{"id":6520,"date":"2021-06-24T15:47:29","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T15:47:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/?p=6520"},"modified":"2025-05-15T09:23:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T09:23:40","slug":"nell-osborne-five-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/6520\/nell-osborne-five-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"Nell Osborne: Five Poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

god tier<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am a monster in the mouth in the head in the pockets<\/p>\n

I am a minnow in the head in the mouth and in the pockets<\/p>\n

Your feedback is greatly appreciated at this point when I am greatly disorientated by urban life’s teachings<\/p>\n

I want to be more dynamic more efficient I am right now goosing for the water pageant but I refuse to accept that I am still redeemable at the fair<\/p>\n

I am no longer a customer of yours not since you treated me so badly I left your company I moved out of your storage factory unit that prohibits perishable items<\/p>\n

I want to love everyone and maybe I could too after I finish the hardest puzzle in the world the one that is technically impossible<\/p>\n

I am schlepping about our father\u2019s body see like a carafe of red wine I am invisible save for at the Laser Quasar<\/p>\n

Love me like a flower touch me like a flower I silent scream like a flower worship me as each flower deserves himself to be cut and paraded<\/p>\n

Let me become the remarkable shrub that I was destined to become in the vegetable patch of this endless fallow year<\/p>\n

Like any bone carcass stretched in skin I look best in soft light and undressing<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chef\u2019s kiss<\/strong><\/p>\n

Train conductor thinking on limply pulsing scalloped edges<\/p>\n

For the rest of the day, ticket fines slide. The bevel on him<\/p>\n

Big, beautiful hands filled to the brim with gem\u00fctlich plasma<\/p>\n

There are things to love about anybody<\/p>\n

moving at 200 mph that is<\/p>\n

Greener the trees balk at joggers\u2019 ankles bonely flashing blue<\/p>\n

The bug\u2019s-eye view. The roiling nation state of red clay soil<\/p>\n

I married a worm under duress<\/p>\n

underground, blindfolded, smiling<\/p>\n

like a dumb gherkin bride lmao<\/p>\n

Sometimes to catch myself, breathing etc.<\/p>\n

What to do with all that humidity<\/p>\n

How to package the blood<\/p>\n

Train conductor adjusts his face and it\u2019s new<\/p>\n

Witness to the luminosity \u2018pon the halcyon<\/p>\n

whatever<\/p>\n

I giggle and giggle and giggle and giggle, until I hear the birds start up<\/p>\n

And the day’s flat grey face is damp against the glass \/<\/p>\n

My email inbox is filled with so many<\/p>\n

possible suitors who know my full name<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Enough, glamour<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am writing to ask that you kindly desist<\/p>\n

your violent tenure as the ocean of my mind<\/p>\n

it being much worse here than<\/p>\n

imagined historical loving<\/p>\n

I wrote a book since we never, starlight, met<\/p>\n

400-thread counts ago: overthinking every phallic<\/p>\n

objet d’art<\/em>, with you<\/p>\n

in the basement be<\/p>\n

men just like you<\/p>\n

Have a soft one, a cold one<\/p>\n

on me, my dear sirs<\/p>\n

merely corpsing along towards<\/p>\n

the curled forefinger of mauve light<\/p>\n

pressed flat into navy for a spinal<\/p>\n

lifetime of palms down in the spreadsheets<\/p>\n

Most beloved when you’re enduring<\/p>\n

wreathed in luminous neon Viking dry lunge<\/p>\n

red petal-breath, blue petal-breath, red petal-breath<\/p>\n

freshly belimbed\u00a0ow ow<\/p>\n

starchily overbody-ing\u00a0the carpets<\/p>\n

Kind regards, now<\/p>\n

turn off the lamp when you leave<\/p>\n

the metaphorical room<\/p>\n

managerially, gentleman<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I inspected every asshole\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I inspected every asshole on earth<\/p>\n

no small feat → no big surprises either<\/p>\n

I made some invaluable<\/p>\n

professional contacts<\/p>\n

my Red Riding Snood<\/p>\n

gelatine bitches assemble\u00a0→\u00a0bend over\u00a0→\u00a0let\u2019s<\/p>\n

get this paperwork done & then<\/p>\n

relax\u00a0→ un-trousered, out-of-office<\/p>\n

Not much going on for me, spiritually, right now<\/p>\n

Still → slips from & sits atop lips<\/p>\n

cheekbones → untreated quantum desire<\/p>\n

is a tick box disease → [cartoon voice]:<\/p>\n

you\u2019ll need to fly to America for that<\/p>\n

(if you can find the coins in time)<\/p>\n

I, like many women of my ilk,<\/p>\n

highly enervated, mute, garrulous, dehydrated<\/p>\n

dream of nothing more complicated than:<\/p>\n

find the extra-terrestrial &\u00a0get paid for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A la Carte<\/strong><\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

didn\u2019t<\/p>\n

order<\/p>\n

this<\/p>\n

OK<\/p>\n

yes<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

suppose<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

will<\/p>\n

\u201ceat\u201d<\/p>\n

it<\/p>\n

(I\u2019ll<\/p>\n

\u201ceat\u201d<\/p>\n

almost<\/p>\n

anything)<\/p>\n

Oh<\/p>\n

yeah<\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

know<\/p>\n

I\u2019m<\/p>\n

literally<\/p>\n

\u201ceating\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cit\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nell Osbourne says:<\/p>\n

I was reading Bernadette Mayer’s\u00a0Ethics of Sleep<\/em>: a poetic investigation that attempts to map out the entangled relations between ideas of sleep, dream and production. I admire how brazenly unsystematic it is \u2014 of course, needs to be. ‘The dream does do \/ things like the poem,’ writes Mayer.\u00a0Things<\/em>.\u00a0I am always getting butchered in my dreams. I have a therapist who tells me there is no morality in the dreamscape. Once you understand that, you can go back armed: become the most sadistic butcher there is (in your own dreams). I’m not sure if the same logic holds for the poem, but I imagine it could.<\/p>\n

In an interview at the end of Mayer’s book, Dave Brinks suggests that her poems are written against the idea of progression and Mayer replies, ‘I like to go backwards’. Me, I was writing these abstruse little poems, simply trying to have a “good time”. \u2018To be small and to stay small\u2019 \u2014 the motto of Robert Walser’s schoolboy hero in his 1909 novel,\u00a0Jakob von Gunten<\/em>. The poem can trace out things, through a series of entirely unrelated propositions, without coming to any conclusion, or having a sense of having spoken, or having been awake at the time.<\/p>\n

Not being a person much in control of my “brain”, I spend the whole time asking: Please sir, which year is it? I like imagining desire at its least legible, least articulate. Hostile inscrutability is my favourite refusalist power move. We have these alien longings. By which I mean, the desire to be found, seen, chosen, taken away. To have one’s damaged attachment to the world \u2014 one’s palimpsest sense of self-worth, one\u2019s patently untenable feelings of superiority \u2014 redeemed by extra-terrestrial peoples. For some of the people I went to school with, alien longing is now intimately woven with an antivax gut-health-core\u00a0ressentiment,<\/em>\u00a0projected onto the advent of a purified, paedophile-ring-FREE Boho Chic utopia. But alienality is equally a feature of poetic method \u2014 one that I, too, feel closely aligned with. Jack Spicer believed that his poems were alien transmissions, he their attentive receptacle. He writes, \u2018For example \/ the poem does not know \/ Who you refers to\u2019. I like the strange re-calibration demanded by that capitalised \u2018W\u2019. We who are so used to capitalising our names. When I was younger, I believed my first name was spelled: N-A-M-E. I was getting scolded by teachers for being difficult. Afterwards, I would try to print it more clearly, more emphatically, upon the dotted line of my worksheet:\u00a0N-A-M-E.\u00a0Again, punishment.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>Spicer writes: \u2018Sheer hell \/ Is where your apartness is your apartness\u2019. For him, poems echo back and forth with one another in some kind of Outer-space, gaining resonance, albeit still carrying a trace of the poet \u2014 the particular topography of their accreted scar tissue. Writing a poem is a dance with a Martian (cry emoji). Not many things make me feel sentimental, but that does. My coming useful irrelevance. Plus, we miss dancing so fucking much.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nell Osborne’s recent work has appeared in places such as\u00a0Manchester Review of Books<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Bath Magg<\/i>. Nell co-runs\u00a0No Matter<\/i>, an experimental reading and commission series, based in Manchester. She co-edits the zine series\u00a0Academics Against Networking<\/i>. Her first pamphlet,\u00a0The Canine Redeemer has Entered the Bungalow<\/i>, is forthcoming with\u00a0Just Not<\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

god tier I am a monster in the mouth in the head in the pockets I am a minnow in the head in the mouth and in the pockets Your feedback is greatly appreciated at this point when I am greatly disorientated by urban life’s teachings I want to be more dynamic more efficient I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6589,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[59,12],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Unknown.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42xiC-1Ha","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6520"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6622,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6520\/revisions\/6622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glasfrynproject.org.uk\/w\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}