Sentire Issue One

Dear reader, ng On the 3rd of November last year, we sat havi elves lunch in the Red Brick Cafe and asked ours , what the hypothetical: ‘if we started our own zine d would it look like?’. Several coffees, scribble the notes, and a Pinterest board later, we had bare bones of Sentire. cofThe next few weeks consisted of a lot more and fees, setting up social medias, a website, and vicin pestering just about anyone in our general ity about our new zine, which was quickly man, terialising from hypotheticals into reality. The on the 24th of November, we officially opened y by submissions, and were absolutely blown awa categothe incredible work we received. Our four ect’, ries, ‘dreams’, ‘transformed’, ‘gigantic and ‘ins s, and were interpreted in so many wonderful way e as issu we hope that you enjoy reading our first much as we have enjoyed making it.

All our love, Hendrikje and Hannah (The Sentire Team)

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i. DREAMS In the Dream House sentimental excess ‘sometimes I see you...’

Dream Poem, 15.12.21 Sleeping Nook Dream Log Casting (B) Late-summer daydream

Bernie Carter Sieve Bonaiuti Andrea Komova Will Randell Kelly Wu Kelly Wu Iz Maxwell Jack Heath

2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10

ii. TRANSFORMED A Deeper Magic Still EMBRYONIC Bud 17/09/21 1:04pm Descent into a Valley Choke on your McDonalds Smash all the bowls...

Jack o’ Lantern Entropy Butter Catch!

TM

Bernie Carter Delfi Dorussen Delfi Dorussen Ellie Austin Matthew Palatnik Tommy Gilhooly Renée Eshel Isobel Dempsey Connor H. Phillips Connor H. Phillips Emma Rowley

12 13 14 15 17 18 19 21 22 23 25

E N T S iii. GIGANTIC Craters the big little things Bubbles Monkey bars Brockengespenst Giant Tree UL

Margherita Volpato Elliot Kelly Iz Maxwell Faith Falayi Sieve Bonaiuti Hendrikje Dorussen Iz Maxwell

28 29 30 31 33 35 36

Renée Eshel J. Guéron-Gabrielle Lucie Gourmet Daisy Tozer Isobel Dinic Hannah Beresford Hannah Beresford Marta Wolny

38 39 41 43 45 47 48 49

iv. INSECT So much beautiful time Josephine Dragonfly agility M e t a p h o r phosis Metamorphosis Fred Bug Burlesque Stir

1

dreams

As

In the Dream House BE R N IE C AR T E R

2

sentimental excess

SIEVE BONAIUTI 3

Gregor

sometimes I see you in my dreams re-living the past life of guilt spilling the pearls over moving sands in a hope to deconstruct the internal sometimes I spot you in the mirror as if you existed outside of the reason drowning me with your glasses of wine swimming in the rivers of my lungs and I dance to the rhythm you play and breathe the air

you breathe yet, you still demand more to follow those who walk the pathways of mind to assign victims to those who corrupt the blind I float on the waves of selves and when the moon lays down next to my sun please, play Verdi, so that I don’t hear her walk living within my house at the peep of dawn living under my roof of sanity just a picture in the dreams and mirrors which are no longer clear what a treason of humanity.

Andrea Komova

4

Dream Poem, 15.12.21 And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres I slombered in a slepyng, it sweyved so merye.

Thanne gan I to meten a merveilouse swevene That I was in a wildernesse, wist I never where (William Langland, Piers Plowman, Prologue, ll.8-12).

In mid-morning’s half-sleep, roses grew amongst jumbled rubbish, a varnished wooden structure curled into the sky.

Sharp concrete lines bordered dull grey warehouses of corrugated steel – a collage obscure, rigid, blank and blotchy – Still Life with Ginger Pot 2.

A bald man with thickly-framed spectacles approved of the vision.

(He told me so over a telephone call).

I woke at eleven to sluggish remembrance and gulped water from the windowsill in flecks of soft sun.

WILL RANDELL 5

Samsa

Sleeping Nook

KELLY WU

6

5

7

awoke

KELLY WU 8

9

one

Late-summer daydream The bus stops at Heath Street and I imagine sitting next to my dead Grandad in his garden in the heart of the Potteries, in the ‘60s.

“I’m afraid of not sounding like you”, I say to him, voice a rounded pebble on the ‘20s Cambridge beachside.

He just smiles at me, with only a hint of pity.

JACK HEATH

IZ MAXWELL

Casting (B)

10

11

transformed

morning

BERNIE CARTER

A Deeper Magic Still

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EMBRYONIC or Ichthyosaura alpestris The milky orb floats, suspended for one still moment, before it is split unceremoniously in two. What was once whole, now divided, each half receiving a heady mix of proteins, sugars and lipids. A veritable elixir of life. As one becomes two, two become four, four become eight, and eight become sixteen, cosily squashed together — there is room for everyone! It becomes impossible to count, a twinkling constellation made up of ever more stars. Suddenly, in one perfect sweep, outside becomes inside. A dizzying, treacherous migration. The outer fabric ripples and folds, encasing those sensing, thinking tissues, keeping them safe for future use. An axis formed, a curled-up creature starts to take shape. Writhing blindly, nubs push against the vitelline membrane. Yawning, stretching as though awaking from a deep sleep, emerging. Quite distinguished, a collar of fine tendrils through which to breathe. Melanin spots scatter, delicate patterns on pearly skin. A heart beats.

Pigment bleeds into the optic cup, eyes formed unblinking.

Waiting, observing the world protected. A flick of tail and the gelatinous shell is shattered. Exposed. An adventure begins.

DELFI DORUSSEN Inspired by Becoming by Jan van IJken

13

from

BUD 14

It’s just all so painful - how do you keep going?

17/09/21 1:04pm The breakup was a catalyst for change (for both of us) - perhaps a necessary one

I never really think about the flowers that grew before the ones

I see in front of me but there must have been some, for how else would the soil have come to be there? Other than from the life and death of some other, once lovely & beautiful seasonal flower

ELLIE AUSTIN 15

You wait long enough and somehow, time passes

transformed

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Descent into a Valley Descending to bathe ourselves in sacred streams, We found the track too narrow, our steps unsure.

We came to be cleansed of colored-paper dreams And the fingers of our fathers and our mothers, But found our former bodies warped into others, No longer what we were, decaying, and impure.

The valley is stripped bare and piled with stones: You must not see us—you must not wash yourselves.

Turn back before the water pulps your bones, Before tar hooves rupture and feathers grow.

Transfigured, we must watch you from below; The roads are closed to monsters—we cannot flee ourselves.

MATTHEW PALATNIK

17

uneasy

Choke on your McDonaldsTM Choke on your McDonald’s Choke on your meat Around garish photos Of the slim Containing the ill.

And the golden arches will herald: ‘This is Ronald McDonald’s body Broken for you.’

Flesh turned fries, Blood – transubstantiated – To scarlet ketchup.

His body broken for you.

TOMMY GILHOOLY

18

Smash all the bowls, I don’t need them anymore Even at the time, I was understanding of the metaphor, ‘have your cake and eat it, but the problem is you get fat’, still it was absorbed, unadorned, permeating my mind. It is present when we stop speaking for the, duly noted, Last time, and by extension, I cut ties to food, too; as though you and him had an embryonic binding, tacitly coveted. Time slips up, and I find the pictures colluding together, reminders of when you forced me to eat brine, scales, and the back of my tongue. My wiry bones spit the table knives back in your face, bitter tasting, I still want to impress you even now. I try to swallow after chewing and chewing, I will come to associate the tough shame with the dining table and your conditional apathy. You stripped me of childlike relish, unsullied, as you photographed me adjacent to pears, and her straight up and down. I was plucked, featherless and unripe, cawing through the cracked carrier.

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dreams

I then consummated only canned soup, a routine, until it tasted like felt and being out of breath and I never touched those bowls again. In fact I stopped feeling a lot of things. My fingers unsoiled by oil and salt and anything candy like. No minerals, nothing essential, no unity to the earth. I could not stomach original sin, practiced break ups as I was unable to bite the hand of Eve. After time, I caved and scooped dirt from under my nails, funnelling it into muscles.

In a warped compliment, you say I look healthier, more womanly and I shudder.

Suddenly, I no longer want to be a girl. This is inseparable from not wanting to be your girl and the indifference between the two still frightens me. If I take away my mouth and tongue and guilty hands and appetite maybe I will be completely devoid of ability to stir your commentary into batter, gorge on it, let it follow you around, impregnate your vision and prostitute rationality.

RENÉE ESHEL 20

You pulled me up from the root and broke the stem.

Slicing the umbilical cord in two.

So I was all your own.

The grin on your face as you wrapped me up Warm in the arms of your autumn coat, holding me close to your heart As you took me home.

Embracing me, placing me pride of place on your kitchen bench As you pulled out the knife.

Slowly you began searching, scooping, scraping I sat there beaming like a harvest moon You dug your hand deep into that wet mess And spooned me out shaking…

But I didn’t mind.

But then you kept tugging and you kept breaking Silver spoon scratching, stripping, unmaking Heart aching, No giving, all taking Insides quaking Stealing my flesh: all that is mine…

And it began to hurt Pulling out my heart strings Tearing them away, snapping me, stringing out my veins Each time I would long for you to stay Flesh for flesh – Instead an empty space began to grow As walls appeared – a hole And the space became bigger and bigger A vacuum in my savaged lungs.

I was so hollow.

Eaten out.

Until I was gaping And I breathed out a sigh of haggard relief that it was over You lifted that sinister knife one final time Carving again A smile into my skin So I stared blank faced grinning wickedly at you My killer Making me full as you dropped the candle in – And I waited for the wick to burn out, Fading.

21

Jack o’ Lantern - ISABEL DEMPSEY

You cut me open but I didn’t mind.

I wanted you to pierce the hole, reveal my secrets My wet and fleshy insides.

Unbind me so you can call me ‘mine.’

he Entropy

CONNOR HARRISON PHILLIPS 22

23

found

Butter CONNOR HARRISON PHILLIPS

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Catch!

It was a catching day when he left.

She remembers seeing the slithy backs of the creatures wriggling in the liquid, beady eyes matching her vacant stare. She was kicking her legs in butterfly-motion, round and around and around, letting the backs of her heels smack against the concrete slab she was sitting atop every time the circle was complete.

It was the first time she’d ever realised her hair smelt bad, because she had forgotten to wash it. Only the year before, she lived under a stable bath time routine dictated by the catchers. Now, she was deemed old enough to wash her own hair, and for the first time, she’d let slip the routine for want of more time staring at the creatures. It stank of oil and sweat and overwhelming loss.

He was a catcher, the best. He used to put on the canary gloves, and delve his hands straight into the liquid. The creatures were mostly calm with him, losing their final moments of life with grace and acceptance in his arms. If they didn’t, he’d snap their necks in seconds. He was practical like that.

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himself

It was a shame that he left on a catching day, because it was his favourite day of the month in the warehouse. Other times, he’d spend the hours picking at the bones of the creatures like she did, scraping out the marrow with a toothpick. They’d eat it in the week before catching days, the days when the flesh was gone.

She, like the others, wonders what will happen when she leaves, and is confined to the liquid too.

Whether the scales that will grow on her skin crunch well in the mouths of future catchers, her flesh tender and warm on the tongue.

She remembers looking at him changing slowly in the liquid, eyes dulling and skin hardening. She remembers smacking her feet again and again against the concrete, knowing she’d now be a catcher, too.

EMMA ROWLEY

26

27

gigantic

in

Craters The grass of my lawn is stuck in the perennial dance of time.

The water that moved it, when it covered the bottom of the sea, still moves it as it brushes my knees, in spirit.

The fish have been replaced by bees, and its shoots by slim trees.

This extinct pond, my garden’s alter-ego Is the outline of an old print, which we neither can see, of where once a foot – that of a dinosaur, I mean – treaded lightly, before it was just missed by an asteroid. Whoopsie.

Too bad I doubt we’ll be missed, by an asteroid or Earth, when we finally leave.

MARGHERITA VOLPATO 28

the big little things the enormity of life it stretches out, so far this incongruent conga of beginning and ending and i can't stop tracing the line backwards wondering how to straighten out the path ahead. i catch myself hating you sometimes not that you deserve my hate your piece of the line deserves erasing but I cannot help but wish that his lips taste like me and that his hair smells like my cologne ELLIOTT KELLY

29

Bubbles

IZ MAXWELL

his

30

Monkey bars Nobody told us that when you grow up you get old.

All we wanted was to stretch our spines, flex our fingertips far enough to climb and hold, cling and swing from the monkey bars in the playground small eyes watching small biceps pumping Where did the children go?

The ones who strung their cares on the metal bars and flew laughter in on crumpled paper planes, the ones who tiptoed towards that sky-scraping silver staircase and made a game out of cold fingers and palms, cloudy days, aching arms, growing pains

31

bed

Where did we go that day we realised we could touch without stretching?

We could touch without stretching.

Reaching, without realising what we were reaching for, feet firmly planted on the floor.

Concrete swallowed sound and small eyes watching the giants on the playground.

FAITH FALAYI

32

Brockengespenst, or mountain spectre Unchanging, the silence stands on the mountains Colourful things and thoughts tap on your forehead You walk and feel the air tighten around your teeth.

Twenty years behind you of wandering, of closing your eyes before the slow ending of the world.

The fog covers memories, Covers words, covers yearnings, covers fears.

Blow away your hair, here silence stands and watches.

How heavy all those years are, how much heavier those that still wait, You move a foot and feel the future echoing beneath, an unknown name You will belong to.

Here, the mountains hold time between their peaks and show That nothing happens if nothing changes.

An eternity is carried between cracks of rock and darkness, between cold, moss, cloud and bone.

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into

But are you nothing here?

Move your feet a step more, let those stones crumble down and know that it is you that brought a sound, you that are here, changing in a breath between past and future, You that are life reflecting and haunted.

Look up with your small eyes, see in the fog a shadow that looks back, light around his head like a star, Like a circle of colourful things and thoughts: a giant or a ghost, walking on silence’s shoulders.

Move a hand, the giant moves his, yourself made again before you: This earth notices your presence, You are alive and you are here and you are now, not a named loneliness of skin, but light stepping on sky.

SIEVE BONAIUTI

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HENDRIKJE DORUSSEN

35

Giant Tree

a

UL

Up there is a little cross-hatched sky And sun on my back; The quiet twitchings of the student body Sighs, holed up in secrecy, or Solidarity, or internment — or, jokingly, education — My eyes are caught on A pretty girl with bright hair, and I think she notices me — I smile, though still Your presence is there, predatory As the books, breathing on the walls.

My thoughts are racing today; i can feel The layered masks peeling back.

Soon i will look like a flayed rabbit And catching not just the bright eyes Of pretty girls, twitching IZ MAXWELL

36

37

insect

gigantic

So much beautiful time I am stroking the bottom of the barrel, sticky jam and sour honey are stuck to my tongue and lips and the pages of my imagination. I read and read and read until the pressed work will eventually become formative and widen the four walls, expansive. But for now, I am a size too small, the fresh scabs on my knees are accidental, dirty, and healing and my hair ties like a noose around my hips, caressing me, keeping me young. The monarch in the cavity is alive and well, her wings stretch wide, fragile, but firm, directing my hands to branches and leaf handles. They do not break when they are trodden on, I do not chew on my fatness, there are no broken clasps. I look down to insects on the hair of my legs and the swell of my belly, I am full, I have lapped up the dew of summer and am satiated. I do not fear hunger, I am not indebted to winter, I am pouring jelly through the gaps in my teeth and transporting frogs to basins. I knit yarn together with unblemished fingers and march through playgrounds, hardy, fierce and entirely unafraid. I cut my hair and bleach my favourite dress and then wear clips and the sodden fabric for weeks - mistakes are frequent, fixable, and fickle. I collect fossils, marbles, stamps, cards, sequential hobbies that will ebb and flow, becoming slack and lean. Constellations are only as big as the stars plastered on my ceiling, my knowledge does not move further than my mouth, my hands are the right size.

My hands are exactly the right size.

RENÉE ESHEL 38

Josephine On my carpet walks Josephine!

Josephine, the one and only Fallen spider Of my Uni accommodation Josephine is hiding behind my bed!

She is the empress of crawling over me when I sleep Sometimes even I might yell!

O how sweet it is to wake up to croissant coffee, and…

Josephine! The fallen spider!

Josephine is hiding in my head eating my thoughts!

She crawls crrr all her legs crackle!

Lovelylovely… I have become Josephine…

My soul outgrew my ribcage, I cannot SpeakAct, I will

have to nibble on people!

I will have to catch people up bundle them up eat

their thoughts fresh O to feed on thought-juice yum!

At dawn the cruel dawn that rises over a people of

insomniacs, again, and, again,,,,, 39

insect.

Josephine has a sister!

Two Josephines crawl in me I have had to lock my door!

I am the Gaya the Fertile Ground of Josephines!

Venomous souls Squished by the world Squid Game When they see me, people Squirm… cute Shall I open my door? & walk a country of dreams, Far from a Josephineless world where spiders do not

bear sisters And humans do not bear spiders Shall I float along a river me and my Josephines Wonder what matters what leaves what stays…

Shall I watch snow fall on a bridge and eat and think Me and My Josephines…

No thoughts left no human ones at least A lot of small pretty moments A bridge A snowflake A nightfall

Juliette Guéron-Gabrielle 40

41

LUCIE GOURMET

Dragonfly agility

‘Metamorphosis’

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M e t a p h o r phosis And you cling to those extra few years, as if trying to maintain purchase on a crack in a wall.

After a time, hands become non-functional; small and wizened like the p a l e g r e e n p a p e r vines that pinch crumbling mortar.

With this stasis, the fluid in your v e i n s t a g n a t e s.

It is no longer blood but thousands of b l a c k b e e t l e s h e l l s that cram into the ant nest of your arteries.

They surged forward once — ever busy and tunnelling and laying — But there were too many.

Now still, they lie in alloyed suffocation.

Yet you continue to dig in brittle nails.

Sickly lichen throws up hangnails bulging beneath your skin’s sheer membrane.

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by

the rest of you is indistinct … warped by haircut moss … a parody in sodden green …

Beneath what you were (A grotesque past tense) (A crack) springs a small new shoot.

Its bulb, fragrant and heady, pervades with light and scent the creative clay that cups it.

So fast it climbs!

Spearing strange tendrils of animation upwards and outwards: it lattices the atmosphere into bold and complicated networks.

Growth overtakes the wall (and the crack).

I grow and you become less — I grow and my blossomy eye unfurls to survey my brilliance — I g r e w … and you were not there.

DAISY TOZER 44

45

Franz

ISOBEL DINIC Metamorphosis 46

Fred Mud curling cooler around him, Fred cast off his night cap with a grumble, kicking fourteen pairs of slippers from fourteen pointed feet, and scuttled under the walls of his home to venture into the moon-puddled night.

He ignored the incessant chirp of the crickets – attention-seeking bastards, he griped – and the low thrum of rogue bees loitering on the hedge corner, remembering their stingers as he cast a wary eye. Those ladybirds that had emigrated from the allotment down the road were even worse, he thought to himself, quickly distracted from the bees as he climbed onto the rotting flesh of a nearby apple to feed. He didn’t trust their new-fangled clothing, their garish polka-dot jackets in tacky shades of red and yellow. Between all their ideas about ‘colours’ and ‘flying’, you’d think they’d gotten confused, figured themselves birds, or something equally ridiculous. If you were born a bug, you stayed a bug, that was how it had been back in his day. He tutted loudly, and the bloom scattered.

Glutted on acrid fruit and self-righteous indignation, all seven body-segments plump with satiety, Fred clambered back to the rock he lived under as the first dashes of sunlight breached the fenced horizon, squeezing underneath just in time to hear the back door being thrown open. Footsteps flattened the grass, before small hands with fat fingers lurched his roof into the sky, and he waved a cranky fist, blinking blind eyes at the young-faced eclipse. A shriek, and the rock fell back. Fred wiggled comfortably in the crush of it. Satisfied, for now, he rolled back into the cool damp of the dirt’s embrace to sleep.

HANNAH BERESFORD 47

Kafka

Bug Burlesque 48

Stir

MARTA WOLNY

The dial woke her: Warmth did it.

Enclosed by a palm temperature can be held now.

Don’t you love the valve?

Docile, stick out, burying degrees from minutes ago.

Tumbling tongue of some k-9 slobbering inside himself reanimating sleeping legs, lapping of the radiator: That keen pup made her shiver and bat each wing, the lamp, the wall, the ceiling are asked which way is out.

I would have shown her though the signs stayed sleeping, like my left leg, beneath my right.

Ladybird, you weren’t meant to sleep in student accommodation. I can’t give you those shelves, nor the vodka-breaths.

Through the window— It refuses to yawn with me, parting its mouth according to budge while that hot hound moves louder, warming my knees, and you, you are made restive.

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Collage and front cover by: Hannah Beresford & Hendrikje Dorussen © Sentire Zine Issue One. Lent 2022.

issue one