All the Motion Controls & other poems
Shane Jesse Christmass is the author of the novel ‘Acid Shottas’ (The Ledatape Organisation, 2014).. He’s was a member of the band Mattress Grave, and is currently a member in Snake Milker. He firmly believes that the future of the word, the novel, will be in synthetic telepathy.
By Shane Jesse Christmass.
The Sensation of Failure
There’s the Freudian slip, and then there’s the Freudian insertion. I’m suspicious, usually, when in the course of a perfectly ordinary essay the writer chucks in a bit of Sigmund. It feels like a cheap trick, performed with the purpose of saying: look, perhaps what I’ve written isn’t that interesting but think about what I’ve not written, or how it is that what I’ve written — or not written — may signify something else, then think about the process of my writing, the effects of the meditation that has gone on while I’m producing these words, isn’t that the real prize, for profound and soulful people like you and me.
Emran Mian on love, betrayal and its politics.
Portage
That night Debra dreams she’s at home and looking into the bathroom mirror. A swarm of insects mass darkening in the glass. In its inexorable turn it takes on the shape of her own features. Seeing herself becoming what she sees entails a kind of disintegration. The dream ends as suddenly as it begins.
An extract from Karen Whiteson’s forthcoming novel.