I Saw Myself Alive in a Coffin, Kait Quinn's second poetry collection, begins with a wonderful author's note detailing Quinn's honest intentions. Through her experience with depression, grief and suicidal ideation, Death and thinking about death became ever present in Quinn's consciousness and so in her poetry too. And yet, Quinn does not seek to … Continue reading Advance Review: I Saw Myself Alive in a Coffin by Kait Quinn
Old photographs are kept in kodak envelopes in boxes beneath the bed; paper with tinged edges - that one time in the garden, my brother’s brown eyes, a Bratz birthday cake and a water fight, & my divorced parents’ wedding. I keep them to not keep them. I do not wish to display them in … Continue reading The things I do not keep
Sometimes, in the quiet, I imagine a lilo bloated with air in the middle of the sea. I lie naked - scorched red in the dying sun and ravens circle silently above. My Erebus eyes and swollen lips beg them to dive and surround me in death - how it tastes like honey … Continue reading Ravens at sea
Landscapes. Portraits. Canvas dripping watercolour or squirming in acrylic. Paper pores closing their mouths as the smell of life turned cold permeates the room. Paper pores squeezing their eyes shut tight to the darkness. Colours greying with the damp running in rivulets down the walls and they breathe - collapsed lungs beneath wrinkled skin. Landscapes. … Continue reading “I would imagine death as a cellar full of paintings”
our last bullet held in the chamber of the revolver we hold between us, straddling dining chairs facing one another: you spin the mechanism into place, readying the roulette, one last bullet - is it for you or for me? the stars, the skies and the seas in between. Poem: © Kristiana Reed 2020 … Continue reading Our last
I count them on my fingertips: branches without berries, leaves or acorns, without warmth, horribly exposed skeleton bones poking upwards of the horizon like hands attached to choral lamentations reaching up from the underworld seeking a love they lost days, months or years ago. Poem: © Kristiana Reed 2019 Between the Trees UK Between the … Continue reading Without berries
Bric-a-brac tumbled, jumbled, across the shelves, scattered in dusty glass cases: broaches, pins, postcards and teacups, shoes, letter openers and model trains, infested with age, idleness and the odd ear wig, next to the closet of death - an under the stairs space with screaming stags and boars pinned to the walls; too many squirrels … Continue reading Taxidermy
Every weekday morning I pass a lone pink house on the corner. It stands solitary against whatever colour the sky chooses to wear; I wonder who lives there. The trees and the climbers are too well-kept for the love and attention of Mother Nature. Yet, I have never seen a living soul go in … Continue reading Aeternum vale
I've never seen a dead body before which I'm not disappointed about, like most people, I prefer bodies which are alive and well but I've seen death; tasted it on the tip of my tongue. I watched the branches of a tree be severed with a saw and tossed into a metal bin with kindling. … Continue reading Oxygen & Dust
Sometimes I wonder which would be better: death or insomnia? Because I cannot withstand the in-between. Cold nights tumbling in and out of dreams. Dreams of dying, dreams of living, dreams of running toward a hanging moon; taking the rope from around its pale withering neck and binding my wrists to the ground. … Continue reading Hanging Moon
