Tuesday, September 13, 2022: Giorgia Pavlidou's poem "pleasure"

 “I lost you out of ignorant attachment to my body. Then I wasted my time searching high and low. Finally, I found you within, O Shiva, and we united in bliss.” -Lalla, 14th Century, Kashmir

ancient atomic wombs

birth burning human rats 

giant cockroach-midwives 

deliver collapsing fetal cellars

underground placentas crackle & crumble 

smell the blood veins of asphalt pumping out the tar of the future

(my neurotransmitters have fruitlessly 

courted the letter ‘θ’)

welcome 

to the hades of my fulfilled desires

here there’s no right of way              here there’s only instant pleasure

(a pyramid of genitals smiles at you)

lalla, you have counted my breaths   

it’s the blue-throated one 

who stares at me    (deadpanned) 

i

am headbanging in the hell of (my) embodiment  

© 2022 Giorgia Pavlidou

Giorgia Pavlidou is a writer and painter intermittently living in Greece and the US. Her work recently appeared or is forthcoming in Caesura, Maintenant Dada Journal, Puerto del Sol, Clockwise Cat, Ocotillo Review, Strukterriss Magazine, and Entropy.  Additionally, Trainwreck Press (trainwreckpress.com) launched her chapbook inside the black hornet’s mind-tunnel in 2021, and Anvil Tongue Books just released her full length book of poems and paintings,  Haunted by the Living - Fed by the Dead.

Friday: April 15, 2022: Giorgia Pavlidou's poem "disfigured dreaming"

disfigured dreaming

though i was walking as fast as i could, the hospital hallway seemed endless. my best friend had just become a father. while running, i sensed i was dreaming and i knew i’d see my oldest friend for the first time. i also understood once i’d wake up, i’d never see him again: this friend did not exist in physical reality. when i had finally reached him, his face looked joyous and proud, holding his newborn baby up in the air. when he passed the infant to me, it gradually became clear that its head and face were horrifically deformed. observing its massively disfigured face and skull, i expected to wake up. to my shock, the baby gently snuggled against my chest. with a never felt before sense of exhilaration, warmth and love, i looked my oldest friend in the eyes and said, this baby is absolutely gorgeous. i could feel it in my bones that i truly meant it. perhaps that’s why for the days afterwards, i was haunted by the thought that it should have been him to dream this dream and not me.

© 2022 Giorgia Pavlidou

Bio: Originally trained in clinical psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, Giorgia Pavlidou is a Greek-born American writer and painter intermittently living in Greece and the US. She received her MA in Urdu literature from Lucknow University, India and her MFA in Fiction from MMU Manchester, UK, (though her meetings with visionary LA poet-philosopher Will Alexander have been and still are exceedingly more impactful). Her work has recently appeared in such places as Caesura, Lotus-Eater, Zoetic Press, Maintenant Journal of Dada Writing and Art, Puerto del Sol and Entropy. Trainwreck Press (trainwreckpress.com) launched her chapbook inside the black hornet’s mind-tunnel in 2021. Ireland-based Strukturriss Magazine selected her as the featured visual artist of their January 2022 issue 3.1. She’s an editor of SULΦUR online literary magazine. Additionally, her book of poems and paintings, “Haunted by the Living – Fed by the Dead,” is forthcoming with Anvil Tongue Books, and she'll be "featured femme artist and poet" of Clockwise Cat Magazine's 2022 spring edition. Before devoting herself full-time to painting and writing, she worked as a clinical psychotherapist for about ten years. 

Women's History Month: Alison Ross aka Clockwise Cat's "The Cubic Aftermath"

The cubic aftermath: calculate the emotional scars of the tallest buildings, and divide the sum by the abstract reasoning of the lushest trees. Multiply by the fractured geometry of the most toxic pollutants, and then send the backwards butterflies swarming into the swamp that’s just west of your mind. 

Disassemble the skyscrapers, and inhale the clouds. 

(c) 2019 Alison Ross



Bio:  Clockwise Cat publisher and editor, Alison Ross, pioneered the genre of Zen-Surrealism and uses that as her guiding aesthetic. She also practices the tenets of Zen-Surrealist Socialism. Alison believes that “poetic intuition” knifes through the murk of the mundane and mutates mediocrity into a Utopia of the Dynamic. Alison has been a featured poet at Surreal Poetics. In addition, she has published reviews and editorials in various publications, including Fear of Monkeys and Pop Matters.