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Jonathan Gibbs

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or the Painted Grape (Galley Beggar Press).



Articles Available Online


Jessie Greengrass’s ‘Sight’

Book Review

February 2018

Jonathan Gibbs

Book Review

February 2018

Jessie Greengrass’s debut story collection caught my eye with its delightfully extravagant title, An Account of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to...

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May 2016

Cinema on the Page

Jonathan Gibbs

feature

May 2016

Film is a bully. It wants to make its viewers feel, and it has the tools to do so....

I’m screaming lying alone in this settlement     everything empty only emptiness sex – is a desert     evening coming home from work desiring on the shopfloor or in the machine or at some other labour of language feel it: there’s nothing there only a desert     coming home from work I’m writing a letter to the first boy why’d you deceive me, you know there’s nothing there nothing nothing only a desert     I’m in the desert alone and desire fades laying sex bare like vision like trembling on the horizon is the body of a dry old man this is my sex this is my future     hundreds of animals will come and hump me a tiger’s sperm leaps toward the clouds monkeys lick my clitoris but none of them will say: ‘sex is a desert’     in the garden of atavisms lifting my skirt, leaning on the barbed-wire fence barely discerning the face in the wilds of bloody tears I, weeping, will say: ‘look at what we were struggling for, marching naked past parliaments, penetrating with phalluses the offices of government no, there’s nothing there, sex is a desert’     I love you and your dead sex still moves me but when I love you I feel: only a desert     the smooth temple of marriage bathed in wine gone bad the raw looks of new lovers the embraces of boys, covered with feces, tears girls with black scars and bright dildos baring their breasts before the river of people dying     what were we struggling for? why all these poems?     the dying camp of peoples in the depths of the analyst you die with them, too, analyst, saying: ‘Desert’ because there is no hidden pleasure in the desert     only sand only heat masturbation and solitude     only womanhood only the desert     crowds of furious men, turning in their zinc coffins crowds of men fondling, flying on a varnished bomb the industry of depravity in space stations, the science of art in the bathhouse all for nothing, procreation is only part of the desert     Kathy, Kathy, wanking off death, I can’t see your face, there’s no dialogue, no strength to tell you how things stand for you, you’re not here, Kathy, the body has no identity in the bitter printed word     the rod in a thrown open bible, student marches little puddles of blood in a dark toilet, where my farewell lament addressed faded out to the dead students and their movement       with knives stuck in the hips with the tender kisses of events I want to say: here is the

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs

Contributor

August 2014

Jonathan Gibbs was shortlisted for the White Review Short Story Prize 2013. He has since published a novel, Randall or...

The Story I'm Thinking Of

fiction

April 2013

Jonathan Gibbs

fiction

April 2013

There were seven of us sat around the table. Seven grown adults, sat around the table. It was late. We had eaten, and we had...

READ NEXT

fiction

November 2013

Surviving Sundays

Eduardo Halfon

TR. Sophie Hughes

fiction

November 2013

It was raining in Harlem. I was standing on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 162nd Street, my coat...

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June 2014

Turning the Game Around

Daniel Galera

TR. Rahul Bery

feature

June 2014

Once upon a time there was – no, better: you are a thief who wanders through the cities and...

fiction

Issue No. 14

Beetle

Joanna Kavenna

fiction

Issue No. 14

SKITAFLIT, DAY 49   704 Dawn Breaks above the grey-dusted grey-fronted houses 903 Well the office is looking just...

 

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