Issue 2 is now out and on sale. You can buy it for £2. Either buy it online, or send £2 and your name & address by UMS or post to Pascal Porcheron.

Pascal is at Churchill College (Storey’s Way, Cambridge CB3 0DS). If you are outside the University of Cambridge, then please include a stamped addressed envelope for the A6-sized magazine.

Big Issue! Would anybody like an issue today?
Music, theatre, sport, news and many other features too.
Would anyone like a Big Issue? Don’t be shy, come buy folks.
Something different, to read later on maybe?
Would anyone like a
Big Issues in society today, where we can go home and say
that it’s okay for someone to be on the street in the cold,
hoping you’ll stop and pay for a magazine he can’t even read,
because he’s “working not begging” even though he’s grey and old,
Did you ever stop and count the issues he sold?
Not half as many as the rubbish we’re sold by the press,
by men in suits trading souls for gold.
Would anyone like a big issue in their life?
Would anyone like to think about their wife
working on the street in his situation,
sleeping on a bench in an underground station.
Where the only thing done about her plight,
was to write about it, to write about
Something different, to read later on maybe?
Hard to see amongst the music, theatre, sport, news and
many other facial features staring gauntly out of the grey pages,
speckled black with meaningless words
promising hope and a future, and the first year’s credit absolutely free,
and the answers to your prayers with cosmetic surgery that will make you look fine,
So you can use your pile of gold that you got after remortgaging your soul on a falling market
to buy some time to lie down
before the bell chimes, telling you “your time is up number 32,
Please come in now, this is the end of your trip, have a nice day,
don’t forget to visit our gift shop on your way out,
don’t forget to pay,
don’t be shy, come buy folks,
Don’t be shy, come buy failure written down,
turned around and sold by someone who missed you whilst you were away,
wrote a big issue about you,
cried into a shirt-sleeve about you,
about the time you ran away,
about the time you didn’t say why my time had come,
about the time I stood in the rain,
About time to go- just leave,
amd in the long caresses of the night-time weave a web of dreams
for all the people in the world to walk upon,
still soft, though relics of a time long gone,
Tread oft the halls of solitude but fear not the dark,
as you wear nothing but sway stark naked into the distance,
He shall be your ark and watch over you,
and spread flowers beneath your feet,
and wash your hair with spring water,
whilst his daughters waft perfumed sweetness into the air,
and the heady scent strokes your mind to rest,
with a pillow of silk and a bed of tissue.
Dream on, and dream not of your big issues.

by Tristan Withers

The Michaelmas Exhibition [click link for more information]

Award winning poet Mario Petrucci on Science and Poetry:

 

As you can see, we have sprayed each one so that it is UNIQUE and BEAUTIFUL.

To get your own, simply send £2 and your name & address by UMS or post to Pascal Porcheron. He is at Churchill College (Storey’s Way, Cambridge CB3 0DS).

Note that if you are outside the University of Cambridge, then please include a stamped addressed envelope for the A6-sized magazine.

To see photos of this in real life, visit this page.

 

To read Issue 1, visit this page.

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
Then one hot day when fields were rank
With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Birth of a Naturalist –Shani Cadwallender

‘Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; I’ll dig with it’
- Seamus Heaney

That window and the dark getting in
And hiding the dust in corners
And my face there on the glass like a
Fainting spell or when
The room spins with spirits.
And outside the lamplight reflection
Of inside, like tracing paper
Held up to sky, the shape of leaves behind,
The picture changes in the frame, no clean
Lines, no flat, neat world but the rustling of
Thickets and the slime
Of gross-bellied frogs and the mud
Alive with earthworms

I think I’ll run into October
Meet the chill air with clogged lungs
Pull up grass in green-stained fistfuls
Not look back at this lit window
Scratch at soil with blunted fingers
Leave the clocks and hairdryers,
The dustbins and the telephones,
And harrowing the wordless ground
Will silence all their hollow sound.

A pen is lighter than a spade
But my words dig me graves.

His high cheek bones fought for prominence with the baby fat still swelling underneath. His hair was tangled and matted, and Quito took great pleasure in using the greasy chaos to form sculptures of writhing curls and jagged straights that stood erect like gargoyles atop his forehead. But the most fascinating feature of Quito’s face was those eyes, darkest brown, yet with a light so appealing it drew gringos towards him without their realisation. White women would look quizzically into his face, wondering what it was about this small child that compelled them to give only him time, to buy only his candyfloss. After a long while they would come-to, and look around the square in a daze, gradually filling-in shapes and sharpening colours until all was as it should be. Then they would look back down and realise that the reason for their absence from this world had been the boy. With a last guilty look, they would turn with embellished grandeur and hurry off in embarrassment.

This was Quito’s life. Every day was the same: a lift in a Toyota truck down the mountainside and through the cacophony and rancour of the outskirts; over the bridge and into the deformed order of the real town. Market vendors hugged the road, porn dvds were sold alongside Hollywood pirates. Chickens stood oblivious under a basket’s woven roof, while next door meat hung and flies sucked and wasps fizzed. As the slope became gentle the market petered out and gave way to open shop fronts. Putrid coloured clothes stared out with knowing desperation, hoping that the tasteless music might convince some gringo to enter.

Eventually the crowded square would present itself. This was where Quito could woo the throng. He would stand on the edge of the steps to the church, watched by the Almighty, hoist his cross of candyfloss onto his slim shoulders, and open wide those innocent eyes. It was a competition – of course. Only a short distance away stood the man with the balloons; but he was no threat. He had an unfortunate habit of plunging his hand into his pocket and conspicuously rubbing his crotch, sometimes for ten minutes at a time. While he did this his face exposed a knowing resignation, a consistent glumness that portrayed the death of dreams and the hateful staleness of reality. There was competition from other children too: Silvia and Rosa would sit either side of a gringo, their furry skirts stroking snow white legs, and then the bracelets would come out, some ‘special deal’ in the offing. Quito watched this charade with particular curiosity: the simple trap; the familiar routine; the same giggles and touches. And yet the tourists played the game, seemingly unaware of the make-believe that only Quito thought he knew.

The sun was fading, colossal shadows stretched from mountain to mountain, dousing the colours of the courtyards and colonial colonnades. A final breath of warmth swept through the valley, and Quito felt his candyfloss stir. He let it be borne up, blown to and fro, beckoning him on. Quito succumbed, and soon he was sailing around the square, led by the thronging manifold shapes of his desire. Every way he went there was new excitement. A whirlpool here, a great wave there, and each one Quito felt with wondrous vitality. No-one else existed. He was a solitary captain with nothing more than his body’s ship and his ecstatic sails. And now the square was gone, boreas led him into un-chartered waters. Higher and higher he sailed. Against the slope of the falling sea, his sails pulled him on. Faint noises swirled around, swallowed in the ocean’s raging joy. Now the waves became angular and jagged, the mast creaked and the sails cowed, but the ship strived onwards and upwards, upwards and onwards.

At last, the wind died, darkness prevailed, the waves dropped over the horizon and Quito was brought back. There was no light where he stood – alone. On both sides of him were the whitest walls and a cavernous roof loomed above. Some scent overcame his nostrils; sweet pine resin and candle wax. He gingerly stepped forward, toward a greater ship and its mast at the end. Those luminous eyes revealed a fearful soul, unable to fathom what mystery lay in that darkness at the end.

Then he reached it: a wooden cross barely lit by a lonely candle on an altar. Quito peered up at his own cross, his mast, his livelihood, his oppressor and his saviour. The candyfloss hung limp. Confusion clouded his mind with ideas and thoughts he had never met before. He struggled to hold onto one simple idea before the next had interrupted; forms and figures jostled for position before his eyes. It was torture, and as the crescendo of confusion reached its climax Quito threw himself into the hard bosom of the ground.

Quito lay still for a long time. And then, without warning, he ripped a bag of candyfloss off his cross and left the rest behind. His squinting eyes were small but clear now. Outside, the sky was a swirling mess of orange and red, for God had poured out his arteries so that Quito could see the bloodied beauty. Lights dabbled below, ducking in and out of view. The whine of taxis grew and faded. Quito clambered onto the wall at the edge of the hilltop to better survey the scene. As he ate his candyfloss and drank in the sounds and sights of his town, he became calm. This was life. This was beauty. This was re al. He glanced back at the ominous building within which he had suffered his awakening and, seeing for the first time, began down the steps to the square.

by Charlie De Rivaz