CHARLIE BAYLIS - |||| ||| || M | (a.) | N | N | || E | Q ||| U | I N|| |||| (h.) | (a.) | (u.) |

CHARLIE BAYLIS

Citi girl
the full moon and the full moon with the fur lined mouth the coral reef ripped by fins off the coast of Japan the green eye leering through the green grass the exclamation mark on the killer whale the twerking seal the queen of colorado
scarlett johansson eating a salad (red pepper garlic avocado) the fountain of jennifer twinkling in the apple light the monsoon emptying babies from my rain-boots the vegetable boy crying by the onion rack
the monk counting the snowflakes in the snow, I standing in the cobweb watching the light change the fifth and first movement of the charlie wave the acid flushed city girl my neon fingers brushing her neon thigh
I never saw the trees I never wanted to see the trees.

A + E
for Emily
Stay away from my sister. Stay away from my pea soup. Life is easy when you live alone. My little sister says. She lives in a castle, chews the sun like chewing gum. Do you like my sister? You can kiss her at the bus stop. My nose is turning green. I can't keep my eyes off her. Take her home to Arlene. Marry her to a frog - if a blonde prince waits. Do you know when to stop? Stop a second before she says stop – her bedroom window ripples to let rain in, each drop becomes larger in my mind. Broken into pieces by spies. Do you know my sister? What is it you want with her? Amber spring showers. Revolution is a recipe we can't win. A hole haunts my bathtub of gin. When I was a boy I pretended to drown every time my pearly toe blue a swimming pool. I want to sigh a kite. For the past three nights I've been sleeping in A + E. Electricity has made a mess of me. Fold away my map of Emily. I do not need her. Every face that flickers briefly on my screen reminds me so sweetly of my sister. The moment her hair spilled out into yellow flowers.

from the heartbreaking collapse of the pound
V
today at the paddling pool by the kino Ezra spoke to me said red was just a shade of red said the mountains were not where I would find the mountains
said a scrapheap of lurid images would not be enough to light a lantern's promise
Ezra's beard was starry and mystical but the beaches we bathed on had been bled to death
leaches sucked the pink from the sky and at night I had to sink a whole ship of cocaine just to escape this loneliness.

Charlie Baylis was born in Nottingham. His critical writing has been published in Stride, Neon and Sabotage Reviews. His poetry has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, the Forward Prize and the Queen´s Ferry Press´s Best Small Fictions. He was (very briefly) a flash fiction editor for Litro. He has published two pamphlets Elizabeth (agave press) and Hilda Doolittle´s Carl Jung T-shirt (erbacce). He spends his spare time completely adrift of reality.