E-Zine

Issue 007

Well, what do we do now? / Page 4

Mostly Fluid

Author: Tom Chivers
Illustrator: Kathryn Cooper

You know what the soft sell is? Well, you've got it, believe me.
I've got a different technique. Laughs, drinks, jokes, tricks. You know?
Yeah. Hit 'em where they live – that's my motto.

- Juror 7

Brother, we are mostly fluid.

Words are a door. Justify nothing.

My porcine self is ill-advised, changeable.

The time is quarter to or twenty past.

Either way the room is getting smaller
and I suspect is rigged and o so fibreglass.

Airless blab, my friend, will run amok
like a curveball fizzing in the left field.

Me myself, I won’t be called.

Why talk when you can chew?

White suits stain easily.

On the plate, I let the thing come at me,
wait until it flashes almost past and –

Time to dowse and atrophy.

A storm is rolling off the city;
what’s left after the structure folds,
these corrugated rooms collapse?

The dodge. The soft sell. The cage,
blade’s alias.

                    I sweat to breathe.

Brother, percolate. Let the truth run clear.

We are right and mostly fluid.

Tom Chivers is a British poet, editor and live literature promoter. He is Director of Penned in the Margins, Co-Director of London Word Festival and Editor in Chief for online literary magazine Hand + Star. Kathryn Cooper has been a regular Mercy collaborator for 5 years, you can see a whole bunch of her charming work on her website here.

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