Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2018 i Popshot Magazine

ISSUE 21 — DREAMAUTUMN 2018 Dream or dreams, dreamers or dreaming? We had an intense discussion at Popshot Towers about what this issue should be called. Such is life at a magazine. We agreed on dream, thinking it could also refer to an ideal situation. It would be our dream issue. With our dream contents. And our dream design. We welcomed pieces, we said, depicting your nocturnal imaginings and your daydreams about your own life or the big picture. Would anyone grapple with a story of an American Dreamer? Most submissions, it turned out, played with the fantastical world of the first idea, which led us to another discussion. Was this a reflection on society – that it is more important for us to sort out what’s going on in…

octopus traps,fleeting dreams undersummer’s moon(Barnhill, Bash’s Haiku) Sleek jars dance their way beneath night water,moving with the thickness of time passing in fever-dreams,the octopus seeps in like a rapid change of sleep-scape. My father says they are quite like us,they too dream of a safe place to lay their heads.We offer them refuge for the night and then… he looks to his sticky takoyaki,he masticates with the relish we reservefor underscoring our barbarity; the way teeth rip crispy skin from hot chickenor gnaw pork gristle off the bone. Does the pot-octopushave greedy dreams like this? Dreams of layering minced crab and beak-worked whelk,camouflaging tentacles amongst the coral,siphoning a giddy expectation? or are his dreams more expansive than mine?Dreams of an unfound crevice shaped like a jarwhere hungry men are as…

We build our kingdom out of markers and cardboard boxesuse leather couches as fortresses, ottomans as brick wallshide beneath blankets that smell like our mothers’ handscheck under dusty beds for iridescent ghosts, four-eyed monsters.We are tucked into bed, kissed hello and goodbye, hugged tight,read fairy tales and fables, made hot chocolate went it rainspretend we are grown-ups with polka-dot ties and briefcases.From within our budding paper kingdom,the world is tinted through stained-glass panes. We paper our rooms with teenage Jesse McCartney posterswrite our truths and our dares in sticky bubblegum lip glossdial memorised numbers, dance to repetitive Top 40 singles,cover ourselves in streaky orange foundation, flaky mascara.We daydream of a life outside of white-picketed suburbiasing off-key in hope of finding fans and famedoodle the names of future movie star husbandscome…

when I wakedI cried to dream again(William Shakespeare, The Tempest) We spend sweet days by the river, dangling our toes,licking ice-cream, peek-a-boo in the shade. Sleep brings night sweats and the days of others,angry bellies shouting for food. A toolbox is flungand cracks the head of my pregnant sister I’m stuck in mud to the knee, grit in my mouth, screamingwithout noise, tongue swelling to tyre proportions. I cry to wake. A hair-clip sticks in the back of my head,I am chased by boys with gunssludge sucking to the thigh. I am awake but running without movingblood in the mud that slurps up to my chest. Dawn spills on the bed and wakes me,her small body curled into mine.…

I fell asleep heavy / the possibility of our bodies/stretched in memory / spectral & soft / it was a reliefto remember / again, rhythmically & lovingly/theshape of wholeness / as dreams became means tosubdue / the thick ache of loss / every night youlived inside me / your skin mineral earth & / thewarm scent of spring / & I heard your voice fromcelestial depths / cry out my name laced with yours/ so that when I woke I was disassembled / fraughtwith cooling desire for you / still hot in my thoughts.…

Muriel shifted onto her knees and peered over the edge of the roof at the miniature figures streaming across the fairground. Her stomach flipped and she squeezed her eyes shut again. For the first time in months, she cried for her beautiful home – her own rooms fitted neatly inside Mohammed’s flat. ‘A house within a house!’ her friends had cried in amazement. Shortly afterwards, her home had begun an erratic pattern of spontaneous combustion. It was safe enough to live in during its quiet moments, though visitors stayed outside in Mohammed’s area once they’d seen little tongues of fire lick the sides of the chairs in which they sat. After each outbreak, a small part of the interior was destroyed, though the structure remained untouched. Then the fires broke…

Adamastor Studio behance.net/adamastor Andrew Bastow sketchheadprojects.com Matthew Brazier brazierillustration.co.uk Charlie Davis behance.net/Charlie_Davis Will Drayson willdrayson.com Paulina Eichhorn paulinaeichhorn.myportfolio.com James Fenwick jfenwickill.tumblr.com Cat Finnie catfinnie.co.uk Stefan Große Halbuer grossehalbuer.myportfolio.com Ollie Hoff olliehoff.co.uk Ruth Kingsbury ruthkingsbury.com Joanna Layla joannalayla.com Alice Mollon alicemollon.com Rachel Joy Price racheljoyprice.com Elisa Puglielli picbear.online/elisapuglielli Renzo Razzetto behance.net/renzorazzetto Sofi Santos sofi-santos.com Alexandru Savescu alexandru-savescu.ro Kyle Scott kjscott.com Josep Serra behance.net/pepeserra Vector That Fox vectorthatfox.co.uk…

Alex finds a hot corner and sits with his back to the pepto-pink sky and sticky tarmac. Planes roar overhead as he scans the room for Maya, remembering the first dream of hers that he heard here. Maya isn’t coming, but the part of Alex that knows this hasn’t told the rest of him yet. The other members of Awake Anon must be wondering where she is, whether she’s relapsed, too. Nobody asks. It’s meant to be anonymous after all, this place where the sleepless come for community and to trade memories of the thing they miss most: dreams. Mo thought people might come from afar so she’d established the fellowship at the airport hotel. There’s a great view of the runway and they can see into Departures, but floor-to-ceiling…

Underneath the boat, Our Girl’s Shadow is kicking her legs. Up there, inside the boat, Her Boy is reading – it’s just a pamphlet that he has taken from the hotel, but Her Boy will not be disturbed. He is basking in the sun and he looks luxurious: a god, of some kind. Her Boy has eaten all of the sandwiches and the boiled sweets, but Our Girl doesn’t mind. She sees boat after boat, and a stand selling cigarettes, fattening cream cakes and giant sunglasses, the type that celebrities wear. Our Girl thinks that she might want to buy some sunglasses, or some cigarettes at least, but somehow, she knows that she won’t be coming back along this river, not today. Our Girl fidgets and glances nervously at the…

The window air conditioner in my studio apartment crapped out during a run of hundred-degree days in July. I’d been unemployed for months, and cash was non-existent to fix or replace the damned thing. Combing my hair raised a sweat, so I cycled between showers and lying in bed, naked, limiting movement, shades drawn to blunt the scalding sun. The evenings didn’t cool. One night, I tried to sleep on the floor in front of the open icebox. No luck. My sanity dangled by the thread of a small portable fan directed onto my face. Like a malignant disease, the heatwave hung on. Miserable days bled into steamy nights. I didn’t leave my flat. I competed with green mould for leftover scraps and ate canned goods months out-of-date. I dozed…

she’s neither blonde brunette nor redheadnor even necessarily a girlsometimes but it is always a london marathon sunday morningtoast piled pisa high sky soft and promisingfabric conditioner blue nice enough to make usglad of life but not feel guilty for staying sofakids playing in the other room ora hip-hop vinyl with a playground sampleneedling in my study (I definitely have a study) you have coffee earlier than I would likebut the smell tips me over you runyour fingers through my hair and I knowexactly what you mean try and catchyour eye in the mirror we doubtless haveabove our mantelpiece but you’re too farto the left you breathe in to speak clickbecome a swift fly straight out the doorunder the arm of the bewildered postmanbecome then a flock of swiftsscatter like…

she ladled a dollopoff the moon from the lower cornerof her window,dropped it in her steaming teaand drank, swirling nebulaeand tea leaves, reading futureand past together –she switched offthe moonlight so a future loverparting the curtains could allowa silvery path to extendalong the floor, across the bed,up two long bare legs,reflecting a round face,asleep, dreaming of long shadowsin an old garden of somnolent morningglory and wisteria posing likejaguars in early National Geographics,observing the stellarpebbles directing the wayhome, past the moors and dunesto a salt shaped hovel yet to be builton the edge of seawhere the world’s turtle plods onwardacross the sparkling sand,headed to heights reflected in depthsas the incoming tide promises talesof a thousand moons thousands of milesaway where her lover’s boat drifts into thehorizon, into a ladleful of moonabsorbed…

I thought she was joking. But she stood there with the magazine article in one hand and a pen in another. Nothing in the waitress’s face said more than the words she spoke, so I autographed the page and thanked her. Later, I watched the traffic from my hotel window. Hundreds of cars and vans crawled along the street below, revving engines and blowing horns. Life down there seemed full of incident, of real drama and concerns – people squeezing their way through London – workers struggling to find food and get to the office on time – women wheeling children to playgroups and nurseries – everyone just trying to stay on their feet as the hordes pushed past. I saw an elderly man, in a white suit and straw…

MeAnd so there I wasIn a house, but it wasn’t a houseIt was a shop, but not any old shopIt was my house and I ranBut I didn’t run like me I ranLike a dog but I wasn’t a dog I was meBut I ran on all foursBut as I ran I clawed at the pathGrabbing great pleats of pathAnd tried to drag it under meBut what was in front of meStayed there and wouldn’t end upBehind me and so I ran but didn’t runThrough my house that was a shopWith a path inside but I was outsideMy house that wasn’t my houseGaining no ground at all. Friend(Looking up from his phone)Weird. I don’t remember mine.Same again? My round.…

You sleep in the shape of a question markI think of our day on the beachyou photographed the waterI was looking for lost items –aren’t we all just trying to capture something? What I found was: a handful of hair elastics, some worn down ropes,broken fish nets, plastic bottles, the tooth of a shark– the idea alone; that they exchange them –and a right shoe I wonder at the ceiling as you travel to the edge of your mindyou breathe in and out at the same pace as the wavesroll onto the beach, back into the seaearlier that day you said: the ocean is 90 per cent mystery Maybe that is why I am afraid of the water,or why I will always have more questions than answersLike: how do sharks…

It happened quite by mistake, snipping a loose thread from the hem of my corset, the blade nicked my thigh and the tiny wound ran round my leg tin-opener fashion. Not a drop of blood spilt, but my flesh rippled to the ground like a silk stocking freed from its garter on a close afternoon. Revealed beneath, a taut and muscular thigh, covered in a gleaming coat of black hair. I was less shocked than you might imagine, thrilled, in fact, to make this discovery, and I set about freeing the rest of the leg. The ankle was a real sticking point and I had to sit on the floor, prising flesh away with a cheese knife at first, and later a box cutter for the tendons, tougher than steel,…

6 – Lydia Ruffles is the author of The Taste of Blue Light (Hodder, 2017). Her second novel, Colour Me In (Hodder Children’s Books), is out on 9 August. 12 – Helen Rear is an English Literature and Creative Writing student at Bangor University. She is a three-time winner of National Novel Writing Month and reviews books on her YouTube channel, capricioushelen. 14 – Jo Brandon is a Yorkshire-based writer. Her pamphlet Phobia and full-length collection The Learned Goose are published by Valley Press. Octopus Dreams is inspired by a netsuke at the British Museum. 16 – Claire Booker is a journalist turned hypnotherapist from Brighton. Her pamphlet Later There Will Be Postcards is published by Green Bottle Press. Her poems have appeared in The Spectator and on Guernsey buses.…