Skin Rind

Fae Sapsford

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your

heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make
sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even
an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little
luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket
or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark,
motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will
become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is
to be vulnerable.
-C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Contents
Skin Rind 5
My body is not a temple
6
A Naturalists Guide to Capturing Elusive Animals 9
Freshers Week Is 10
A Chronology 12
Thomas in 14 Lines 16
Wallow 17
Xeno 19

Illustrations
Marble Boy 7
Elbow Beach 8
Cacti 8
Scraps Collage 10
Garlic Boy 12
Belly Laugh 14
Shaded Clearing 18

Skin Rind
Crescent moon thumbnail
picking into dimpled flesh
centre excavated, exposing
delicious light pink wetness,
citrus zeal effervesces;
little, tough sinew
stays wedged inside
between thumb and thumbnail,
slivered skin rind.
Cantaloupe armor dressed
in leopard print
teeth bore through to taste the
fruit within
skin all sucked purple
by my lips
and the meat rounded in my
fingers like a prayer bead;
scoop out the pulp with a
tongue, spit out the seeds.
Halve the fruit
to saturate yourself with
the golden liquid inside; get sticky
juice on your fingers and cheeks,
peel off and compost
the thick skin rind.

My body is not a temple

you dont light candles in it in me
is not the holy spirit
because God doesnt exist
but there is so much love here love that oozes out as passion fruit juice,
leaves you mango-mouthed, and your
rough tongue sundewd my body is milk and honey a new planet,
and oceans lush with coral and lavished with fish,
soil saturated with saplings that reach up for suns kiss,
a crafted collection of dints are fjords imprinted upon my back,
and what curious mind could rest and leave
a whole world unexplored and unmapped?
Cartographers and their nimble hands
use their fingers to outline rich loamy lands,
each freckle a reference point, they traverse
the fertile crevice of each of my cartilaginous joints.
And I want to explore new worlds, naked and softly curled
round someone elses ocean and islands and molten core,
feel his warmth as our two planets collide
and supernovas the room, and we both ignite.
I didnt lose my virginity;
you cant lose something that never existed in the first place,
that is made up, that makes our bodies churches where we
are never allowed to pray.
I put my hands in his smooth, soft hair,
I dove into his ocean and did not want to come up for air,
we were pinned into the bedspread of stars, stitched
in our orbits with celestial yarn, in this solar system
we are unconcerned
with what people might think, or whisper.

I have so much love to give,

in kisses pressed against hot neck like flattened flowers,
or on my knees and choking.
My affection dwarfs galaxies
its as malleable as dark matter and
vicious as a black hole, I
love to swallow solar systems
and stay friends with benefits,

August 6th 2016

His lips were so soft. I made him late back to work.

A Naturalists Guide to Capturing Elusive Animals

You have to pick him off the
undersides of leaves, shy as
a chameleon, he
always has a giggle bubbling in his throat,
shimmering geode for a soul;
and his hands grip fast, two-toed.
Rucksack-backed, I am an explorer
and have always preferred reptiles;
I want to tickle his chromatophores
and watch him light up
as a moonbeam, all smiles.
Existing only in dreams, him; sweet
as vanilla ice cream. You can
find him in caves, or out at night,
against banana leaves, stark and bright his colours give him away.
Smuggle him into your lap,
convince him to show you a tattoo so you
can trail a hand over his chest
feign sleepiness
so bodies can press
together.
Ask him,
want to kiss me?
and hope to god he says yes.

Freshers Week Is
A night out with people you barely know,
dancing dizzy, skinny spinning,
all midriff show; cheapskate too
stingy to check a coat we are queens these nights,
first time connoisseurs of sensation and aesthetic;
delight in that tiny feeling:
the sticking the unsticking of
crop top cotton to the skin of my back
with sweat my purse an almanac of this time,
and I, coy coquette; my receipts
chronicling adventures unfinished as of yet.
This is Georgias face in the strobe lights flash,
fragments of her doing her dance,
and Nick watching his feet, and his
head snapping up again, beaming, to the beat.
Its permanent marker on my arm
proclaiming me an honorary member of Hugh Stewart hall and Broadgate late eats; nutella toast at 2am,
then propping up my tired feet.
Its collapsing into hysterics and swapping
slang full hot and plastered and sloshed,
pulling boys and causing disasters,
and when its time for a nosh,
putting all the food you have left
between bread, calling it dinner,
and going ahead.
It is a million faces, the ones you draw
in art soc, the ones you smile at
for nervousness, the ones you will never
see again its being completely free.
Freshers week is going for the double shot of vodka,
10

sharing black seal rum, wine glasses smashing

or cheersing, then crashing before we see the sun.
My flat mates faces popping out their doors
one by one, making conference room of the hall
and collapsing into giddy, giggling free-for-all.
Its when I cant hear the bar tender, Ill just say yes;
its getting a pint when you needed much less,
its a 3 pound 50 bumper car ride under neon flashing lights
and Georgia by my side, faces grinning wide
its the feeling curled inside like a sleeping dog,
the warm contentedness of knowing you belong.

11

A Chronology
1. You and your shit haircut,
and warm blue coat, next to me
on low railing in parking lot top floor alone.
It became our spot, with your camera
on slow shutter stop, that makes headlights
look more like laser beams, in one image,
capturing many moments,
and pressing your lips into me.

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2. The first time I fucked a boy it was period sex.

The first person I told was my best friend.
He was cool to the touch, and soft, like marble
all gloss, and looking at him, I understood
why renaissance masters revered the male nude.
I chisel him with my fingers and lips,
and watch him halve as shimmering,
brilliant geode.
3. Finally, I slosh out like an overfull glass,
and I am thinking about cats
there are so many wandering around my hall
that it would be plausible,
people would believe me if I said,
I got these cuts from one of them.
Silver exacto craft knife
blissfully opens my wrists,
I lost my happiness maybe I left it in there.
4. I have stopped sleeping again.
It is better to be kept awake in my too small bed
by his bony rib digging into my chest.
The clock shows 5am; Im out cold,
nightmaring again. I dont mind a body
pressed up against me, the crook of his arm
is more stable than the pandoras box of my thoughts.
5. I hate how I make your mannerisms mine,
the evidence you have been diffusing into my mind,
but I dont think Ive diffused into yours
the particles of me have effervesced
into the atmosphere, lost, perhaps
coming down later as rain never to be seen again.
6. The first belly laugh Ive had in weeks:
tired, naked, and strewn over your body.
Youre trapped I whisper into the shell of your ear,
13

and I feel you shuffle under me, skin to skin.

Hand trails over my shoulders, my back, my butt,
until youve found my giggly, tickly, spot.
7. I feel light as air, crushed beneath
your tiny frame, the closest weve ever been,
my hands in your hair, nails on your neck,
we are nature children on this park bench,
as leaves shade us and fall around us,
and insects alight on our clothes,
our oasis in the city,
and you,
beautiful with cold, red ears and nose.
8. The softest self destruction:
to be in love alone. To tram to Lace Market
and be set aglow, and to have to put myself out
when we both go home.
I wonder if you know
that I would brew in kerosene for a lifetime,
for the chance to be set on fire
with a spark from your eyes.
9. Social interaction is an unpleasant event
that my friends dont get compensation for.
I trail sticky silk with me wherever I go,
and ensnare boys and flies and girls.
I become myself
when I repay a night spent next to me
by relieving your morning glory.

14

10. You skipping class to meet a girl

at Greggs me, so happy
that you just buy two gingerbread cookies
without asking. Me, once again tricked
into thinking Im special. I think
I could talk to you until the end of time
and be excited each time the thought of you
came across my mind.
11. A five in the morning calm,
sat on wooden railing outside Broadgate Park,
while my skin cools and dew turns to frost
through the thin cotton of my clubbing dress
my essence sloughs off. I am no face, no person,
only flesh. A passenger as my body
hurtles towards death. Maybe I sat for minutes
or hours, and counted lovely things,
but never got to double digits,
out there beside the bins.

15

Garlic Boy in 14 Lines

If the muses do indeed live they must
have survived in him; raw art shines from his
laugh lined eyes. With thin fingers he presides,
naiad-like, over market square fountain;
(with lips scabbed over I still want to drown in)
a siren, holding the world hostage there.
Next to him I glow, like the moon; and push
warm tides in simply to caress his skin,
I like to visit parking lots with him,
allow my soul to unpin, and trade thoughts,
and walk til our routes forgot. He carries
apertures in his pocket, and cankers in his mind.
I love to watch him glisteningly rise,
as if Calliope burns his very insides,
and let him charm me, golden and wise,
if I perchance happen to meet his eyes.

16

Wallow
Knee deep in mud - then a splash
and from waist down Im encased
in a begriming, cleansing bath.
Savannah sun encrusts my back,
hackles sheathed in grey cottage cheese
that calcifies and begins to crack bedroom this warthogs wallow;
bedclothes, pleasantly cool, swallow
my body whole.
I wish I could lie forever in this
watering hole, until it doesnt feel
like Im underwater anymore,
until days blur and feeling numbs
from never rubbing off any of this mud,
just rolling and clogging my pores until
Im stuck in up to tusks and horns.

17

18

Xeno - n. the smallest measurable unit of human

connection
Last night, without a sound
new saplings sprung up from the ground,
and others, slimed soft by fungi, sloughed off
and sunk down
made the loam spongy.
Covered by the hushing grass
moths lie flat-backed,
their dusty wings dissolving like powder all this in the twilight hour.
Before morning breaks, the silent stars
will ripple, and spin like a top, and align
to execute their grand design.
A butterfly twitches its iridescent wings;
and hurricanes are borne of such trivial things.

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