CONTENTS

# A Letter from the Editor

"Wind From Nowhere" & "Exequies" by Robert McCarthy

"Summer Hols" & " Destruction" by Darren J Beaney

"The pandemic made me miss feeling like 1 of 7.9 billion" by Kara Dunford

"Alone" & "The Matress and The Rainbow" by Tim Goldstone

"Death's Astronomer" & "Midnight Swim" by Robin Neal

"The Insects of the Soil" by Ashwini Kumar, translated by Pitambar Naik

"Time has passed" & "Last night, Everyone was having a party in the city." by Ivan de Monbrison

"The Dawn Parade" by Mathew Gostelow

"Overthinking" & "Multiverse of My Mind" by Mat Blunt

"Screams in Vain" & "The Stink" by Hugh Blanton

"Cahoots" by Bud Sturguess

"Mysteries" by Peggy Hammond

"Nuns and Roses" by Aneeta Sundararaj

Letter from the Editor

Dearest Readers, welcome again to our pages!

"Volume 2" of Spare Parts Lit has been a delight to compose - this edition saw a myriad of voices band together and raise a joyful noise against the darkness. I have noticed with intrigue the thematic strands of identity, connection, mental health, and the mysteries of what it is to be human, all shining between these works like light between a canopy of leaves. It is a delight and a wonder to me to receive and receive from our contributors, all pouring and pouring into this new well - Spare Parts literary - I cannot underscore enough the privelige and pleasure that curating this magazine has become for me in such a short period of time. It is the conversation between our creatives and you, the reader, which breathes the passion into this project, and I can only write this, a letter of pure gratitude to all of you.

And, so, It is again with great thanks and humility that I introduce, "Volume 2".

Oak Ayling

Oak Ayling (EIC)

Letter2

Vol 2.

WIND FROM NOWHERE

By Robert MCCarthy

Wind, extempore, winging it, welling

up as if from nowhere, from old mines,

from earth’s center. December surprise,

hurricano out of season, burly,

as if clamor had gained a body,

ventriloquized in the tumultuous

vaulting air no longer air, havoc, furor,

horizontal avalanche, a compost

of rocks and dust, meaty howls, wolves’ whistles

of unpleasure pitched at the whining

threshold of audition this wind that finds

nothing beautiful, a commotion of trees,

matchsticks ignited, roaring, stripped from their leaves.

A wind to accelerate the planet’s spin,

a gyre, the day’s rotation, the veiled sun

streaking across the shutter-stop sky,

violent, flensing, a gale to rip breath

from lungs, paradoxical aspiration,

deconstructing all it smashes upon,

squalls of in-flight rubble, masonry chopped

from roads, from steel foundations, from towers

the pared, the exposed bones, the wind-cracked ribs

of concrete citadels flurry in whirlwinds,

autumnal falls of tiles, spills of solar glass,

the roof-stripped chimneys (complete with smoke) ride

the cannonading wind, stridulous now,

keening, moaning to match the storm-lost shrieks

of people caught out, gale-battered, clutching

themselves to ground, trying to magic their

bodies heavier, bulkier, a limpet-like

leaden clinging, a partiality

to gravity evinced, a hopeful emu-

immunity to flight, as the welter

peels them from shelters, winkles them into

the ravening wind, limbs splayed, rotating,

heavier-than-air kites, tempest-tossed, tempest-

lost, barques aloft in cyclonic seas land-

breached, exalted by toppling waves

multitudinous, falling to abyssal troughs.

This wind from nowhere has stripped away city,

locus, place, the planet’s greenmantle,

clawed the bedrock, ruptured tectonic plates,

knocked all the outside in. . .

Now we can begin.

EXEQUIES

This dissembling body (not, after all,

as advertised; not in the least as promised,

of spirit partially comprised, some stuff

angelical intermixed with the mud,

the sludge, some substance incorruptible)

begins its disassembly; or suffers

itself to be disassembled, conspires

with its break-up into parts, junked debris,

the oxidized, the worn-to-a-transparency

components, the never-to-be-salvaged

orts and lumps.

Only so many strokes allotted,

only so many piston pumps, their finicky

limits surpassed of gasps and grunts, strangled

evacuations; only so many

cell-replicants to go gentle into.

Some tropism

toward todestrieb must have been factored-in

at the point of manufacturing.

Exhaustion, indifference,-- to let happen,

without intervention, whatever happens

next to happen; not thanatos so much

as tedium, the adventure leached from

everything, some reek exhaled from every

molecule a cloud of weltschmerz, evidence

of so much shearing of all those telomeric

tails.

Drowning not waving, a suspired

slipping-under the breathtaking water,

a final yawning mutter no mas, no mas,

flesh’s thanatopsis, not so much as even

a show made of resistance, of struggle,

the vaunted rage against the light’s surcease

gone missing, more a sighing subsidence

to the empirical, more a sinking

into the hyle, matter’s quicksand, formless,

agglutinate, stockpot waiting on new

information, ready for reassignment

perhaps (though you remain indifferent).

Here watch the being-integral becoming

one with its parts, each one distinct, separable,

dissocketed. See them cataloged and shelved,

all the parts, the parts -- the once-elegant makeshifts,

virtuoso bricolage, harboring

such skills, such enterprise,-- abruptly

become loathly, half-rotted peripherals

preserved within oblongs of glass as once

were hand-meals in old-timey automats.

Made available for wonderment perhaps;

relics in some macabre rite.

Down on your plastic

patellas go,

onto your knees, your knees,

pain-pricked mechanicals,

down on the stones go,

the obdurate stones,

say your orisons, your psalms,

your home-made koans,--

and then to bye-bye on the bones.

Robert McCarthy is a writer living in New York City. He prefers to use formal means to achieve lyric ends. Robert has published poetry in The Alchemy Spoon and Dreich Magazine. His work has also appeared in Yours, Poetically and Neologism Poetry Journal; as well as in Words & Whispers, Celestite Poetry, Fahmidan Journal, Version(9), Madrigal, Ice Floe Press, PaddlerPress, Nymphs, The Storms, and others. @codbiter

McCarthy

Darren

SCHOOL HOLS

bY dARREN j. bEANeY

The sun gambled early. Sky loaded

with mischief. July’s early bird

leads the line in badinage

with snollygoster gulls.

Today will be sequenced

danger, naughtiness, adventure

and will ramble on.

Morning jeopardy double dares doorstep bottle snatching, knocking down ginger, sugar speeding smoking candy sticks, doing it ourselves, skateboards, crashing Choppers, being Knievel, scaling 20 foot slides, balanced on 3 inches, ‘look no hands’, bouncing off concrete, blood & sunburn, flouting warnings climbing, swimming, entering, exploring, hiding, taking and sometimes breaking.

Just happy being gone

far and varied. Out of range.

Everything eternal. Choices informed

by heat and rumbles.

Dusk dictating reluctant return. The future

still a stranger to be avoided. Pick ‘n’ mix

summer days set for one more

reprise before the punk rock revolution

crashes the September tea party.

DESTRUCTION

Slow words sneak from livid lips

all sinew,

lingering ligaments

stealing toward emotions.

Ferocity loiters in quarrel

like silt in a foolish prospectors’ pan

long after all the claims were staked.

The potency of spitting spite sticks

to the heart, like burnt milk

in a battered old copper pot.

Loose abuse lurks with lost sentiment,

an iron fist waiting for a fight,

ready for the final push

while weeping love

balances

on a chasms

edge.

Darren J Beaney is a hopeless romantic and he means hopeless! He cuts his own hair. He really enjoys a good pint of IPA. He
loves music, mainly punk rock, and old Colombian folk music, but lots of other stuff as well. He is one half of Flight of the
Dragonfly, who host a regular spoken word evening on Zoom and in a pub Brighton, they also produce FLIGHTS a quarterly
poetry, prose and flash fiction e-journal and have just set up as a small publishing press. He has had poems published in several
journals and anthologies and has two pamphlets published by the Hedgehog Poetry Press - Honey Dew and The Machinery of
Life. His new chapbook – The Fortune Teller’s Yarn (Destiny F*cks With Milo) will be published by Alien Buddha Press in July
2022.
He lives with his family and their rescue cats and dog in East Preston, which is nestled on the West Sussex coast.

T: @DJ_Be_An
F: darrenj.beaney

www.djbeaney.com
www.flightofthedragonfly.com

kara

THE PANDEMIC MADE ME MISS FEELING LIKE 1 OF 7.9 BILLION

BY KARA DUNFORD

How lovely the moment our eyes meet,

strangers on a packed subway car

as the train careens station to station.

Constant. Familiar.

We don’t know where we’ve been,

the things we lost to history.

We let the world spin,

unsure how to make it stop.

What are they worth, these shared seconds

in each other’s presence?

What will they teach us, these minute minutes

we catch each other’s smile?

Seeking, and so: finding,

searching, and so: discovering,

our place on this planet.

Our place among the stars.

As if we’d known it all along.

Kara Dunford (she/her) is a writer and nonprofit communications professional living in Washington, DC. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Brave Voices Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, and boats against the current. She serves as a Poetry Editor for Overtly Lit. Find her on Twitter @kara_dunford.

ALONE

by Tim Goldstone

The skin clung frantically to the banana

he’d found on the pavement by the bus shelter,

some bits had to be dug out with dirty nails

and inside his mouth the hard-won flesh

tasted woody, its green peel stripped too soon.

He was hungry but he was saving for later

the dangerously grey ox-heart the butcher

had handed him that morning on condition

he stopped begging in front of his shop.

When the bus came he had already positioned himself

in exactly the right place on the edge of the kerb

to win warmth from its exhaust fumes and then

the bus was gone,

a small gang of dead dry leaves scuttering after it.

A brief red glow of brake lights made him feel warmer

then they were gone too.

Then he saw the well-dressed woman

walking briskly towards him, clickety-clacking

on high heels. She looked far too thin to him.

As she got nearer and the heels got louder

he expected her to cross the road because of him

and when she didn’t

he smiled at her as she walked past

without the slightest acknowledgment

of the proffered heart

lying in the open palm of his hand.

THE MATRESS AND THE RAINBOW

It is humid and drizzling,

there is the constant hiss of wheel spray,

an abandoned mattress is lying

in the middle lane of a motorway,

a few feet in front of a bridge.

The bridge is empty,

except for one lone figure.

Engine fumes soak his clothes.

The mattress is empty too,

no bedclothes, no pillows, nothing,

and looks serene

even though vehicles must take evasive action

and are going too fast

for anyone to venture out

to drag the mattress off the road.

The speeding traffic

makes the sound of a catapult twang

as it passes under the bridge.

The sun comes out and the drizzle continues.

Suddenly the back wheel of a big lorry

clips the mattress in just the right way

to send it somersaulting magnificently high

into the air towards the hint of a rainbow

that is weak and grubby through exhaust haze.

The figure is still on the bridge.

After watching all this he doesn’t jump,

needing for the first time in years

to know what happens next.

Tim Goldstone has roamed widely and currently lives in Wales. His writing has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print, including 11 Mag Berlin, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Offing, The Daily Drunk, The Cafe Irreal, Rough Diamond Poetry, Crannóg, The New Welsh Review, Tír na nÓg, Stand Magazine, The Mechanics' Institute Review Anthology. Prose sequence read on stage at The Hay Festival. Poetry recently presented on Digging for Wales. Loiters in twitter @muddygold

Tim

Kara Dunford Poet at Spare Parts Literature

Robin

DEATH'S ASTRONOMER

BY ROBIN NEAL

After “The Fury of Flowers and Worms” by Anne Sexton

constellations connect death’s potential / like roads and blades of grass / all live things lean on

dead things / astronomers, earthworms, fish / inside earth’s cauldron fish are swimming in

patterns / festering water molecules connecting their movement / poetry’s constellation / birth

to the earthworm that thinks death is bullshit / cycle of life / enter in through the ear / She knows

of the dark sky’s night lights / constellations of dead poets’ minds / Her words beat the eardrum

to better see you with / words the ghost of life / constellations’ word envy / connecting dead

things to live things / it's a thing you know

MIDNIGHT SWIM

In the beginning, we are blurry,

gentle air stirs as I unzip you.

You are covered in a green forest;

the white of your glassy owl eyes

stands against the surrounding midnight.

Will we dance around the edge of it?

Or dip right into the deep black paint

of night’s rippled water, spraying drops

to purple sky cast by the hidden moon.

The vibration of our atoms align,

twisting the surface of everything.

After fucking, we float like otters,

our skin cooled by night's shed of the day.

Turn our heads from the lure of beauty,

begin our story in wide-eyed match

ignoring questions of new love's hope.

Robin Neal is a graduate student at the MFA creative writing program at Lindenwood University. She has been previously published in The Raven’s Perch, Filter Coffee Zine and The Wild Word. She resides in Spring Hill, TN as a mother, wife, woman, creative dreamer, and writer. Most importantly she writes for all women who have something to say and know there is a meaning to their lives. For the past 17 years she has worked as a nutritional scientist and this influences her work today.@robinnealpoetry

insects

THE INSECTS OF THE SOIL

By Ashwini Kumar - Translated by Pitambar Naik

He didn’t have a container full of paddy to grow a morsel

for his stomach, nor did he have a piece of land of

interdigital folds; the sixteen houses he had built in the

chest of the land, at the end of the village for his

sixteen ancestral deities don’t belong to him anymore.

The land where he was born and grew up as a kid playing

keli badi and hide and seek, the land where he started a

life after getting married under a pandal of boughs and the

traditional earthen pitchers around it doesn’t belong to him;

the land alone was his deity, god and provider of

subsistence, today that doesn’t belong to him anymore.

The land which was tremoring by the nissan around his waist

and the jingle bells on his ankles with the rhythms of the

drum and wind instrument doesn’t belong to him now,

the land for which his ancestors died and merged into the soil

doesn’t belong to him but belongs to someone else; the land

from where he was growing crops doesn’t belong to him.

As he’s landless, he’s a labourer on someone’s farmland

he goes out to another state as a bonded labour for his

stomach; on one hand, he’s known as a landless man on

the other hand, he’s an elephant for the king. I remember

even today, before he became a ghost, he kept saying

we are the insects of the soil, bow down to protect

our father's land even at the cost of your blood and life.

Notes: Kelibadi is a game played by children in rural Odisha

using two sticks, one is very short and the other is long. The shorter

one is hit with the big one from a certain circular post to score points.

Nissan is a very old and traditional musical instrument of the

indigenous people in Odisha, that's played on every occasion.

Translated from the Odia by Pitambar Naik

Ashwini Kumar is a teacher in a Government Upper Primary School.

He writes poetry in Odia and his work revolves around socio-cultural

issues in India. His work in Odia has appeared in various journals.
Currently, he’s pursuing his MA in Odia from Sambalpur University.

Ivan

Pitambar Naik is an advertising professional. His recent work appears or is forthcoming in The McNeese Review, The Notre Dame Review, Packingtown Review, Rise Up Review, Ghost City Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Indian Quarterly and elsewhere. The Anatomy of Solitude (Hawakal) is his debut book of poetry. He grew up in Odisha and lives in Bangalore India. He occassionally Twits @naik_iconoclast

TIME HAS PASSED.

BY IVAN DE MONBRISON

Time has passed.

The world has changed so much in thirty years.

I don't recognize anything anymore.

But it is logical that the world changes.

Humanity continues its headlong rush through time, which it has created itself, and cannot stop.

Our billions of neurons locked up in our hairy skulls, like microbes, are making the machine go crazy.

One day, I imagine, the car it drives will go off the road, to end up by pulverizing itself on a tree.

Then it will be a day to celebrate ...

LAST NIGHT, EVERYONE WAS HAVING A PARTY IN THE CITY.

Last night, everyone was having a party in the city.

Human beings forget at night their lives of slavery suffered during the day, it is indeed a clever

solution.

For them, this is freedom.

Illness and old age are for others, who are locked up elsewhere.

It reminded me of that very bad movie, "Planet of the Apes".

Except that in the American movie the apes are dressed and talking, so, no doubt, they are human

beings disguised.

Maybe in the mind of the racist America of the time, the apes were their former slaves, now finally

free, and they were still so afraid of them.

Ivan de Monbrison is a French poet and artist living in Paris born in 1969 and affected by various types of mental disorders, he has published some poems in the past.

MatGos

THE DAWN PARADE

BY MAThEW GOSTELOW

Oh. This one is wakeful.

You must be muddle-much bewildered. Yes? What whereabouts is this, your eyes implore. Don’t fluster so. Your scrawny nerval systems could not fathom out the depths. But be not frightstruck, little moppet-pop. Your continuance is paramount to us.

You're abuzz with query-questings, I can see this much. How to express, that you may make some sense of what I speak?

Did you ever wake bone-weary with exhaustion? More slumberish than when you went abed? Or stir around with some new ache or groany torment? An over-hang unearned and undeserved? Oh, yes? I thought it so, my pretty poppet-pie. It is not at all uncommon, by the by.

We need your hands and feet, you see. We lack your prehensility. Our thumbs and toes do not oppose. Bereft of suitability. You are the lowly cogs within the clockwork of our world. Without you we are nothing. There. This is veracious truth, unclothed and stark. We make you work for us when it is dark.

From rise to set we let you go about your bumbly ways, with nary but a minor interrupt. Most handsomely benevolent, we're sure you will concur. But in the fall of night we need your hands for our travails, those hours would be wasted othersuch. Your feet must step the dawn parade to work on our behalf. You labour while you slumber, so that we may live delicious well, like queens. Your hands bake all our honeycakes and churn our creamy butters. Your feet march on our battlefields and trample out our wines. You venture down our airless mines and bring us back the riches. You stitch, and fetch and carry heavy things. You entertain like tumbling marionettes, our little poppets, pretty pretend peoples propped by strings.

We are not akin. You're lesserly, but serve our purpose flawlessly. We antecede most longwards, back before you first began. And our living will surpass your dusty end, all crumblebones and tears. We snuggletuck from view of course, deflect from our existings. You won't see us outside a glimpse, all cornerwise and hid. You won’t recall this chinnywag amid the morrow’s din. The hubble-bub and squeak of your most busy being drowns it out. We will make doubly certain of this much.

Night’s end we put you backaways, the places whence we found thee, before your sleepy lids rise with the sun. No harming done, no malice meant, those hours are our belongings. So get back to your droney buzzing snores. Yes, sleep now poppet, back to sleep. Slumber long in drowsy deep. And when you wake, with tire and ache, don't recollect this chinnywag. Just go about your beeswax, normalwise. And next time, if you open eyes, be not so poppetsome afraid. It's just the secret march of dawn's parade.

Mathew Gostelow is a dad, husband, and copywriter, living in Birmingham, UK. Some mornings he wakes early and writes strange tales. His stories have been published by Lost Futures, Myth & Lore, Soor Ploom Press, Cape Magazine, and others. @MatGost

MatBl