ISSUE: 23

Neon Highway 23                                                                    ISSN: 1476-9867

Note from Jane...

Dear readers,

I have begun a new series of Neon Highway issues that are to be

edited by guest poets. I thought his would be an interesting idea to celebrate

the variety of editors and their interests and poets of choice. 

Our first guest editor is A C Evans. I pass you over to AC to 

introduce this issue.

Yes, thank you Jane! And, without further delay we can meet our contributors to this ‘surreality of now’ edition of Neon Highway…. Unidentified flying poet Andrew Darlington is author of Euroshima Mon Amour (2001), a collection of SF poems enthusiastically reviewed as ‘poetry from a twisted mind’ by NME. A visionary novel Beast of The Coming Darkness is currently hunting a publisher; then there are reviews, interviews and fiction sales to hosts of UK and international anthologies and magazines. A live performance video (Five Leaves Left) and records (as part of the U.V. Pop Electronic group) have also appeared, and probably been deleted! Andy’s spoken about how any vague potential for academic success ‘got terminally wrecked by teenage addictions to loud Rock ‘n’ Roll and cheap Science Fiction’. Aad de Gids has a straight twin brother Bas, while he himself is gay. We’re from the ‘anti-generation’, Aad tells Neon Highway, ‘a bit punkish’. Bas is the imagist; the sharp eye for imagist distortions of a distorted society. Our aesthetics have always been anti-theatre, anti-poetry, anti-cinema = experimental, neomusic, nonmusic, muzak, the ‘die-collector-scum’ aesthetics, dada, postneodada. All that is new, strange, decoding all codes, societal, sexual, natural, literal, philosophical, transdimensional; this, we try to do. ‘We have thousand personalities now and, it shows’.M J Foster is a writer, poet and the founding editor of Inclement Poetry Magazine (est. 2000). Her work has been published in Still, Iota, Exile, First Impressions, Poetic Licence, Breathe, Candelabrum and Amber Silhouettes. Her short story, 'The Willow' was shortlisted for the Myslexia Women's Short Story Prize 2012. She graduated with a first class BA (Hons.) in Writing from Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.  She is often mistaken for Beyoncé by absolutely no-one and has a long-running battle with a squirrel with a grudge. Wednesday Kennedy has lived and worked internationally as a writer and performer in theatre, cabaret, television, radio and print media. ‘Always experimenting, working with sound artists, musicians, dancers, film makers, actors, honing her craft and creating her body of work… surfing into every scene like a gate-crasher’. Post Romantic, her 1999 CD, prefigured performances at The Edinburgh Fringe, and beyond. She has also written One Woman Shows for other performers, including Intimate and Deadly for Christine Anu and recently released her magical realist memoir21st Century Showgirl, ‘an all-girls adventure epic about being a One Woman Show in a Brave New World’. Rupert M Loydell is Snr Lecturer in English with Creative Writing at University College Falmouth, and editor of Stride and With magazines. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including the recent Wildlife and A Music Box of Snakes, co-authored with Peter Gillies. He edited From Hepworth's Garden Out poems about painters and St. Ives and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh, an anthology of manifestos and unmanifestos. He lives in a creek-side village with his family and far too many CDs and books. Lorraine Mariner was born in 1974, grew up in Upminster and attended Huddersfield University where she read English, and then University College London, where she read Library and Information Studies. Her pamphlet Bye For Now was published in 2005. In the same year she also received an Arts Council Writer's Award and in 2007 her poem ‘Thursday’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for best individual poem. ‘Her gift is to reveal how much of the everyday is purely surreal and to articulate the strange and fleeting thoughts we often have, but rarely have the nerve or quick-wittedness to voice’. Lorraine Mariner’s Furniture was published in 2009 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Fiona Pitt-Kethley studied at the Chelsea School of Art where she obtained a BA (Hons.) before going on to become a full-time writer. As a student she ushered at the Old Vic and National Theatre and while writing sometimes worked as a film extra. Now living in Cartagena, Spain, Fiona has acquired new hobbies and has adopted seven feral cats. She goes rock-hunting and hill-walking in the Sierra Minera and is currently writing a book on its history. Her Selected Poems was published in 2008 and includes work from her notorious 1986 collection, Sky Ray Lolly. Alicia Winski was born in Los Angeles and has been hailed as ‘a fierce poetic voice, spreading her wings across the West Coast’. With an impressive following in both LA & Seattle, she is ‘a provocative figure on page, online and on stage’. She is Author of Running on Fumes and works at Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House (Editor, Seattle division). Alicia possesses a craft that is ‘melodic, brutally honest and oftentimes, quite sultry’. Her words encompass strength, courage and a passionate perspective on life and love as seen through the eyes of a poet. She is currently working on her next collection, Naughty Girls Dream in Color, which is anticipated to be released in 2012. Michael Woods is a surrealist consultant, writer and experimental filmmaker. Expert in special photography and effects in all media he is experienced in publicity, poster design, digital work, prop photography and vintage prints. Also, he is joint author with George Melly of Paris and The Surrealists (1990). Work in progress includes: constructing and editing a film version of the stage play Ajax, (2011) with Jack Shepherd, and The Distorted Self – Schizophrenia, an experimental film with Eliot Albers. Soho and Elsewhere: an exhibition of photographs 1979-90 (2012) and Portobello Eye (with Michael Horovitz) explore the ‘topography of the imagination.’ And, finally, Marie Zorn is our ‘eternal wanderer questioning the ambiguities of desire, the wonders and the mysteries of the Self and the Other, the thinking body… the body that we both are and have’. When asked about her work Marie says: there is a Paul Klee painting entitled ‘Beginning of a Poem’, in which the painter offers these words as a riddle... ‘so fang es heimlich an’ (caught it on secretly.) ‘Should there exist’ she asks, ‘other reasons to write than to steal and hide, to chase elusiveness of emotions and conceal them in beauty, crafting amulets to protect ourselves from their tearing power?’

Contents

Note from Jane… 2

Meet Our Contributors by A C Evans 2

Andrew Darlington 7

Fiona Pitt-Kethley 10

Michael Woods 13

Rupert M Loydell 13

Marie Zorn 16

Wednesday Kennedy 26

Aad de Gids 28

Lorraine Mariner 31

Roy Sutirtha 35

MJ Foster 35

Alicia Winski 37

Listings & List of Illustrations 42

About Neon Highway 43

Thank you to Michael Woods for his original artwork for this 

issue. © Michael Woods’ for all pictures

Front cover and artwork by Michael woods

Front cover: untitled photograph

Jane Marsh would like to apologise to the poet Roy Sutirtha.

A mistake was made in issue 22 where Roy’s poem was attached to

that of another poet accidentally. I have republished Roy’s poem in this

issue and of course,  this time under the correct name! Our apologies to

Roy; We hope this republishing will make up for our error.

Andrew Darlington

How Does It Feel To Feel…?

(Incident Sourced at ‘Jumbo Records’ St Johns Centre, Leeds)

hey andy,
flipping vinyl in jumbo’s
Ian, great to see
bin a while, how long?
doin fine, I can see
how’s the lady? – oh
she’s not your lady now
stuff happens, man, yeh?
when she goes, she’s gone, but
we had happysad times though
partners in rhyme though
you & me, Ian, riffing verse
reelin in them years, wow!
how we did Blackburn…
driving down to Blandford
a high hi-fidelity weekend
Ian, crazy days drift away
what’s bin did & what’s bin hid
never forget, know warra mean?
flipping vinyl through futures past
yeh, we’re younger than that now
are you on Facebook, Ian?
see you there, great, great…

it’s only later
walking away,
no, it wasn’t Ian
it was Martin…

Notes From The Coming Apocalypse:
Rime Of The Future Mariner

now, inhabiting this place only in dream & myth
these conspiratorial corners of this city of wraiths
burned to the ground, rebuilt, razed, & built again,
too ashamed or too broke to venture home, yet
sing my rime I must, believe as you choose
how we stake its mouth, to hold it from closing
how we prepare our vessel in readiness
mounting our lodgings within its intestines
provisioning with stores of bread, fresh water
& other vitals necessary for survival, until,
next morrow, the whale that is not a whale dies,
& since taking upon himself to be our pilot, we
sacrifice the hyena to the bronze Poseidon-head
& wire his still-warm cerebellum into its
neural network, it is said, the source of our curse,
& fastening cables about its teeth we
haul our strange craft through gravity wells,
for our first three days together hard by
the lodestone of a swathe of worlds
we find ourselves becalmed,
becoming as dreamy as the tide beneath us
with the currents of light running so
I can already taste morning,
the fourth day we rendezvous dark moons
& encounter multiple drifting corpses
perished in the most recent apocalypse
our vessel holds against those bodies
taking measure of what stone does to bone
what shrapnel does to flesh
& what confinement does to the mind,
seeing a man with the tail of a snake
another being devoured by a crawl of ants,
before running aground in this far place of exile
where nothing is as it seems & every
truth is written in six languages, here
you must know the dead, not just the living,
yet, sing my rime I must, believe as you choose
although I don’t always trust my own opinions
I will never betray by saying we were wrong…

SPRING MILL FLY-TIP
(using elements sourced from Jeff Nuttall)

fat mattress sun rippling
spring unsprung nettles-thorn
kids bounce contra-grav
up-&-down around
in lazy bee-droned light

silver moon-scum for
furtive teen-lovers grope
no place to go, but here
in slurpy slithery skin-softness
erupting seed body-fluid stain

dawn in piss-wet dew-sodden
spilt lager and fox-musk odour
snails slugs slip-trails under ooze
spider-crawled over-webbed air
louse-lair within-inners bug-skitters

hosting hosts of beetle-hordes

fat mattress corpse-open
splits around spiral helix rib-coils
drifting quilt-continents separate in
incontinent spume of tufty magma
crow rips with nest-weaving beak
burry-down deguts rag-splatter intestines
overflow rip-mould sink-holes agape

blossom-green blood-sockets
bright blister-warts tap-root forks
decomposing composting depositing
devolve in leaf-creep mulch, ripe
slime-fibrous, seething erupting seed
germination pollen swirls,
torn in nettle-thorn storm
fat mattress fades in slow
molecular entropy
already gone…


GIANT ‘COMET’ SALE

The advert says ‘Giant Comet Sale’
so I go in and say
‘I’d like Halley’s comet please’
she says ‘of course sir, we have
one due in 28th July 2061’

now I hear that, across the retail park
Curry’s are holding a ‘Monster Sale’...

Fiona Pitt-Kethley

From In Search of San Valentin

Corta Brunita

A row of broken houses by the road –

a hamlet of the damned – marks where it lies.

The path winds downwards to a jade green lake,

soft toxic sands gilded with pyrite dust,

marked with the footprints of the last who past. .

They planted trees here years ago…They died.

The withered saplings still have plastic wraps

This soil, it seems, will not rejuvenate.

Yet one thing grows here in this barren land –

Small crystal sceptres springing from the rocks.

The Eight Kings of the Air

I walk the paths of Sancti Spiritu.

Eight windmill turbines dominate the scene –

the unoiled one groans slowly as it turns.

Strange shadows pass across the yellowed soil.

Distant they´re small- a cluster on the heights

along a track that winds its course across

the hills, littered with debris of the ancient mines.

Up close they tower above me as I walk.

I stoop and scratch some opal from the road.

You see for many miles on either side. -

the Mar Menor, La Manga and the Med,

poor ruined Portman with its damaged beach

It´s not the Roman “Portus Magnus” now.

since Peñarroya´s pipe belched toxic filth

into the bay till Greenpeace closed them down.

The fifth mill has dark stripes below its blades.

A lightning strike? Graffiti by its base

shows pictures of a cloud and zigzag line

and labels these the eight kings of the air.

We find a large decapitated bird –

an eagle – lying on a quarry path,

hundreds of feet below the mountain top.

Aeolic turbines, like the ancient gods

whose altars crowned high places in the world,

must still demand a living sacrifice.

From Baal to Jove to Iberdrola now –

the heights send energy to those below.

Michael Woods

Pigalle

Poem to George Melly,

first trip to Paris for Paris and the Surrealists, Thames & Hudson,

Hotel Blanche, 69 Rue Blanche, Paris, France. 1988.

I am the wanderlust returned,

A ghost, barely visible, a

Trace of stale nicotine smoke

Curling up spiral stairs to bed

Pigalle has finished

Curtain call, lights out

A chorus line shot-dead,

Line up metro-bound,

Cold eyes peering in dreary rain,

Combinations of threadbare lives,

Elastic snapped, hitched-up above

The knee - a feint memory

Between intervals, between my

Index finger and thumb, of

Ritualized sex well done.

I haunt dark allies, theatres

Constructed from Adams rib,

Penetrating neon paradise, a

Solitary cardboard figure amid

The glitter of fading porno stars.

Hush….!

I wander soundless into a

Parisian night,

And strike a match

From a box of desires,

Entering a storm raging

Beneath satin sheets,

Set sail my soul in sunless sleep.

Rupert M Loydell

Boarding Pass

And here's the ego talking:

Did you ever use my poems

in class like you said you might?

My travel plan does not preclude

diversions or different trajectories;

this is not a boarding pass.

By focussing in on the decay

we draw attention to the structure

revealed through crumbling walls,

the infrastructure if you like,

the way it was originally built.

How the past has followed us:

one of the voices used in this volume

is there only to quietly catalogue

the discarded items of the dead.

If you read the newspapers

then you will know that poems

should look like this. It is easy

to take it one stage further

and promote a more fluid approach

to life. What advice do you have?

How should text perform in the world?

And did you ever use my poems

in class like you said you might?

Ready To Fly

The spirits hovering over the ashes

are vultures circling the debate.

We are just selfish, each echoing

each other in each other's minds.

The problem is not deception

but corruption. The art of mirrors

is a lie, the truth is in an envelope,

unnoticed just inside the door.

We are principled but not transcendent,

live without hope of a sensible answer.

Some are jubilant, others more sombre,

most a series of imperfect erasures

revealing an astonishing white wall.

Content arises as much from process

as from subject. That process disrupts

the poem, readers are likely to flounder.

The spirits hovering over the ashes

are vultures circling our remains.

No one wants to talk about

the echoes in each other's minds.

You Should Have Given Me

My Medicine

Science fiction madness:

I think I can see time.

Using Paris As An Instrument

A hundred miles from chaos

preparing for something.

Life moves in a spiral;

cyclone trees have no eyes.

Fall into the footseps:

they're easy to follow.

The swaying of a skirt

is a type of freedom.

Hysteria

(a found poem)

'Sin the worst of her screaming,

when she would bury her face

in the pillow and throw herself

on the blanket, as if there were

a grenade in there that was about

to go off, when she was so shaken

with its trembling that she felt

like a flat, vibrating sheet of paper

so flat that there was nothing

to take hold of, no way to stop

her shaking, it became clear,

with a clarity that was not conscious,

but that hit you straight

from that trembling sheet of paper,

that her compassion and even her love

were rattled in those initial sobs,

and that here, on the blanket,

on these pillows, she was left alone,

quivering, that hysteria consisted

in that trembling, in that howl,

in that dance of hers

beneath the vault of heaven,

that this was a matter

strictly between her

and the empty space

of air around hers'

(Marek Bienczyk, Transparency)

Marie Zorn

‘so fang es heimlich an’

Veil Nebula

Is there still a sheet over my soul that he didn't remove

In his fleeting manner of a breeze

Or of a falling star?

Shrouds of ancient thoughts

Distant universes of oblivion

Torn rags are raving

Over the trembling revelation they uncovered

Before this bareness more naked than flesh

His comet eyes that set my orbit

The dance of Salome

A swirl of veils

A command to reveal up to vertigo

Upon my closed eyes that see only his image

The heavy curtains of eyelids

Alcove of my dream

Fiery orbs that burst

Pierce sails, burn ropes

Free hallucinated ships

Tear their shreds

(And Lazarus sisters

Do not understand the mystery

And dancers

Devour their dismembered God

And Veronica

Holds her veil she will no longer wear)

My baldness of a tomb

My cerement

But already flown cataclysms

Complete my transformation

Bones bathed by the light of the Veil Nebula

Home - His child – Bare

Bite

She remembers the cold. Biting. His departure. Biting. Reluctant steps clapping. A clicking of heels on streets. They walk. She staggers inside. And then a flood of words covering the drum of her roaring thoughts. They are ebony - her thoughts - freshly hatched, first born of the Mother of humanity. They rejoice like little lustful children.

Your eyes ...

Your arms ...

Your sad smile ...

The hotel room that has become an extension of you ...

Just as you have become an extension of myself ...

The alcohol, so much alcohol to silence the huge fear that pierces me when you touch ...

Let me disappear, in this very moment, on that field, too much evanescence ...

A drunk drawing with lip pencil all over your face ...

A large vertical line that you let me draw ...

Now, I say, you sleep next to me and I tremble ...

And then the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, in the bitter biting cold. His other hand surprising her, shaping a pedestal for her face. And there in the cold, a kiss intimated as an order. He takes her mouth more

intensely than he had taken her last night. She wavers. Her bag! Damn bag that slips from her shoulder and tries to come between them. No! This kiss, she wants it. Interlaced, pressed. She could die of his tongue. Not to move, not to live. Here. To surrender as if it was death, so she could feel everything deeper. Some people passing them scream: "Get yourself a bed!"

Yes, my love ...

Lets return to the hotel ...

There, now ...

You see, even they know it is the right thing to do ...

Vox populi, vox Dei ...

Can you hear it? ...

Pure folk wisdom ...

You and me, our place is in that hotel, in bed ...

So that I could touch you ...

Scent you ...

There, everywhere, on these spots where your smell is a little stronger ...

She remembers that she had asked him to bite her last night. Not that she likes pain in itself. But she wanted a trace, oh nothing much, so little, a small bruise instead of a wound. A bruise on her skin mirroring the wound in her heart. A sacred image on the roundness of her breast that she could caress later at leisure.

So, you are here! ...

She thinks of it when he releases her. Yet she keeps it secret. But she talks a lot this secret girl, while she prefers silence and she cannot say. It is in silence, that she loves him selfishly.

You've imprinted in me ...

You see, I have a proof, a bruise of blue, green, red ...

Melancholy, fear and passion ...

They start walking again, closer to his departure. Biting. She would not wait with him for his train. They agreed so. It is better this way. Nobody wants to close this parenthesis. "No goodbyes, eh!" He said.

Of course no farewell ...

You rest on my breast ...

In colours ...

He walks her to a taxi. She rushes into it. Returns to her life. She takes her hat off, which protected her all this time against the biting cold wind in her hair. Her beautiful hat. Her favourite hat. She will forget it on the back-seat of the car.

(S)Words

I.

Ah! Evil God!

Ill Master of language!

You, whose face I do not know

And yet the only I cognise

Who secludes us from those we love

Who longs to be the sole comforter of eccentrics and poets

Jealous!

Jealous, who collects us in Your shelves

Like battered flower-dolls

Watered with the poison of words

Words that we think, say

And we cannot free ourselves

Things are said, uttered so poorly, yet told again

Why speak then?

Except by this force placed in us

Strange and estranged

II.

Thief!

Thief, who brings everything down to Yourself

Who robs me of my ineffable:

My silent music

That could link

(Which aspires in its movements and chords

To the transmutation of souls)

My inner melody

That could love

Birth

Kill

Nurture:

Me, my love, the world and the roses

In a single momentum

III.

But You mighty thundered:

« Feel, think, speak up, put down, separate, define, order! »

Then like your puppet, I felt ardently

Ordered keenly

Separated grindingly

Thought intensely

Fervently

Devoted to the task

Embracing my fate of a sultry courtesan

You pay with illusions of being Your kin

I spoke

Too much?

« Think about what you feel

Express yourself

Shout it out

Don't keep it in

Let it go

And at the end

Tear it apart:

Put words between you and him »

How common!

Transparent advices from a bad adviser

That are making ethereal birds swim the deepest sea

IV.

So I showered him with misunderstanding

Rotten doubts and corrupt brain mud

With the sulphur of my fears

And my fantasies

I took the cup that You held for me as a reward

Yet it wasn't a cornucopia

But a death chalice

and I shared it:

Unconscious and generous

Innocent and wicked

Providing the arsenic of Time

To what had no beginning and no conclusion

Throwing in a reality that will inevitably end

What was supposed to float and wrap

Although it didn't fully exist

V.

And me, Your docile pupil

Oh malevolent Demiurge

I told him: « I love you »

And then I could only swallow my tears

Of a weeping widow at the battlefield

For my words were no longer mine

I love you

I love you?

Why saying?

Why detach I from YOU?

Is there a greater peril for newborn lovers

Strong as lace

Fragile as steel

Than these vaporous words?

Deadly swords!

(You have to choose, my burning soul

You can't make love and poetry)

VI.

But on that first dawn, dear

Before the Evil

There were only

... your skin

... your sweat

... my silence

The smell of my love on your skin

Unspoken promises of what has yet to come

Dream Of the Alchemist

I

A l'amour comme à la guerre

preparing provisions of oblivion

to quench the consuming thirst

memories inevitably bring

A l'amour comme à la guerre

drinking liters of quicksilver elixir

matured in the saliva of men

hoping that its bitterness

will give birth to the Great Work

A l'amour comme à la guerre

believing, oh yes we are believers

during calm mornings and nights of fire

with the same ardour

that revival will come from rottenness

painting ourselves in colours of transmutation

Nigredo - Albedo - Citrinitas - Rubedo

A l'amour comme à la guerre

one only in the multitude

of our nerves and sweating pores

A l'amour comme à la guerre

small children dying without coffins

no graves or roses to honor them

bearing the chilling image

of the future they will not have

A l'amour comme à la guerre

feeding on promises

and wishing only for those

untenable

immense

towering

that would engulf us as Biblical monsters

if we would approach

A l'amour comme à la guerre

unleashed and embraced

shouting out of time and over mountains

meeting our Janus

that soothes and aches at the same time

A l'amour comme à la guerre

(And we cry in advance

paying our debt to order

forgetting is horror

remembering is horror)

A l'amour comme à la guerre

with no fear feeling

the hand that holds us

and then no tranches any more

in love nor in war

nothing else than the certainty of meaning

A l'amour comme à la guerre

facing each other

alive

My love, my dream of battlefield ...

II.

Once

In your dream

I kissed a devoted alchemist

who vowed me then

to bitter blackness

certain death  - sudden

quicksilver embraces

poisoning fleshes

and transcending soul

otherwise unattainable promises

heavenly elixir

that soothes as it deepens

my thirst

and my unquenchable fire

III.

And I woke up

Red

Prayer Before The Catastrophe

(to utter between fervour and fever)

I know that you are music itself in the guise of a human being, and that you took this shape to dance with me. All other reasons, I don't care for. And I know that I am beautiful since I am you. Since my soul doesn't exist anymore, but became this wave coming and returning from me to you and from you to me. And I am still doubting my very existence everyday when I touch my face, my lips, but in a different way. My string is so much out of myself, that I wonder if it is still possible that I dwell in this body. That this flesh hasn't evaporated yet to join you in the velvet of your deep night. But then I feel sparkles of electricity under my fingertips, pollination of the comet rain you cast upon me. And I know without any doubt, in a leap of my heart, that this body is still there to be a vessel for your alchemical work. And this body, a dream of you. And the space of our dream together. This flesh of mine is seeing you in all the beauty my eye finds in this world. So strong is my love, our love, love. But despite all this, I still wish, after all this intense joy of contemplating you in Nature and smiles of blossoming Spring, to see the world in your eyes, to find it collapsing there, ingested, nothing but these dark pools to save me, my gaze mingled with your gaze. To bring back love from its diffuse homeland, to its only true home: you, me, meyou. Sensual dream of you that is the air I'm breathing. Light piercing my flesh, rhythm of your music becoming the momentum of existence. Swelling waters of the fountain of youth of your kiss. Then I believe again in this primitive and ancestral wisdom, that the dew of beings embracing each other is forming this rainbow bind, movement of one to one. And we are endless decay of each other. My one in movement, my endless set of digits after the comma, my diapason that I attuned to. The palm in my palm in your palm. The polymorphous creature of our love

The Sad Sister

You gave her

Some vague glances and

Kisses

Too voluptuous

To withhold

Unfinished embraces

And she surrendered

For some looks

Or pennies

Eternal price of love

A few drops of man's dew

Drained

In drunken dawns

Like an automaton

She remains

Dazed

And sated of sad flesh

She staggers

In apnea of you

Declaiming

The perfect rhyme of your lips

Wednesday Kennedy

Door Bitch

Just a few weeks ago at a dinner party in Melbourne a retiring Rock God said to me ‘

Wednesday maybe if you stopped describing yourself as an Artist then you’d get more 

opportunities? Three times tonight you've referred to yourself as an Artist' As if that was 

something very shameful and the key to all my woe.

His words slammed like a sucker punch and so I slapped him back with his own self-

description. The room gasped but I knew I’d missed his balls. My head was reeling. Why the 

fuck was I even having this conversation?

I knew that being seen as an Artist was akin to having a venereal disease but it was strange 

to hear someone who had devoted their life to the muse, chastise me for owning the fact 

that I’d done the same? I mean he had some volunteer scribe that he was dictating his 

autobiography to. But maybe he knew it was his shlong she was hanging on ? Because if I 

looked at all the stories I'd collected on my travels he did have a point.

Nobody likes Artists. Not even other Artists. Unless they’re rich they’re almost universally 

despised. When Aussies think Artist, they think smelly needy poor lunatic whores with no 

ears and no sense living in garrets off tax payers money. They think wankers and bludgers 

and even worse…poets. There is nothing sadder than a Poet. People run from them. They’re 

not worth robbing and they want to read you their poetry. It’s hideous! Run for the hills! 

Better to be that guy on his knees at Town Hall who keeps his mouth shut and holds out a 

cap looking humble and fucked up. At least he has the power to make people feel guilty. 

Poets don’t have the power to make people feel anything. Except, perhaps irritated and 

vaguely suicidal. 

So I went to the loo and videoed my feet as I was contemplating. And I remembered when 

I’d just got back from New York and was still floating on the last of my Manhattan mojo. I 

had organised a photo story with a magazine and the Crown Casino Day Spa. They were 

catering to the Melbourne Metro-sexual. And I was bringing in three handsome men for 

pamper, interview and photo shoot. I had scored myself a room in the Penthouse suite and 

dinner for everyone involved and facials and mani pedi, massages for the talent. It was a 

magical ride that all ran like clockwork until the Casino looked at the proof of the photos. 

The Rock God looked too much like a dirty artist and didn’t fit with their corporate brand so 

they all freaked out and pulled all the photos. Without the photos I had no story. Without a 

story I was cast out of the Penthouse Suite and onto a greyhound bus back to Sydney. The 

clock had turned midnight and it was chutzpah au go go…

I’m a regular Cinderella act.

When I returned to the table to remind the Rock God of that incident I had a napkin swiftly 

stuffed in my mouth by the Hostess. She tapped her knife on her glass with a ding ding 

ding. It was time to SHUT UP! The discussion was finished. And it’s not like I could argue 

because I was staying on her lumpy couch.

So I went out on the balcony for a cigarette.

The Rock Wizard joined me and said 'Wednesday I understand when you call yourself an 

Artist. That makes sense to me because I see myself as an Artist too'. The Wizard was sweet 

and could afford to be generous because he'd escaped from Australia and been rescued by 

Germans. They even paid him to perform and they weren’t a front for organised crime or 

anything! He was indeed an Artist. He embodied and owned it. Whereas I had become that 

twisted thwarted creature that Virginia Woolf once described in a Room of One’s Own.

‘I gotta get out of here’

‘Out of this dinner party?’

‘No. Out of this country. From coast to coast it’s Ding Ding fucking Ding. She needs people 

like us. Artists darling ARTISTS! But she crossed the line with her 'ding ding ding'. This is 

why people end up throwing punches. And you know I expected more from Melbourne! I 

know it fancies itself as the cultural fucking capitol of the arse end of the world but this is 

not exactly the Round fucking table is it?'

The Rock Wizard listened supportively in silence because Wizards never take sides. They’re 

too busy looking at the big picture .

Then the Rock God joined us on the balcony and announced ‘A year ago I was diagnosed 

with Fucking Arsehole Disorder’ as if to explain himself.

‘Oh really?’ I replied. ‘And all this time I thought you were a GENIUS’.

He had traded in his electric muse for a shrinks diagnosis and now he'd been reduced to a 

Fucking Arsehole. It was official. And then he pointed to his girlfriend and said ‘This woman 

saved my life’. As if that was sposed to soften the vibe and make me feel better?

If I’d been diagnosed with Fucking Arsehole Disorder the room would be emptied. It's hard 

enough being a Disaster Diva with PTSD. That didn't even win me a ticket for the Disability 

Pension. I tried for that pension TWICE but I failed the twenty point madness test. It’s very 

hard to pass that test. They’re not even taking Cutters these days. You could crawl into 

Centrelink hanging off a cross and nobody would blink. They’d just call security. So forget 

slashing your wrists. It leaves them cold. You’ve got to chop off the whole hand off and 

poke out your eye and get gangrene in at least one foot and even then you might only add 

up to nineteen points. It’s a risk. But then once you’re in, you’re officially mental. It’s like a 

club.

Hi I’m Wednesday PTSD. Pleased to meet you.

Nuts is the new black but unfortunately I’m not quite nutty enough. I’m in a sort of nut 

limbo. Can’t spit and can’t swallow. I’m one of those nuts who sees themselves as an Artist. 

Who will show you her stigmata at the slightest provocation. Who is married to the muse 

and who doesn't make a single choice without his consultation. I'm a regular moon mama. 

And I may be delusional. But I aint the one feeding Big Pharma. It’s a game, it’s a dream, 

it’s a faustian deal, it’s an art, it’s a calling, it’s an addiction. We’re back to mental illness. All 

roads lead to the nut house. Buy your tickets, take your ride and suffer your ridicule

I AM AN ARTIST!

So put your money where mouth is.

Please

Aad de Gids

while he slept the guilders of death imminently swirled

here we have the house and just now a thought of immense beauty traversed

to be vanished now,and if you’re old enough you say: “go fuck yourself,another

thought will come”. but it was a round thought as profound as gracing surfaciality,

as imminent as heralding absent light. poetry needs endurance more than inspiration,

maddening drivenness more than chic declining on a chaise longue. the painting has

great intimacy. all is done with “old” colours,rich ocres,greens,browns. the brush

could have been tipped with ash. it had this anciennity and timelessness. a frozen

chamber of faith and philosophy. it has certain naiveté in style but almost deliberately

so because its impact is grandiose in its stillness. a bearded jewish mystic lays vastly

asleep in his bed,seen on the backwall. the room is painted as if on a stage. not much

nécessaires cloud the image of bed and table,chair,window,alcove with three books.

a washing vase and basin,a pot in the window,all painted fromout the heart with

meticulous devotion and the room gets unity by the preciousness of style throughout.

something is happening in the room the omittance of which would have made this

the painting,with love,of a sleeping man in his revered room. yet now we clearly see

that,while he sleeps the guilders of death imminently swirled almost as if in the flight

of starling,leaving trace of twenty,thirty guilders or shekels hovering from ceiling to

bed,alongside him more,as not to disturb him. it is of supernatural order,as death is

of supernatural both,and of natural order. perhaps it isn’t his last sleep and he just aided

in his dream an older woman or man on their templed erratic pathway to death. if

this the sign of death is,it is gilded and a flight of magnificence. the timeless patchouli.

rose du texet

it is raining delicately to an inner wallpaper

wallpaper is wallpaper if big flowers are involved

not so much behind but in the thinness of the

finely plastered paper to the walls,dressing them

in hibiscus,magnolia and roses,there is a hush

as there are two phenomenons compatible than

this inaudible yet presumable hush of innerest

rain meeting upon the thinness and delicacy of the

wallpaper. the dying shall be the waterfading

riverialization of the reddest hibiscii and roses,also

lush rosa and sinister red,and magnificent magnolia

asian pinks in appearances,all these colours now

a carousel of death. and thus death rained in and

the slowly fading and with sinewy fingers inter

mixxing petals and colours and stamen and scent

wafted towards an areal vessel as perfumed as

half sensible in her flight,the halfzen vessel of

death,in due time,to not too much dishevel the

living and those,who still had some tasks at hand,

perhaps a repair of the flowery wallpaper,after

all inner rains were subdued,stilled somewhat

living in the trafficpretzel of unaromatherapycoloured steelhulled rapid s of erythrocites

o.k. i will make a NASA map of this here and there of freeways and lanes and antivegetational

graphite labyrinths for the beetle like drone and persistence with which these gleaming post

homoeopathic monsters started and actually,pertained to ride,glide,staccato heavy humming

of 5000 kg bumblebees. at night you heard individuality within the cars prodding forth in the

endless night,however sometimes threesomes or flotsams of easy nightsurfers neglecting

trafficlights to define the zanzibarian loneliness of the only rider on an endless boring offblack

composite asphalt,reducing roar and thereby blandening the driving endeavour,that you now

were a shusher at night,a hustler,an unobtrusive hooker,an ignorant vector in the urban statistics.

travelling became featureless now even with highest highrises or skeletonnest bridges and

aluminiumnized museums billbaoized titangleaming facettoid flyeye museal expositions one

trafficdrone over the northern hemisphere. geiger corrections showed slowly fractionationleasions

and extractive metallurgic progressions,disaggregated oreholes,destabilized earthconventionality.

“FIRST STAGE CRUSHING is generally by JAW, GYRATORY or CONE CRUSHERS, depending upon

the tensional strength of the rock. Crushing capacity can be predicted from testing data from

BRAZILIAN TESTS and UNIAXIAL COMPRESSIVE TESTS, or SCHMIDT HAMMER tests. It is important

that all rock types that will be fed through the concentrator are tested. Many new beneficiation

plants have found themselves to be short of crushing and grinding capacity because they tested

an average grade ore and paid little attention to the rock type, or failed to recognize a siliceous cap

that dominated production for the first several years.” we have abided with these schemes and

the way now shall be builded following the 1974 plans and this is yet the best for us all,all is always

alright everywhere at all time and at all costs,all is true,safe and prosperous,beneficial for earth

and obscurest of plants. with this we can comply finally,the tenfoldening of the traffic so,that some

days ago in the “botlek” i said to the driver,it looks like sao paulo and mexico city and that,was such

marvellous feeling,of globality,mafia,pantzercars and panterwhores,fences and canaille,so sweet

lou rivera motel

this is the motel where we take new responsibilities and,looking into the bering,see,

that these depths and that furor also are present in us yet have the same indiscernability

the same profundity but with a kind of soothing valuelessness,just its’ being there,very

bering,menacing and changing with the minute,to which anchor what certainty would

arise,in the fuming broiling mass of froth and lost ponds,undersea rivers and pipeworms,

galaxies of protuberance and cystic cyclicity,pain and the pain overwhelmingly awashed

with the acrid salinity,in this motel in dutch harbor. all meteorologic conditions are gruelling,

job perspectives gruelling,social mobility interesting. there is the great absence of alaska,

being so desparately empty,as it is called placated with words the inuit and alaskans hate,

it is what it is,this big realm of naturality,and even not that,all attribuations fall short,better

to ditch up some found poems under the lychencovered grounds and just above the perma

frostlayer. cold poems of blubberfood and windshiftings,short seasons save the eternal

borealis winter. temperatures like vectors on a grid between which maze we can climb

hollow and sparse trees,from within,higher,higher,as the conditions strangify by the minute.

squirrels have squatted here. in the h/m/otel of m/h/ysteria we learn that there are the empty rooms

for anti-aliasing or birefrigerence,but also restylane ®,botox ®,tupperware ® and agent

provocateur ® and princesse tamtam ® parties,that there are rooms for gazing at the wall,

experiencing some outerbody fluidisizing,floating,in the void in the void of alaska unalaska.

actually it only seems that there are nothing but empty rooms in the lou rivera motel. couple

of researchers always,the lost pilot,a cameramember of “the deadliest catch”. absence of

mentors elemental in the distracted,disheveled yet also strangely comforting,nondemanding

athmosphere in the hotel. it became an acenter of sorts for full body and contact and mental

floating and putteth unalaska on the map for the seoul? 2014 olympics. nothing to loose here

bc all was already lost. alaskan nature so oversatiating nothing keeps left for fancy desires but

surviving and sashaying in your anoraks. and it is so filling that there simply is no room for antics

other than zonous floating exploring lightblottage the thinness of stranded hairs entangled

just so on the silken midaregami reminescing cushioned silkcovered black bedaccoutrement.

a blackness gleaning with the moiré pattern not to anti-aliasize feature of simply,beauty like

the surfacetension on the glass water reflecting minute flutterings of light due to small coils

of wind. this is the matter-antimatter of visionary floating. we see the “worldness” of the world,

we’re “becoming world”(deleuze-guattari). so we reached in this motel the echelon trance,

as the physical household with all kind of alcoves,niches,the empty rooms,sexy waittresses,

sexy bellboys,all to learn to still the desires of linwood and aad and jack and carolyn and tara,

y’know? but also the meticulously inlaid tables with ebony,mahogeny,rosewood,pearwood

and eucalyptus flagplates of inlaid mosaics,with that fine rough texture,where you can easily

put your lass of peachjuice and peacetea and hardcore liquor at and it doesn’t shift. the greenly

gilded kitch boots with ink neonite light,to replenish the eighties with bandanas,yoga de luxe

and loveboat reruns,that harsh acrid blue colour splashed around in this motel with vibes of

“calneva lodge”. and thère we would learn floating? we’re already doing it,searching for tiny

meaninglenettes and sense in a world that is just cascading and loaded with cyclicity in an

amplitudinous race timeless,while the gravity of the iron basalt granite planet draws us back

into shape,until we fall apart in quite arresting funiculary shapes of skeletons and skulls pearly

brésil

an interval of draught through the house. weather as ominous as yesterday,

heat builded up in certain domestic areas and,after dinner,inside the inner temple

as well,a hot head,a hot belly,cayenne pepper abundance. the draught brings

“world” in,in whichever not a priori humane fields of energy. the windows bring

the world in,as well as keeping it out. the world seeps in in the house as the mould

already had annexed quite some stretches. a resolute contrameasurement is to

mix chlorine into your latex where it otherwise had been water. first you hoover

your walls ad absurdum,that is,the affected spots. then you slap with loose hands

and the brush the chlorified not glorified latex onto the rims,walls,stretches,dotted

areas. if your mood either or your condition is weak a lot of drip is gonna fall indoors

and it aint transparent. you had me slapping inthe weakest ways possible just to

arrest and halt the mould. now we have a tokyoite avantgarde architectural house

with dots white on white. i am weak. the mould now becomes satiated with chlorine

and in the background a bossanova. it is inside as well as outside. in my world brazil

is always near as is sicily. there are no borders,just the oceans and the continents.

both teaming with life and chemification,also due to the high usage of chlorine and

ammonia and lead and acrylate debris. i had to let it go to come through the day.

the trend of tropicalismú furthers. FFWD. the brazilianization is inevitable,combining

modern complexity with tropical laisser passez,out of a deep knowledge that spots

are there,if we are there. sleep,slap and swallow all pride,it is just going fast forward

Lorraine Mariner

Austerity measures

We tightened our belts

but still our trousers

dragged on the pavement

tripping us up.

140 characters

your brain may dribble out of your ear and this town is full of tightly dressed women with Twitter accounts so do not get drunk without me

Factory

So I tried to shut that factory down. Laid off

all those operatives who’d been working in my head

non-stop constructing your good name.

Explained that times were hard and my heart

was even harder. Disassembly wasn’t as easy

as I’d imagined. They formed a union,

turned up as usual the next day, said they’d accept

a three day week, half-pay. Insisted this

was the best job they’d ever had

Monkey

You came back to me today

after 30 years when from

his swivel chair my colleague

offered peanuts still in their shells

to me in my swivel chair.

Suddenly I was back

with my top school infant class

standing in front of your cage

to watch you squatting

on your branch, chewing your food,

which you then decided to spit at us.

You hit our teacher

who found you hilarious.

You also hit me and that evening

my mother spent what seemed

like an hour combing

congealed nut out of my hair.

Was that your party piece

or some animal kingdom

warning lost on us?

Belligerent monkey,

my colleague has got peanut husks

all over the carpet around his desk

and tomorrow morning

before we arrive, somebody

from another country

will hoover them up.

Toll booth attendant

It might look

like the worst job

on earth

sitting in a booth

on a motorway

collecting money

so a car

can go over

a bridge

but the snatches

of music

you would hear

as the windows

roll down

and back up –

somebody’s

favourite

driving song,

a sonata,

a hit played

on Radio 2

caught in

intermittent

blasts

or suddenly

something

you have never

heard before

so beautiful

that your soul

begins to lift

then it’s gone

foot down

crossing the river.

Roy Sutirtha

Van den Budenmayer

Of Course I didn’t meet the man near

Marble Arch at Hyde Park on an idle

Sunday afternoon, precisely at four p.m.

Nor did he shake my hand or, lift the

dark felt hat, before he could take a

bow and scrape. But I always knew that

He was the one - the invisible maestro,

the Dutch who loved waltz, red tulips,

merlot fragrance, sometimes fresh

Polish scones,– certainly life above all.

And only

He could capture the immense beauty

of time and space silently flowing like rain

beyond the grey-scale, - perceptively limned

ever by him – the eternal Van den Budenmayer.

M J Foster

Bookshop

Beyond thrilling, entire spaces

Of imagination captured, scents

Of paper, sweat and ink sear the nostrils

Keeping memories and anticipation alive

Sensual and electrifying as new love

Hopes and dreams and the intimacy

Of another being’s thoughts, their grainy

Perfume consumes and we, the reader, submit.

Pearls

Proud fingers now fasten

and smooth

the golden strands

a wave

of stale perfume and age

the neck stretches

just a little longer

the head lifts

stronger

the eyes

whirlpool grey

clear and confident

an illusion of grandeur

Cocktails and cotillions

a sense of belonging

Release

When I pretended I knew you

You were the Sun

and I was blind

The Ice Wharf

Near full moon

the blank sky

snatches lengths

of the creaking cracking oak

delicate but

deadly

to the fearful foot

not diamonds but

daggers

Alicia Winski

City Driving

Driving in the city--
a precarious past time these days

With so many highways to choose,
I always seem to lose my sense of direction on roads
of such complexion I find it difficult to turn around
and recover my original point of destination

Despite high tech maps and my fully charged GPS,
I find myself frequently traveling down a one-way street
so charming, so inviting with a nuance so enticing,
one would never know it was littered with dangerous
road hazards and

with so little fuel in my reserve, it's far too precious to expend
on a street with a dead-end leaving me befuddled; bemused
as to why I always choose
the wrong road

A Winter State of Mind

gray cracked concrete saturated under icy torrents drenching early morning risers in cold anonymity; sunny outlooks washed away as litter down dank street gutters, released into city drains hoarding dark secrets

hearts fall hard in the rain,
when exposed to

optimisms defeated, victories of the angry mother heralded by harbor horns in sing-a-long with a herd of sea lions barking in protest against buoyant steel intruders polluting a rapidly diminishing habitat

hearts fall hard
when torn asunder,

assaulted by realities depicted in the form of digital lives, victims of a sea gone mad in a killing spree incited by eruptions of anger and thunder unleashed by a shaky, outraged ground under once complacent feet

never to know complacency again

hearts fall hard
when shattered,

a safe haven in rebellion against catastrophic indignities inflicted upon it by kami-kaze engineers annihilating the purity of our garden, damning early summer blossoms and gently aging falls to a silent season

hearts fall hard under
the weight of silence

leaving me shell-shocked, apathy jarred, a single spring
larva cocooned behind secured doors and haunting music, combing through bright memories stored away to relieve the sorrow of a rainy day, safely confined where

hearts fall broken, lost --
to a winter state of mind

apr 1/apr 2 2011 (written after the Japanese tsunami)

~The Wednesday Night Special~
(choices)

No, a slow, lengthy demise does not inspire pride
for Death is not proud

It's hold is long and strong
with a grip on your throat
allowing just enough air to breath
with just enough suffocation
to give you the delectable little
taste of nothingness you long for
in the dark when you know
you can't take any more

The question is,
what would you prefer, Monsieur?

Suffocation, with a hint of life seasoning
or the soup du' jour;
a carefully concocted creation
offering sweet release, pain-free salvation
while bypassing a god
in whom so few believe--

It's your choice; ask—
and ye shall receive


Wednesday Blue Plate Special

Pentobarbitol --- $275
Morphine --- $100
Xanax --- $50
Amobarbital --- $47
Valium --- $30
Nembutal --- $30
Secondal --- $25

La Petite Mort

… why, why, why did you need him?
where was I? just how close to you is he?** (from Kandi by One Eskimo)

you, you were far, far away and he--
he was close, oh, so close and he--
he looks in my eyes and he--
he calls me baby and he--
he makes me want to drop where I stand
and he takes me and he breaks me

all night long

he burns me from the inside out and he
rips the flesh from my bones with his teeth
and he gets me sticky and sweet, licking me
clean as he calls me

baby, baby, baby
all night long

he sings his whiskey warm song in my ear,
it’s good, oh so good and he--
he smolders when he looks at me and he
pours his dirty little secrets into my mouth
drowning me in a flood to my senses as he
overwhelms me with his

baby, baby, baby
all night long and he—

he says all I’ve been afraid to hear and he--
he turns me to liquid, sipping from this deep,
deep well until it implodes, touching me in places
you can’t reach and I die a little death with him
all night long

baby, baby, baby
all night long
all night long
all night long

Elements
It's a cold earth you roam, lost in yourself,
lost to humanity, lost to love--
your steps ponderous, immune to the scalding ground
quivering beneath scornful feet, immune to the fires
you vanquish with a frigid glance

Have you not witnessed the fury of an erupting volcano?
Have you never been singed by the heat of lava flowing
through dry fissures in its race to meet the sea?

Fire
Water

Opposing elements in a violent clashing, creating
between them a stealthy mist, an insidious vapor
slipping in and out of one's thoughts, melding
in that volatile place where

Moisture begets moisture, where

all water flows
in the same direction

Singular slow trickles deceptively mild, conjoined,
high velocity currents sweeping lone, abandoned hulls
into roiling seas, flooding the void between them,
saturating, expanding dry tinder rocked wildly
beneath the weight of healing waters
leaving a finite voyage softly concluded

Exhausted vagabond vessels washed up onto gritty terrain
surfeited, becalmed, left simmering under a sunburst glare

all water flows
in the same direction, while steam

rises …

Listings

Andrew Darlington

http://andrewdarlington.blogspot.co.uk/

Euroshima Mon Amour. Hilltop Press. 2001

I Was Elvis Presley’s Bastard Love-Child. Critical Vision, 2002

MJ Foster

http://www.inclementpoetrymagazine.webs.com/

Inclement Poetry For The Modern Soul (Ed.) 2000-

Aad de Gids

http://keithalanhamilton.com/portfolio/AaddeGids/Default.html

Wednesday Kennedy

http://www.wednesdaykennedyink.com/

Cultural Refugee (performance) 2000

Last Night In New York (multimedia show) 2001-2003

The Myspace Diaries. Oko-Jumu Press, 2009

The Myspace Diaries. Oko-Jumu Press, 2011

21^st Century Showgirl. Oko-Jumu Press, 2012

Rupert M Loydell

http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/

Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh (Ed.). Salt Publishing, 2009

From Hepworth's Garden Out (Ed.). Shearsman Books, 2010

A Music Box of Snakes (with Peter Gillies). Knives, Forks & Spoons Press, 2010

Smartarse (Ed.) Knives Forks & Spoons Press, 2011

Wildlife. Shearsman Books, 2011

Lorraine Mariner

http://www.panmacmillan.com/book/lorrainemariner/furniture

Bye For Now. Rialto Bridge Pamphlets No. 1, 2006

Furniture. Picador, 2009

Fiona Pitt Kethley

http://fionapitt-kethley.blogspot.co.uk/

Selected Poems, Salt Publishing, 2008

Alicia Winski

http://edgarandlenores.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/author-alicia-winski.html

Running On Fumes. Create Space, 2009

In The Company of Women (Ed. with Apryl Skies). Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House, 2012

Naughty Girls Dream in Colour. Edgar & Lenore's Publishing House, 2012

Michael Woods

Paris And The Surrealists (with George Melly). Thames & Hudson, 1990

Puff Ball (directed by Nicolas Roeg). Dan Films/Yumi Media. 2007

Marie Zorn

http://dreamorous.com/

Illustrations by Michael Woods

Untitled [front cover]

Arena of Hearts [detail] Place Pigalle, Paris, collage assemblage with Inesa-Barrington de la Roche

Sonia Braga, montage-collage for Nicolas Roeg’s film Two Deaths, 1995

Place Pigalle, Paris, in-camera montage

Arena of Hearts (Psyche ’63) [detail] collage assemblage

Pilar Reflecting on Herself, Carlton Arms Hotel, New York City, photo and photo-collage

Passage des Princes [Interior], Paris, 1987

Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, 1993

Passage des Princes [Exterior], Paris, 1987

Neon Highway Poetry Magazine is edited by Jane Marsh and Alice Lenkiewicz. Neon Highway was set up in 2002 as a non profit making little poetry/arts magazine



Neon Highway                (ISSN: 1476-9867)

Avant-garde
Literary journal

PUBLISHES:
POETRY and ART
Neon Highway is available bi-annually, with 2 issues costing £5.50, or a single Issue available at £3.00. Order your next issue by sending a cheque made out to Alice Lenkiewicz at 37, Grinshill Close, Liverpool, L8 8LD

Submissions

We prefer to receive work by snail-mail. Sometimes email is useful if your work format is 'experimental' or you have images and of course if you are abroad. For these reasons, email submissions will be accepted. On a general level, email submissions will only be read if we have time to, as we prefer to receive your works in the post. Please do not forget to enclose a sae for returns and replies and to write your name and address on all poems.


Alice Lenkiewicz

37, Grinshill Close, Liverpool, UK, L8 8LD

Email: neonhighwaypoetry@yahoo.co.uk