five poems

by Jack Bennett

Dolbadarn And Kowloon Walled City

Send Each Other Secret Love Notes In The Wind

Becoming, looming                              

white twigs and black sediment            

shells husks becoming              

and looming (sleep as I sing)                

the dogma the snow                 

the pinnacle the edgelands                    

becoming, looming                              

as we swap thumbs and exhale             

long exhalations.                                  

Drum my heart and pluck my soul.       

Nocturnal creatures                              

carving a tunnel for us.             

Sappho’s vacancies                              

slipping through our departures.            

Hold me as I sleep                               

and as you return to me                   

let morning birds wake me up.

Finding An Owl Matryoshka When You Were Young And Making Something Beautiful Out Of Trauma

Mountains and molehills.                     

A car is a Russian doll             

and it takes you back                           

walking with your grandparents            

and finding it dead                               

between the autumn grieving…            

owl matryoshka!                                  

Little beak inside thin slips                               

of matted feather                                 

owl in owl in owl in owl…                   

owl matryoshka                       

Grandad tells you to walk on.               

Grandmas gone all quiet.                      

The clouds turn themselves upward

Stony, stygian                                      

and I think I’ve just felt rain.                

The insides of owls                              

Harbour the insides of owls.                 

Hark! The brains back door.                 

Mountains and molehills and the      

last dulling of old trauma.            

Nighthawks

Neon cannot reach the murky killers beyond

this clean, well-lit place. Dull orange begat

crimson and crimson found wine-bottle green.

Is that him, with his back to us? Is that him, now

walking into an old antiques store searching for

lost memories? A drunkard hush flattens as he

leaves, quieter as the last call is served, and quieter still

as a kiss is kissed and a cigarette glows to stump.

Unusual Thursday

Dream of a neon diaphanized whale

arcing over you as you stand

rooted in the Hadal Zone.

Leave the organs of your hoard-house

at the foot of a semi-constructed bridge

and whisper them goodnight.

The whale falls, its light dims.

And you fall from the bridge, extinguished.

The Unicorns Came Down to the Sea

Jettison the piña colada. We will return to this place

when the unicorns come down to the sea.

You call from the other room but I cannot find you.

I thought I knew the floorplan. Walls are furniture

and carpet folds itself over our little hoard.

I thought I knew the floorplan but curtains unhook

imitating our longings. Shivers erupt. Chipped wood.

They began their long ocean migration yesterday.

Photo of Jack Bennett

BIO: Jack Bennett is a poet, short fiction writer, and artist based in Manchester. In 2022, he won the Edge Hill Vampire Bites competition with his poem Fragments of Paole, which was judged by Dacre Stoker, Bram Stoker’s great grand-nephew. His first publication was Lunette, a pamphlet of prose poetry published by Broken Sleep Books in 2023. The Psamathe Centre Journal, his first full collection of poetry, is to be published July 2026.