The Ofi Press Magazine

Museum of Death

Poetry by Steven Fowler

Photography by Alexander Kell

you can get a sudden attack of nausea by staying too long in an art gallery as well. It must be some kind of illness – museumitis – unknown to medical science. Or could it be the air of death surrounding all things man-made, whether beautiful or ugly?

    Gustav Keyrink      

#1

wife; lunatic

until moonlit

then, a dwarf

of melody

a celestial harmony

perfection

below

thus, a debut

in the unter

tow

#2

ark of the covenant

baby hercule

as asp, a thesp

a guided tour

of softcore

#3

Cuckoo, witness my record

3 in a day

& fights won between

a life tired

to temper hard to soft

mean to kind

but always open pursed

friends, there are shadows

in any case

#4

I awoke from my nightmares with an erection,

penetrated the sleeping Claire,

went limp, and feel asleep again.                                          Peter Handke

bitten rivals of hinterland museums, I cup my    

    ears     

      I know from what you hide

later willows,              open your buds

this is your Shepherd’s bush   

   a nest of antler’s skin  

   to take (no?) pleasure

in its architecture    Seppuku as a woman, new twin  

   the jaffa coil         

       intestines like tinsel      

   odourless all about the place   

  new twins, Thessaloniki & Tallinn

 cheap shadows are real, as is the need            

       for contraception, never to forget

#5

in the end she knows

eves as heavy throes       

    lips bristled

the way of the bubble

popping like a joint

under the crux       

    of an omoplataa

an ippon    

    seoinage

that nearly

broke her neck

#6

Julius Caesar has adopted Octavius as his heir in exchange for being allowed to sodomize him.

Colin Wilson

sardines linger like silverer fish

caught short, more like puddle in a bathroom

of accidents, incidents in the warehouse

seeping out of tights, furtherer than human lemon

in the negative year 52, for a new history of salmon

Octavius of a small girl playing the breaks of a river

water, the fish crying ‘bombs’ throwing salads,

sandwiches, prawns using Hans Fallada as a windowstop

appealing to the board for calm

wearing a leather wig of mother, breast a falling

where the eagle egg comes to rest 

held tight like a steel tortoise, like tank of tits, a swift bip

racist people can change, while Livia, her wife

kills babies for the Orb Leopard

#7

in the number

zero

fishmouth

blindness

every woman

dies alone

#8

the salt of the salt mouth

will my maid be plucked

in heaven? or virtuous?

I’d prefer to clean myself,

if the help aren’t sluts

for time is short.

suicide machine on the crow’s nest

I look upon the lip to see

the gardener himself is soon to mulch

ash me instead! I’d not be ratfed

SJ Fowler is the author of four poetry collections, and is the UK poetry editor of Lyrikline and 3:AM magazine. He has had poetry commissioned by the London Sinfonietta, Mercy and the Tate, is an employee of the British Museum and a postgraduate student at the Contemporary Centre for Poetic Research, University of London. www.sjfowlerpoetry.com  -  www.blutkitt.blogspot.com   - www.youtube.com/fowlerpoetry  - http://www.maintenant.co.uk/

SEE OUR INTERVIEW SECTION FOR MORE INFORMATION ON STEVEN FOWLER'S WORK.