Issue Four
Birmingham; Indiana; blacktop; diners; boys; men; mothers; bicycles; cameras; piñatas.
Introduction
Welcome to Seaford Review Issue Four, which features poets and poems from all walks of life: in this issue is writing by Will Russo and Chris Gylee which examines masculinity — playfully and with creativity; poems by jake s. frances ferguson and Joey Wańczyk which delve into the queer experience; and poems by Sarah Louise Morey and Becky May which examine loss and growing up (Sassy pink bicycle, Plantings).
Not to mention the many other wonderful pieces of contemporary verse which populate this edition: C. H. Lieberman’s Laura Palmer, which takes us into a dark, Twin Peaks-inspired world, tinged with longing; Sophia Georghiou’s poem Your Mother Knew, which interrogates the relationship between mothers and their sons (and girlfriends); and Caroline Druitt’s We threw a break up party, which takes a dark and humorous look at the end of a relationship.
Issue Four marks one whole year of Seaford Review: our first issue was published almost exactly 13 months ago, on November 18th 2024; this is our first “repeat” seasonal issue. We’d like to thank you for choosing to spend your time here, and are very excited to announce that in the New Year we’ll be sharing an epub anthology of work that’s featured in our first three issues.
In general, we’ve been overwhelmed by the volume, variety, and quality of work we’ve received since we started out; not to mention by how well the magazine has been received by the community of poetry writers and readers. We hope the poems in this issue bring you as much joy as they brought to us.
—Chris, Luís, Jack ❄️
Table of Contents
Will Russo
All Boy
Rose Ramsden
daily affirmations
Joey Wańczyk
Telekinesis
Caroline Druitt
We threw a break up party
C. H. Lieberman
Laura Palmer
jake s. frances ferguson
Colby Gordon says we are trapped in memoir
the speaker of wulf and eadwacer visits The Fox, Birmingham
Chris Gylee
Song for Bravery Riding
Sophia Georghiou
Your Mother Knew
Sarah Louise Morey
Sassy pink bicycle
Becky May
Plantings
Will Russo
Will Russo is the author of two chapbooks: Dreamsoak (Querencia Press, 2023) and Glass Manifesto, winner of the 2023 Rick Campbell Chapbook Award from Anhinga Press. Recent work has appeared in Dialogist, Burial Magazine, and A Thin Slice of Anxiety. He is poetry reviews editor at Another Chicago Magazine and received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Find him at willrusso.com.
All Boy
The all boy proves himself mischief rewilds uncontained praise, an excuse. Straggler, wallflower— wedgie up the flagpole. What docks in you like the scar on the nose dad once called perfect. A band of all boys nothing but rubble, force to unstop. Everything sways on a tide of blood silent as night in a suburb. Plain as a girl. Nothing else fit. Pleasing and female, flower into your next drenched thing.
Rose Ramsden
Rose Ramsden is a writer based in Surrey, UK. She has a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and an MA in Creative Writing: Poetry from Royal Holloway. Her work has been previously published by Propel, 14poems, bathmagg, and rejected by many more. You can find her on Instagram @RoseRamsden.
daily affirmations
my daily screen time is fine / my spine is strong and sits in the ideal S shape / I do not luxuriate in my skull’s dirty bathwater / I soak in the sound of stars and summer / my inner child is full from honey indulgence / I have appropriate and proportionate emotional responses / I tackle trauma like a boxcutter / compartmentalise / condense / everyone is very impressed / hot girls collect sylvanian families / ketamine will never hurt me / the crisis support worker thinks I am charming / calories are a conspiracy / everyone on this bus wants to fuck me / I am whimsical and flourishing /
Joey Wańczyk
Joey Wańczyk is a poet from Indianapolis, Indiana. He currently lives in Eugene, Oregon where he is an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Oregon. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Meridian, Shō Poetry Journal, & Change, and Frozen Sea, among other publications.
Telekinesis
I know how I reek like desperation, stench of a corn-fed farm boy. Wasn’t raised off the land, no, but all Indiana owned that stench. It wasn’t so pretty the things I did for fun. Didn’t want to turn out typical, but there I was chewing on a wheat stick, watching shadows marry the edges of my shape to asphalt. At the blacktop behind school, I mashed the spring helicopter seeds into green paste, a potion I pretended was magic, still wanted to believe in something super-real, like dragon rollercoasters out in China. Told the queer girls from class there was a baby bunny trapped in a sewer grate, and after they ran to investigate, I swiped their loose change and claimed I made that rabbit disappear with the might of my mind.
Caroline Druitt
Caroline Druitt is a writer and facilitator living in London with her cliché cat, Suki. She runs creative writing workshops in unlikely places, including saunas, pub gardens and strangers’ kitchen tables. Her work has appeared in The North, Lucent Dreaming, And Other Poems and The Alchemy Spoon, and has been commissioned by Apples and Snakes. She has been longlisted for the Out-Spoken Prize for Poetry, shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, and commended in the National Poetry Competition. She is a 2025–26 London Library Emerging Writer, currently working on an experimental hybrid memoir about chronic illness.
We threw a break up party
decorated the hallway dresser: mini candles with a personalised scent and trinket bottles hung with tiny luggage tags: absinth makes the heart grow fonder. There was dancing, lustful looks across the lounge, the ceremonial slashing of His/Her towel gowns, couple friends fantasising about untying the knot. We’d prepared games, trivia, ‘Who Said What First?’ followed by charades: ‘Act out the Argument.’ Relationship scorecards marked 0-5. Anonymous feedback forms. I went to fetch the piñata for the climax but the neighbour’s kids had got there first, sat slug-like in the front room with rainbow smudged mouths. To save the night we agreed I’d offer myself. Our guests, eager for their turns, wondered who might make the winning split, what treasure could come streaming from inside. My feet swung low like pendulums as they hooked me to the light.
C. H. Lieberman
C.H. Lieberman (he/him) is a transmasc writer, performer, and visual artist from South London. He is the author of the award-winning play Bunny Man. His poetry has featured in & Change, t’ART Magazine, Trans Tongues, and others. His artwork also featured on the cover of & Change Issue 10.
Laura Palmer
“the worst thing about love is
i remember it.”
— I get so jealous of euthanized dogs, June Gehringer1
These days I’m scared of cutting myself when I shave; there are so many blood vessels in my face, and so many ways to contaminate the blade. We lose a chunk of the highway every time it rains and I get to have such interesting conversations as: “How many cigarettes have you smoked this week? Is it more or less than last week?” Everything that happened here was so long ago it’s hardly worth mentioning. I walk to the diner, because it’s healthier than driving and my doctor is hell bent on keeping me here. There is less of you in the world with every passing year but at the very least I can say that someone thought about Laura Palmer in the diner today.
jake s. frances ferguson
jake s. frances ferguson (they/them) is a London-based Irish poet and a PhD student at King’s College London. Their poetry has appeared in Propel Magazine, Fruit Journal, Queerlings, Impossible Archetype, and Poetry & Audience. Their poetic project ‘wulf and eadwacer and i’ was long-listed for the Ivan Juritz Prize 2023 and their erasure poetry was displayed in the 2023-24 Forgotten Battles exhibition at the Royal Armouries Leeds. You can find them on Instagram @jakestefan181.
Colby Gordon says we are trapped in memoir
time isn’t cis its dendrites break and glimmer can’t cleave a from b x or y there are no genes i was greened from a leaf and as a child i always knew i was an emily dickinson poem all those afterimposed slashes gasps for an air unteemed a deferral of “i”s i knew i was different when i watched marie antoinette and wanted to become the soft pastel light in a sofia coppola film i’ve had an unchanging identity as windtrembled grass / dana scully / the hushed downy purple in the mourne mountains / a line from mrs dalloway about taxi cabs and seas and danger / the touch of a beautiful stranger’s hand on my shoulder flustering my pronouns i’m disparate in how i walk through streets / hallways / men’s bedrooms i don’t taste like labels i’m a kin to the folds in my lover’s shirts lingering there slantwise bunched plural and still one historied body
the speaker of wulf and eadwacer visits The Fox, Birmingham
and what is it anyway? this inkstain i was i’m not one for crying over the air’s tentative the tension of its motion lessness unhefted and exiled but i’m not unvengeful something was here and then it wasn’t if something hears me tonight i’ll retell any version how i’m an unabandonment how seconds strip your sting’s stem from my skin’s circuitry i drink a spicedrum dietcoke lemonslice the memory acute bearing the whelp of my meat across this sticky floor i am floaty and prepositional a wedge between stones fickle islands i forget my parents removed from the sectarian fractioning glitter of empire crusting like an exoskeleton across the bar another islet forwardflares me into a dream of their hands their neck a kiss we cleave becomes its own ūhta that darkness before dawn hour of nocturns and the harshest brawn of desire’s seep in a loverless bed this person gleams through me like a spell of fainting and i know how touch can seem from the outside like a battle how it unlatches one grammar from another from a /you/ they unmade into composite as if it were a godgift to be consumed into the bleared tapestry of their elegiac recitation
Chris Gylee
Chris Gylee (he/him, Stockport UK, 1983) is a queer writer and artist living in rural Finland. His poems include the micro-chapbooks Ten For ‘A’ and Songs for Our Future Selves (both Ghost City Press). His writing has appeared in & Change, Frozen Sea, Fruitslice, GARLAND, Impossible Archetype, and Under the Radar, amongst others. www.chrisgylee.com / @chrisgylee
Song for Bravery Riding
Nothing wrong, really, with wanting to be a small-time god
Lust pigeons flocking, eyes beady & bright, we all coo you
Call us & we come running, no need to advertise
Muscle slip-sleek over bone, ancient vision aloft
Air Max squeaking freshness, size nines toeing this brilliant slab
We watch your short show, flame-shapes vanishing in our blind spot
Little devils & nightshades swallowed, lye lapping
No substance left when we empty the vat, simply colour
Plain shades, metaphorless, pears pear-green, cherries cherry-red
If you wanna rut, put up your hand
We are a Palace of perpetual sinners
We steal out into the first mist, disco-line skin goosed with anticipation
Arms lining the edge of the clearing, funny bones against silver bark
No tracking it, little deity, just rough promises, all our days ripe for devotion-stackingSophia Georghiou
Sophia Georghiou’s work has appeared in The Journal of Creative Writing Research, Poetry London, Lineage, the6ress, and other poetry journals, with poems forthcoming in additional publications. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for the Pat Kavanagh Prize. Her debut collection Gloria Trillo, forthcoming, received the 2025 Eric Gregory Award.
Your Mother Knew
Your mother knew I wanted it. Your mother knew I wanted it so bad she unscrewed the locks to your bedroom. Your mother knew I wanted it she knotted the curtain and drilled it to the ceiling. Your mother knew I wanted it she fixed cameras in the kitchen, watched you laugh when I put two lemons in my bra. Your mother knew I wanted it she tackled me during a friendly game of football, tightened the bandage of my leaking ankle. Your mother knew I wanted it she managed to sniff-out the stash of unused condoms. Your mother knew I wanted it she sent your father in while I was taking a shower. Your mother knew I wanted it so bad after a month of no bleed, reluctantly rubbed the small of my back. Your mother knew there was nothing she could do. I loved you, so your mother let me stay over on weekends, pretended to ignore my howls while you pushed it in. Your mother knew exactly what was happening when she gave the dog her hand to lick and her rings came loose, her fingernails lifted and when the dog, none-the-wiser, got sick, she left it to shit everywhere, over every carpet in the house.
Sarah Louise Morey
Sarah Louise Morey is a London based writer, educator, and co-founder of The Writing Shed. She is a graduate of the Goldsmiths Creative and Life Writing MA. Rooted in life lived in New York, Istanbul, and London, her writing examines construction of the self, relationship, and place. Her poetry can be found in Lineage published by Oblique House. She was shortlisted for the Free Verse Poetry Prize 2025.
Sassy pink bicycle
a four year old belongs to you— no matter the weather—you wait outside the launderette — laid out side stretch on cement not longer than a yard wires nestle in rubber sockets a life — arrested— must be going on three months— fuschia folded — caught by a chain— looping yet frozen— someone put you together with hopes high each day I wonder— upright splayed out— split open — the day when we won’t meet anymore— exhale as I turn the corner eyes land on you sassy pink bicycle my first bike — royal blue training wheels tacked on— of which you have none— accomplished— the body waits— polythene rope threads through spokes— under tread— to swing — off city black diamonds pavement— heart that plucks lavender — faithful steed raspberry runner —stilled though hungry for salt crusted palms shrieks of legs to spit out — how to stop this whooshing cloud — air sun gravel— hands cup pearly— you are as real as fenestration shadows stretching on my two a.m. carpet you are loved
Becky May
Becky May is a Manchester-based poet who used to live in Spain, Her work has been published in PN Review, Propel Magazine & 14 Magazine, amongst others. She is on the panel of judges for the 2025 Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition. Becky is passionate about poetry as community and loves running workshops, hosting events & supporting fellow poets. She can be found on social media @beckymaywriter
Plantings
1. The local paper clears space for hope, their photographer in Saturday corduroy, issuing instructions from behind his Nikon, my eight-year old foot steady on the shovel, conkered hair tilting towards my father, weekday suit swapped for white anorak, a sapling in his hand, slotted in its hole, a tooth placed in a gum, my tongue remembering. 2. Thirty years later, nobody notes our names, tripod angled on the pitch of my father’s drive, the red boiler suit he lent me for the afternoon, grubs of soil on his awkward, summer knees. He cradles the silver trunk, the first of three, blinking its garden-centre leaves in unfamiliar light. This wordless afternoon, we’ll cut turf, tamp earth, soothe trees upright. Gift them space to grow.
Quoted with permission of the author.