Sentire Issue Three

Dear reader, Taken from the first sentence of Iris Murdoch's The Sea, The Sea, our three themes for this issue have inspired a wonderful range of work that takes you on a journey from beastly bonsais and B&Q car parks to mythos lurking in ocean depths.

This is the first issue of Sentire that we have edited separated by a sea of our own and much of our curation has happened over the phone, connecting Cambridge and Logroño, Spain. We have had to adjust to the new ways in which Sentire has slotted into our lives and want to thank all our submitters and readers for being patient with us. We are so grateful to anyone who has trusted us with a little piece of themselves for this issue.

Boundaries between this issue's themes have been fluid: you might find the ocean wash up into a poem on lies, or be struck by the glow of sun on sand. Despite only being one of three themes, the sea has provided a definite undercurrent throughout. So we recommend that you put on your swimsuit, blow up your armbands, and wade into the incredible submissions ahead!

All our love, The Sentire Team

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C O N T i. LIES Sketch from el Museo de Navarra 4 Sand on the Glass 5 What You Sow 7 Undertides 9

HANNAH BERESFORD DAVID QUINN ESTHER ARTHURSON MAJA KOBYLAK

Screaming at a Phantom 10 MATTHEW TAYLOR Arabella 12 FIONA HILL Sonnet 13 DEWEI KUNG Peripheral Talk 14 SIENNA BLACK Self-Fashioning 15 HANNAH BERESFORD Essex Grrrls 16 ELLA SMITH On “inanimation” 17 SYNA MAJUMDER junk huckster’s communiqué to the 18 SAM DEMARCO man upstairs / saxo grammaticus

ii. GLOW alstroemeria lino cut 24 ISOBEL DINIC About a week before my 25 JACK HEATH brother died

ii

E N T S Selene 26 HANNAH WORRALL “And I am horribly limited” 27 M. PÉREZ-GUILLOCHON photography 28 DELFI DORUSSEN record of a revelation of colour / and 29 HENDRIKJE DORUSSEN then the light confessed to me She is Not her 33 EL WOODWARD Song of Surville 35 LIBBY HARRIS artwork 36 MEGAN GENIN Shadow Puppets 37 HANNAH BERESFORD alstroemeria monotype plate 39 ISOBEL DINIC Ne 40 MADDY BROWNE

iii. SEA photography 43 DELFI DORUSSEN Ascending With My Father 45 BERTIE KIRKWOOD The Coral Mother 46 REBECCA WRIGHT Selkie 47 ROSE SCHIERIG The Singer of the Sea 49 JACK HEATH Shipping Forecast 50 JAMIE CHEN

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(C O

N T .)

Sketchbook Drawings of the Beach 51 LAURA BRACEY CURRY at Warnemünde, part of the German Baltic Sea The Whale-Road 51 JOE WRIGHT Rockpooling 53 JOE WRIGHT At Bamburgh 55 JOE WRIGHT Things I probably shouldn’t say for 57 EMMA BROWN a wide variety of reasons, or, Back from the Beach Seasalter, September 2022 58 SAM BUTLER Plato’s Cave 59 EDEN GRAY artwork 60 ELLA SMITH On Ringstead and Redcliffe 61 SAM ALLEN How to Sail a Bed 62 EDEN GRAY Photography 64 MOLLY STEPHENSON

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v

1

Sketch from el Museo de Navarra HANNAH BERESFORD 3

The

4

Sand on the Glass The wine bottle cap bursts –

I could not control the spills then

comes the fumble As Lowell’s Dolphin, beached.

Hers was filled with all the flower stems a hand could hold –

5

sea

Inside and invisible In hidden bloom.

Dylan’s Sara returns Savanna-la-Mar On the beachfront, glass full.

Come crash, we fall

to a wave, Distant.

DAVID QUINN

6

The man at the market stall told me it was a bonsai seed, so I planted it, watered it diligently, and waited for something to grow. When something eventually broke through the soil, it was a pleasant surprise. I had assumed the seed a dud, the seller a conman, as is often the way.

Perhaps I was too quick to equate growth with success, for my delight rapidly shifted into unease when I noticed that the sprout had become rather hairy overnight. As the seedling gained height, the matted brown clump of hair became tangled, and I spent the best part of an hour coaxing out the knots with my comb. After all, whatever was brewing in that soil, I had planted it and it was mine to care for – this is what you got for buying cheap, my mother would have chastised. After a few weeks, in which we’d tested various hairstyles, from simple pleats to jaunty pineapple, my sapling started to moult and did so rather dramatically, not clump by clump, but in a pealing sort of fashion, like a snake shedding its outer layer.

However disturbing the human-like hair had been, I guarantee that what lay beneath was more chilling by far: a pink, unfocused, gelatinous mass had lurked beneath the mop’s surface, a partially formed albino eye, still more liquid than solid. For neither the first nor last time, I wondered just what I’d been sold in that market. Its milky pupil, a shadowy puddle 7

which

within a pool, dilated adoringly as I came into view. Still its faithful custodian, I continued to water her every second day (the plant had become a she in my mind), and applied the eyedrops I used for my hay-fever, which calmed the inflamed, watery look slightly, although the eye remained far from solid.

At the three months mark, I etched another groove into the wall behind her with pencil, proud of her progress from six inches to eight, and noticed a new feature catching the light: a baby tooth, the first of several that would vertically line the stem, sideways sentinels with no obvious purpose whatsoever. When she started to talk – only gurgling at first, although it soon transitioned into a happy and incessant babble – it became impossible to find a plant-sitter for the Christmas break. I was meant to go to my mother’s, but since the last sitter pointedly blamed my baby girl for the loss of a fingertip, word appeared to have spread that my house was to be avoided. So we stayed home for the holidays, just the two of us, and I drank eggnog and sang her carols and tried not to overthink the situation.

Years later, she started to wither, succumbing to time as we all must do, and spat out a round of seeds that she insisted I pass on; my grandchildren, if you will. I sold them to the market man as bonsai seeds.

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9

lies

artwork: Undertides MAJA KOBYLAK

Screaming at a Phantom Composed. I felt a liar.

Grass stains where my heels dig into dirt will be bleached tomorrow, made invisible.

How are you? tell me (but after). what I ask in silence, How could you?

Pretend not to speak constrained breath.

But I know you feel it as when we kissed exposing.

Train home, silk wrapping around the stranger whose hips touch mine crinkles as he opens elbows tucked away his falafel and houmous wrap.

Bites swallows bites (does not chew).

Breathing we peripherally stare then smile then avert. eyes return to their wrap.

Clumsily unbuttoning my shirt once, your fingers screamed in silence, wear it loose.

The irritation of the pause, I liked (but for you) I turned up naked. and ached as you stayed clothed.

10

A structure of meant-to-happen-like-this conceals what was.

Uniquely us, we, like everyone, played maturely. need to squabble unfulfilled, I smile in adult.

Train home, stranger swaddled by my hips stands.

Outside, water mocks silk, it shines then drips then blows in the thieving wind. Take it away.

Opacity never kept you warm and our... charade? is rained upon.

The maceration of our wrap burns.

Cure three words unspoken: quiet.

Thoughts spiral and grow alone as I (don’t) sleep. diverging into those I’ll share, those we won’t.

We have let half-truths stockpile, and clung to façades that keep us warm then throw us to the birds.

MATTHEW TAYLOR

11

before

Arabella Walk with me Arabella, talk with me and touch my skin, This thin coating of mist marks my last breath, last October, Your lease of life was signed with that hand, I couldn’t stop, Such poetry. Intent you’d fold those wide-eyed lies, For me in butterflies and paper planes, again and again, I’d kneel in pretty ashes, powdering your spirit spent On haunting, your talcum lavender scent he knows, Flows like lies Arabella and it all falls through, I don’t believe a ghost of me could be like you, Could look like her, a modern beauty, what a cruelty, She’ll never age again. Born of his words Arabella, Our dead dilemma, shivering a silk upon my lips, A gentle rip of time you bring the autumn back to him, And I in fragments, stitching back the slip with it, Delusions honeyed, I’ll eat my fill of truths that lie, In wait for one another. Arabella how you laugh, You pick the scab that stings each time I take my bath, In memories, hot as tears, I watch the steam and smoke, Of you flush the mirror wet with all the ways you’ve smeared, And smudged me into spirals round that ever-present form, Of him. Arabella, watcher, spectre? I dream of silent halls, And live in morning walks. I feel you now, a shaky sigh, By my side, we pass along the terraced streets that roll like, Minutes, we pass your time with every step. Your every grin, Walk with me Arabella, talk with me and touch my skin, Within this dewy daybreak’s resolution, I’ll pluck the heart, And exorcise, all the phantoms that lolled around in fickle, Truths. I test your lies. He opens his eyes like sweet wrappers, Arabella, I hear a shatter! Perhaps now, you and I, we are gone.

FIONA HILL 12

Sonnet I reach to kiss through flakes of age-dulled gold The knuckles white as pure revirgined soul that ousts as many lies as it can hold and swallows me, in gulping mouthfuls, whole.

If ill-begotten love were mine to mould I’d purge my crooked heart of all she stole In her I cannot trust to pass a prayer: In life, in death, she tempted ne’er a Sin, Yet in my lungs she’d whispered, deep within: ‘If want was wont to sate, I’d lay you bareYou’d pluck me in this chamber, layer by layer; I’d shield your eyes from ever-watchful Him.’ Til death I’ll nurse this spell she used to sing, and bleed til salty seas have blood to spare.

DEWEI KUNG

13

me

Peripheral Talk In the violence of a moment, there were two of us. I was inside the car, looking out, thinking that the night was redder than I’d ever seen it. Hoping for the lilac of morning.

You were tapping your fingers on the wheel, and were too distant in rhythm to be looking at any one thing. If we had noticed one another, we would have seen that there is little we can do now to be redeemed.

But still, from where both of us were sitting, the strange depth of darkness rose, stretched into fingers and sought to hold. We could build this world entirely with our hands, I said. Yes, you replied, we could build this world, entire, with our hands. But we did not mention our rage.

We did not mention the house, an old friend, appeared from the dirt as if from nowhere in the once empty field. Or my odd habits, joints slotting to a sort of half-sleep: always hiding, always finding me crouched in corners, unlacing a nail from its cuticle. Nor the women on the radio, that we cannot save.

Who soothe their skin with pain, then return in the morning to their cubicles. You muttered beneath your breath at her story, she must be insane. I looked over at you, said, she’s not trying to be sane or sensible, she’s just trying. You drove faster then.

And I hadn’t realised, but I rubbed the tears into my cheekbones, let go, looked out again. And I can’t seem to help it these days, it leaks out of me without much effort or thought.

I am trying to be kinder, especially to you, before I leave, so soon. But no matter how I try, you seem half-remembered.

And after all this, all I know is that sanity is not the point anymore.

Words, exchanged in the dark, on the drive home—or something close— perhaps this is the point.

SIENNA BLACK 14

Self-Fashioning I scoop my flesh like wet clay, taking handfuls from the meat of my thigh to shape a large mound. Press in ridges for the ribcage, smooth the stomach’s extended sphere. The fast food that I ate through my twenties, metabolised into flesh: she’ll share my taste for cheesy chips. We’re made of the same matter.

I roll fingers and toes from the skin around my ribs. A dark vein runs through the fistful of clay: tattoo ink (my body still bears the memory of being eighteen.) I massage that year of my life into soft submission, fingers tinged grey, and press the stained appendages into place. The muscle of my calf forms the shape of her skull. Her nose is made from my heel. My body has digested the Northern twang of my home town, but as I pinch off more flesh to fashion a voice box the clay refuses to hold its shape, softened by the drip of long Southern vowels. It’s still too pliable as I press it onto the column of her throat. My fingerprint indents the surface and soft clay clings to me, symbiotic. It’ll never fully set, kept damp in the osmosis of culture; she gurgles speech and the larynx dribbles down her neck.

Finally moulded, my Golem stares at me with my own eyes.

With my last remaining fingernail I reach forward and scratch my name into her forehead. She smiles with a mouth entirely her own, and I sink back down into the dirt. We are made of the same matter.

HANNAH BERESFORD

15

as

LLA MITH

16

On “inamination” massage chairs are sexual beings just as a brick wall is back support. leave uncounted half the world to want only the part that tells explicitly what it feels and jump off the longest bridge in the world it goes over the ocean (atlantic) the piers that hold it up sway in the water when there are no cars on the road i swear i can feel them under my feet talking back to the water another one of those relationships detective and the jewel thief actor film and the camera watching code and the elusive broken part of it everyone wants someone else to eat them but there's just too many vegetarians which is not an ideological problem just an aesthetic one, a problem of want that is easily solved by all the pylons curving and curling on the sides of hills talking amongst themselves on sun-dried plains metal-teeth structures, grasping electric cable billions big, imaginary numbers big but still so closely aspirational i can feel them under my feet telling the water i'm far too dehydrated and alive, for my own good.

SYNA MAJUMDER

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junk huckster’s communiqué to the man upstairs / saxo grammaticus

It is round about September 15th and the summer heat has not stopped burning, the summer crowds have not stopped coming, and– You up there.

Hello.

–I have a list of questions.

What if the rains do not come, the season does not break? What if the flowers all turn from the sun, and the bookstores are all rackets and tourist traps, and the high streets and subway cars are all faces and limbs and no kin to me at all?

I

dear god or other puissant creature (do you read me) dear god (is this thing on) dear god (I have a list of demands) this is my huckster’s prayer (dear god) blight the crops befoul the wells rain fire upon the earth it is tourist season and they are buying fridge magnets

dear god I am a troubled cog I have sat behind this counter all day I have peddled garbage I have foisted crap I could sell you pond scum (if the fancy caught you) dear god this is a polemic

dear god (one time) some fucker handed me a magnet he said you got a cleaner one of these round back I said I’ll look (I did) and lo there it was I picked it up I danced a jig I put it back and I came back up and told that fucker nope all out dear god (don’t18 worry) this is a lie

What if all my life’s labour has been to feed key chains and fridge magnets to the maw of the earth, the belly of the ocean? And what if one day all these trinkets rebuke their far drowning, wash up on the shoreline, swallow the beaches, the trees, the towns? What then, if no moss grows among the ruins?

All right. But how about this? In September heat the world curls and dries like wilting flowers, and there is a little cow sat across from me on the windowsill, his back to the greenhouse and the garden, looking forward. As though not a cynical token of our travels cast in red and white plastic, and after an old friend, we have named him Saxo.

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fucker nope all out dear god (don’t worry) this is a lie

dear god (I bet you get this a lot) do fridge magnets go to heaven or do the souls suffocate in their cellophane do they remember the heat of human hands the slick of human sweat (the taste of human skin) dear god I see your novelty coin (this is a lucky penny) but did you really spend time on Alcatraz?

dear god (sorry to bring this up but) when they took your boy rent him to scraps scattered scraps to the winds took the scatterings for souvenirs was there any precious love (at all) imparted on even one finger that was not amidst ten thousand barren

write

But what if I bore him worshipfully home, to the home we have made together, like a toenail of Christ, and what if he is loved, so loved, because we stole him from the airport.

not amidst ten thousand barren imitations washed out dear god (please tell me) what purchased joy is not touristic is clean is real

(does this help our case?)

SAM DEMARCO

photograph by Sam DeMarco & Hendrikje Dorussen

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21

I

alstroemeria lino cut ISOBEL DINIC 23

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glows

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24

About a week before my brother died It was just after visiting Connor the second time. Dad and I were sat on bags of soil in the Meir B&Q carpark, waiting for Ad to come back. September Summer had come. Golden sun, warm, powdered cloudless sky. Peacefully quiet. It was a few hours before sunset, but you could feel the shadows lengthen, the day gathering in. Stilling. Dad leant on his stick between his legs like a sword as light glanced off the trees. We were wordless and calm. We didn’t know if Con was going to make it out of this one.

“Light like this makes anything beautiful”, I said.

Dad might have nodded, tapped his stick. At least there were plenty of trees about, he said. His tremors hummed.

We were shimmering.

It was beautiful.

JACK HEATH

25

rather

Selene How you glow Remarked the sun as he rose To the moon gliding low Everything you show From your eye to your toes How you glow Seeds of worship do we sow And drive off the crows To the moon gliding low Attention is your foe Yet for them you still pose How you glow As you draw up your bow Away run the does To the moon gliding low Whether you decided to stay or to go No matter what you chose How you glow To the moon gliding low

HANNAH WORRALL 26

Photography by Delfi Dorussen

“And I am horribly limited”, I am locked in this dark lighthouse Surrounded by an ocean of creatures Humans of all forms come out and creep at night And though I can not breach the distance I am them and they are me I am the whore and the homeless I am the killer and his victim I am the wind that covers the corpse I am the blood that stains the hands And despite the tears one sheds Despite the regret one never shares Each of them have this glow This spark that irradiates from within It merely flickers in some It is a blinding light in others.

27

Untitled DELFI DORUSSEN

than

I am locked in this cathedral Some sort of Quasimodo above all Paris You can hear the bells and the crowd An omniscient being that flies above in the sky I see through walls, I see through hearts I am the lovers' sensual embrace And I am that lonely erring soul For I am the individual and the collective I am the fury of the mob And I am the smile of a child I am the cry for justice And I am the king laughing on his throne I am the flaring fire in the streets And I am the candle's placid flame.

There is this glare that wanders around It crosses paths with angels and beasts This glow is boundless and fleshy It fills the empty chalice in god's hand Overflows out of the vessel And pours down into the world.

MARINE PÉREZ-GUILLOCHON

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HENDRIKJE DORUSSEN

record of a revelation of colour / and then the light confessed to me

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sparkles

30

31

in

32

She is Not her When I was born, She birthed topaz, A refraction of Gemstone.

I am cast aside shard, Shadow atop shadow: Tarnished with yellow-hue.

I compete with glass-child, Who radiates the same.

These years with She are spent Bounded to crystal with cord.

“The tighter the better”, She says, Making my shattered edge Fixed: through eternal hymn.

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the

And I’d plead for fixing to SheFor peeping at lips same as mine: My edges raw, bleeding repent.

So she did- a Genesis tale.

“How it should be”: Though his breath lined with pome, And tarnished recollectionsHers a bittersweet cure.

Though glossed in shattered sinA pricking of perfect pout.

Her radiance glows through cracks, Beyond the sickly BorderlandDripping in the same sheen as mine.

Her glow is beyond glass; Pushing her sin against my sin, Indulging in our Mother-tongue: Languages She could never understand.

And She should never find.

Though someday She will.

And I prepare, serving life’s duty: Connecting fragment to fragment, Reflecting light of my own.

I burst through mosaic to find: Glow is eternal- not just home.

EL WOODWARD 34

Song of Surville The sun did not take me When the horizon sliced it, Well-worn blade thicker than its fruit.

Dark pinheads, bobbing in blue satin, Replaced by my helpless gaze Which cannot stick.

Uncrying I scattered myself On the sands.

How can I pick my thread Out of the fray Of each evening sky, Languid and blushing away?

I am a sandhopper.

This ocean is admired by strangers And so can’t be mine anymore.

I would stop three feet from the tree Because I’d read the story before – I wish I could believe in novelty.

LIBBY HARRIS

35

bland

MEGAN GENIN

36

37

Shadow Puppets, HANNAH BERESFORD

May

38

39

sunshine.

alstroemeria monotype plate, ISOBEL DINIC

Ne neon is precious metal to a jellyfish, is iron. rotting to them feels like taking a hairdryer to a desert, drying out on wet sand craving the wet under which they (huddle). so, this beach is mine, ruled beneath my shining armour of seawater - that glows, don’t you know, don’t you know that it glows, in the slice of October sun it is half-term I am studying the half-life of neon before they expect me to know what that means, before atoms are one mark questions and not grains of sand the sand at my feet doesn’t hurt enough ground glass in my eye should do the job fine, its pieces ravenous for my discomfort-ed knowledge neon is precious metal to a jellyfish, I know that, just the right amount of atoms before I come along and poke it with a stick and it has to sting except unlike a bee it is already dead lashing out in decay as I clutch it near as neon toying with its grey electricity until their footsteps came running - adorned with jellyfish am I now as the death gets in my finger cracks with an alcoholic insistence not to breathe. so, I turn blue on the beach as it drains me of truths.

MADDY BROWNE 40

41

Untitled DELFI DORUSSEN 43

bland The

44

Ascending With My Father We ascend the island in the sea together I like to think of it as a sort of quest: Through the rows of ferns like hands reaching for a king Brush past the barley whiskers and foxglove tentacles Along the paths like arteries, footprints of some former kinship Beyond those bearded crags and onto our plinth of rock We walk upwards with intent Find ourselves arisen from the mudflats below Walking in search of admiration from the sentinel seagulls But also the quiet joy of admiring the unspooling horizon I point out that tiny train to you, which seems to spot us Heaving along the shoreline with a friendly chug Dark chocolate sands corral the cars with a watery breath Boats tremble nervously by the docks, waiting Meadows beyond stretch out like a wedding gown Seamed with rivers and buttoned with cattle The towering grey bride looks down on us Godly as the sun gently kisses her forehead Back at the tent I check you for ticks Examine every inch of these legs which mirror my own Try to ignore the bloody thorn scrapes and nettle stings Conclude there’s nothing to worry about We look out to sea and wonder if the tide will ever come in Under the moon, waves lap on the rocks and lull us to sleep

BERTIE KIRKWOOD

45

Sea,

The Coral Mother The sea-sweeping current alludes sailors, Though never us.

Grounding anchors into rich, Gurgling waves.

Ceaseless swaying From these islands to those Mediterranean tales.

Over ice, after dark.

Floating above colours that remain unseen, The ocean is one small boat.

A breaching whale Ascending through the blue epidermis Of siren, of real myth.

Touch it, Tide and moon.

Breathe it, Green and blue.

This body does so much for you.

Of this, there is no other Our siren, our coral mother.

REBECCA WRIGHT

46

"The tale is also reminiscent of folktales about the swan maiden, another animal bride with whom the seal woman shares the ability to shape shift; in both cases, a man domesticates them by thwarting their ability to move across species, but eventually they escape."

- Penguin Book of Mermaids

Selkie You peel the fur from my skin, pluck the lumps of coal from my face.

You fold my coat carefully.

You are gentle.

You revere that you have it, that you hold me in your hands.

You cradle my wet eyes in your palm.

My reflection writhes and blurs on mirror sea.

I would not see myself in the still of its silver.

This fresh film prickles at my pulse, Vibrates under your touch.

This is the skin you have dressed me in.

47

The

Fleshy interface of your hometown tastes.

Collage of chemical clippings, viral off cuts, feminine scraps.

Patchwork woman.

You have flavoured me with plastic.

You have forgotten my voice box.

You haven’t given me enough ribs.

I miss the skin that time maps, age bubbles, life lives in.

Painted with blood, milk, spit and saltwater.

Emblazoned with spiderweb scars and razor burn bumps.

Undressed to my bare bones, Rebuilt in your ridicule.

Stripped from myself.

I will rip open your shore, your shack, your surety in my searching.

I will swim back to my skin.

shells by Hendrikje Dorussen

38 48

The Singer of the Sea Growing up, I used to think merchant meant singer of the sea.

I would trip it, glide it, over my tongue.

The ch a ssh, er the aire of my French aunt Who would pray over the pot, the onions and potatoes And beef she’d graze with swollen knuckles Before opening them up with a knife — murmuring her prayers, her love in low chansons To my ear below her elbow. Her lover Lost, below the waves.

Pirates would come to me in dreams, With blue skies and barrel-chests filled with rum And song. No rape and scurvy. No capitalism Or queer homosociality, life led in rebellion.

Speaking French they sung in English — Now we are ready to sail for the horn — And the word, I would chant the word As we muttered a language I couldn’t speak In my heart, searching for the love Lost below the waves.

With merchant now I smell sawdust, The hard skin of bricks clicking into unmortared blocks.

My dad’s nails, hands no fingers but all palm, Discarded safety helmets. Diesel. And vowels which drop Flat as granite (Sparkling like granite, too), The anchor below the waves

JACK HEATH 49

Sea

Shipping forecast Grandad played the shipping forecast to me Earliest morning in the caravan “Showers, later, gale eight south-westerly” He would tune the analogue antennae, We all had to hush as the broadcast ran, Grandad played the shipping forecast to me Although we were far in land, stationary.

And here it could not be more different than “Showers, later gale eight south-westerly” Perhaps to remind him, though distantly, Ships keep journeying the sea’s wide span, Grandad played the shipping forecast to me.

That sailors are still at her wild mercy, That her might will never be tamed by man: “Showers, later gale eight south-westerly” Although I lived landlocked, the call of the sea Reached me through the habits of an old man; Grandad played the shipping forecast to me “Showers, later gale eight south-westerly”

JAMIE CHEN

50

The Whale-Road The whale-road is paved With flecks of plastic, inhaled Like some scrounged fag-ends JOE WRIGHT

51

Iris

Sketchbook Drawings of the Beach at Warnemünde, part of the German Baltic Sea LAURA BRACEY CURRY 52

Rockpooling Once we got tired of the waves We’d walk to the headland To rockpool, squeaky Crocs scrubbing my ankles raw With insistent grains, absolved With a plunge that spilt and re-tilted the light, Marbling and wobbling the blue.

Neck cricked from crouching, I was poised And intent on bright shells: clams and scuttling crabs In tiny worlds my toes picked slicks of seaweed in— A honeycomb maze of mirrored troves.

My love language back then was The gift of a particularly smooth pebble, Or the alien brush of fingers as we blotted the sun Beneath us, hunched over the pool, Our salty hair intertwining, Breathing in each other’s tremulous air.

JOE WRIGHT

53

Murdoch

54

At Bamburgh At Bamburgh, her hands On mine were cool sea water, Printing big hot stones.

JOE WRIGHT

55

Sentire

56

Things I probably shouldn’t say for a wide variety of reasons or, Back from the Beach lick me

taste cold sea on my skin

breathe me in

smell burnt sand in my hair

listen

I’ll tell you about a mermaid without a tail

in my eyes

you’ll see pixelated sunlight horizon jostling

draw near

move closer

touch me

EMMA BROWN

57

Issue

Seasalter, September 2022

Here we are on the concrete seawall.

Beyond is the sinking world of silt and ooze, of shells and stones, and the tide is way out teasing us that the end is at bay.

There are couples bent and probing the sludge for something. A man sweeps a metal detector over the scree. A Saxon wharf jags from the mud.

Do you remember comparing timetables in September of Year Ten? Our notes melting those cold rooms.

Our fish-tank of innocent glances.

For once we are kidless, the two of us on the seawall of my fortieth.

In a few days you will meet a climate scientist who tells you what is to come.

Just couples, kidless, probing the sludge for something by a seawall jagging from the mud.

SAM BUTLER

58

Plato’s Cave Wind, howl: watching shadows trickle down the wall, grey scintilla of beyond to entertain you from my cave. The bed rocks on the seafloor.

Fragments of shell prick the soft body (oyster meat, let me slip down your gullet still raw & cold) & fronds tickle, their touch sticky and seductive.

59

3

Writhe with memory of the sea. Strip for the ogre, frogmonster, my Caliban lover— realise your bones beneath & let them be bleached by the tide.

Dissolve the form & treasure the sexless silt remains.

Inhale the deep salt.

There is power in succumbing.

Now begone, begone, now stay.

EDEN GRAY

artwork by ELLA SMITH 50

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On Ringstead and Redcliffe The waves ripple through me even now The force of them makes me dizzy I’m reminded of every other time There’s always part of it left in me The stillness almost feels like silence The silence almost sounds like sleep A saltiness stays on my lips and a heaviness sits on my feet

SAM ALLEN

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How to Sail a Bed, I never learned how to sail a bed

or why

to stay

Black and blue

blue and white

never

further

i

than any eye can be

against

seen,

afloat. ends

splashing

crescendoes

no

thing dislodges,

the wooden frame thrashing, wind roars louder than blood:

choking, near retching

gag

but

no thing changes.

Only

the scent shifts,

strengthens, putrid

pungent of pitiless antiseptic suppress

would the the deathsmell ?

the same inside and out,

, clouds upon clouds let’s make a pillow fort

then I am to be

smothered.

Light laterdarkens: there are bruises juice-staining my neck everso grasp Blue

there is no thing left blue

salt

the world tastes hide

ice impersonating comfort, will collapse

and

gasp

sheets spasmed to shreds— blue

blue

EDEN GRAY

blue

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Photograhy, MOLLY STEPHENSON

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A special thanks to all our Issue 3 submitters

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co-edited & designed by

Hendrikje Dorussen & Hannah Beresford

@sentirezine Sentire Zine