Popshot Magazine Issue 32

Growth is all about renewal, rejuvenation and reaching new heights. As we emerge from a winter and spring of lockdowns and fear, however normal things may feel, we will have undeniably changed and grown. Having failed to get a haircut between the first two lockdowns, I’ve been able to witness some literal growth during this strange year (partly why I related so much to p. 28) and my hair is now down to my waist. Sadly, I lost a friend to cancer last October (someone with whom I grew up, and so whose face and identity I saw grow and shift in a distorted mirror to my own), so I’ve found a positive opportunity in this accidental hirsuteness, and have decided to cut twelve inches off my long hair and…

We used to race sunflowers when I was small:would plant the seeds finger-deep in rich black mudwould crush egg-shells and scatter them roundthe burgeoning shoots (mine nought-point-five inches taller)to deter the mouthing slugs, to keep the flowers lonelykeep them whole. We learned all about photosynthesis in school:about finding invisible nourishment in the lightabout lifting our heads, always lifting our headschins high, chins up,“Always keep your chin up,” they said,“God’s light will warm your soul.” But my shoes don’t fit me anymoreand the graphite scratches on the frame of the doorare creeping higher, like a tide line, likea crown that can never quite keep up with my head. I, the growing girl, eyes on my feetand the sunflowers bow when I pass them.…

Maybe, I will be brave and you will start growing in me,and all I can picture of that is whale calf in a whale gut,from an old picture book about babies. It is so surreal,the thought of a great cage of ribs, a huge round head,fin-hands, tail-toes, all pushing and denting my surfaceto finally, brutally break out, on blood and water, to be.Maybe, you will grow from a test tube or a glass dish,make the first few multiplications, bubbles into bubbles,until you are slid into me, or her, whoever she may be,then you grow underwater, but with that first taste of air.You could come from either or both of us, frog baby,and you will learn one day how hard we fought for you.Maybe, you will already be growing, in the…

Bobby tossed the stuffed chihuahua between his bare hands, suboxone in his right coat pocket and a picture of Alyssa at two months in his left. Should have worn gloves, he knew. Cape Cod winters tug the cold out of bones. The bus depot, of course, wasn’t heated. What if I can’t find you in the parking lot, he said over the phone when they arranged the meeting. Just stay in one place, Alyssa’s grandmother said, and then she named it. Sharon added: You’ll recognise your blood. The call went clipped like that: Yeah, he was still at the halfway house, working, wanting to see Alyssa. No, he wasn’t paid on the books or sure about child support. He didn’t have any other kids. Yeah, he was sure. Sharon and…

A thumb of root ginger. A wodge of Victoria sponge.Apple cores, tulip petals, hydrangea crowns, radishes.Shells, peelings, scrapings, halves. Celery stems, limes,onions, rocket poured from vacuum packs, Cutsto rescue ailing economy, inks bleeding through beige.Cauliflower heads. Strong English teabags. Innardssqueezed and scooped. Tops, toes, rinds, fingers, alllocked together in life-slime. Mush shivery with heat,a dizzy waft of sweet puke, fast and slow rotting loot,shoot and syllable distilling black-gold mosquito-hummingdirt liqueur. Quintessence of nitrogens,carbons, rancid/fresh chemicals, all of us chemicals,crushed in our squalors, august in our entropies. Peas.…

Only when an aloe vera the size of a garden shed burst through the roof did anyone realise what was going on. The office block was empty and unremarkable, another mass of concrete and double-glazing; not the kind of place we expected to see popping open like a squeezed spot. Kara and I lived over the road, seven storeys up in a boxy new-build flat. I was sitting on our balcony when I heard the loud crack and looked up from my laptop just in time to watch as the big green fronds erupted through, tossing rubble to every corner of the roof. The aloe vera was springy, with leaves like the foam noodles they use to teach kids how to swim. Other people had seen it, too. We met…