Poetry By Maria Sledmere

Ben Seidelman CC


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Security Deluxe

A selection of minotaurs pass
This is just my life, love is like
the colour packed flat upon bus stop adverts
a tendency towards breakfast for sport stars
plasticize affect in myriads
I gather up a careless lust
Portend to the force-field, melancholic for objects
Missing you means mostly missing the days in June
and ghosts hatch cold from tins of peaches
I have stored up a lot of loss in my time
for times like these
The metallic twang when they open
Dreaming of climbing a tree
against a tiled sky of marketed sunsets
leaking syrup, relish precarious
They long for flesh like christmas
is it a missive in lieu of screens
Learning to burn in the dark for this
Lack of delete key, lapsing fire
You’d type it like, in the context of minor stardust
how do we seek the real?
Still bothering with punctuation
The internet made prettier labyrinths
of everything you said, so I forgot your face
and its usual synecdoche
Hailing my monsters to imitate dawn.



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Autumn Equinox

Forms of address, they clot in the lungs
to be singular
I notice the rowan trees losing their fruit

Eventually
everything becomes a symbol for buffering:
a bruise on cheeks, a glow of cold

When I see red brick it’s always October
somewhere in the world
Can’t you see, the leaves
clutter the streets like pastries, flaking;
I love the air
so crisp, you phone me
for juice, just like that

Dear sill, dear blue
I have rolled for you this many cigarettes
and smoked the sirens out of the night

Do not think I will draw beyond these thoughts
anything less; the day is so clear
that my face hurts, I love you.

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Maria Sledmere is a PhD student at the University of Glasgow, studying Anthropocene aesthetics and the everyday through creative-critical practice. She’s Poetry and Nonfiction Editor at SPAM Zine and Press, editor of Gilded Dirt, member of A+E Collective and regular contributor to GoldFlakePaint Magazine. You can find more work on her blog, musingsbymaria.wordpress.com.

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