In chamber three, you come across a man
whose eyes are kidnap victims lunging for
the door. He's slumped across a table, gowned,
and jitters. Then a phone's buzz nips his ear,
and he's up, scrambling, trying to find the source.
His right leg sports a silver cuff, which stirs
a chain that winds pythonically towards
a fresh-sprung furnace and as he runs by
a rack of flames leap up like hostile swords.
The metal, quick to heat, begins to fry
his thin leg; not much pork. He screams "I've done
no wrong!" The reek and buzzing are a choir.
He hunts through sweat and scorching, face a bulb,
unearths the phone, hits 'Answer' and the fire
dies down. His leg grows skin like stretched-out gum.
"No," he tells the phone, "I don't require
what you're selling." Hangs up, rubs his head.
Then that drone again, so you climb higher.
In chamber four, another man, half-dead
sits cricked, a pop star mic clamped to his jaw,
hitting 'End Call' on a greasy keyboard
whose keys are all 'Dial Number' or 'End Call'.
He has the pallor of a trampled road,
and as his index comes down on 'End Call',
a mechanism nods and starts to grind.
The silver chain linked to his cuff is lit
by all that sudden firelight from behind.
Fuselit is a hand-bound and finished pocket literary journal edited by Kirsten Irving and Jon Stone, each issue of which is built around a ‘spur word’. Fuselit celebrates its fifth birthday this year, and is launching its 16th issue, ‘Jack’, at the end of August. Also, in September they launch ‘Pocket Spellbook’, the latest micro-anthology release from Sidekick Books, their new imprint. Here Kirsty and Jon present some of their own poems with submissions from Fuselit and Pocket Spellbook.