided, though
SARAH PREDDY[ILLUSTRATIONS]
the curtains were open their isolating potential
severed us just as well. Except for the smell FLICKATRON
the air feels more like a library in here, or even,
THOMSON GUSTER
perhaps, a church - that nervous silence which
SUZANNA SCOTT
only the staff feel free to break; here
it's the nurses' feet, walking from bed to bed ANDREW PARKES
that fleck the awkward tension with their busy,
JOSHUA J DAVIDS
punctual pacing. Yet even here, while I sit
alone to wait, I see your eyes have met. SEBASTIAN RAYNER

By early afternoon you're sharing a bed. S O P H I E E. C O L L I N S

It's chaste of course, in a room with twenty others
and hourly vitals checks, to fuck would be
more than impressive... or not, if you got away
with it. So instead you watch Sex And The City
and lie together on the single beige mattress.
"How novel you found each other there," I hear
your friends and family say, "that place of sickness

and death, it's ever so romantic". But as

the noise of your DVD fades to a silence
saying more than you ever could, my jealousy
fades with it, safe in the knowledge that you
are as isolated as me, alone on my bed; SUBMISSIONS
SAMIZDAT@LIVE.COM
I've just given up your pretenses.