my poor love
i’m on a plane on a multistorey usa-style plane with a spa pool and two bars the passengers wear a smirk that floats across the face of nominee wrapped in velvet she was asked last night to prepare a five-minute victory speech for the tonight’s gala
we’re winners in our own minds we’re all winners winners we are better than the neighbour better than anyone honestly creating depth to fall like a treetop apple that thinks it’ll never touch the grass it won’t it freezes when winter comes
fuck how i would like to say that i’m the winner better than everyone o my goddd thank you this was such of a surprise really i’m so grateful but it wouldn’t be the same the same as winning it’d be the smile of someone who’s won and lost at once not the winning feels natural smile i’m built different stinky there’s loser in me too smile a frozen winner’s smile no one wants to pick off a tree a rotten smile full of wasps everything’s buzzing it’s so hot i order a mezcal with ginger beer and lay my puzzy behind a low table time undulates below
words are for people with issues deadass your chest beads with sweat i smile at you we clink clink bitches i smile again and you say something which i don’t hear and i don’t ask because i don’t care i show you an instagram reel that goes: so before you start gossiping about me love scratch your minge sniff your fingers because you have got bigger fish to fry you smile at me we drink seats made of blue velvet and gleaming display cabinets they all shine for me my glow reflects in them glass skin an oil film on puddlewater star in your sky+ a pool on a plane
which is made more for picturing yourself swimming than to actually swim in it a plane thiccer than the sky existing so this text could be written and so i could watch you your pearl-slick chest smelling of chlorine your eyes wide open above the clouds feel your sweat sliding under my fingers sense how everything else drags quite literally beneath my pussey a greasy finger across the iphone max pro 20S ultra trying to launch a productivity app loaded with ammunition that won’t fly farther than spit holding a glass of collagen yoghurt wrinkle tape on the face i lick your sweat off my finger we laugh we keep laughing and laughing because we love laughing we love love we know the rich love poverty jesus we feed off it aha
don’t notice me senpai they won’t bitch the lust inside me is drying up be the sculpture to the sculptor a nekros to the necrophile my poor love can i please have my pool time be my airplane pool my brainrot instagram reel girl dinner brunch cocktail my laugh the row jil sander i’m not asking for much am i just let me win always win never lose bro stay rich and GET EVEN RICHER haha period babe
if (auto)biography is a field, then what is a garden bed?
a garden bed is more exotic; it is more eclectic usually richer in species often propped up weeded watered cared for — like every smaller thing yet it is hidden behind a corner; you need to enter the garden to encounter it it is created for personal use but public for some — a lifetime’s work for others at least half a year’s food
a garden bed doesn’t grow flowers maybe marigolds i’ve seen sunflowers too only useful flowers — chamomile flowers there’s also this thing called allotments behind apartment blocks maintained by the co-op filled with cranky old people yet there are pearls too everyone has their patch some have greenhouses often made from plastic simultaneously heavy with inventions: chairs made from car parts bird-scarers made from cds supports made of wires irrigation systems from gutters short two-metre walkways paved with tiles everyone has that graveyard bench where they sit all day in the greenhouse a small half-empty metaxa bottle the rest is plastic and wood i think something like this
and the lament: whose potatoes failed whose cucumbers were struck by frost whose peas were raided by birds damn kids trampled the beets neighbour picked the tulips for a vase those angry crones have ambushed me in their greenhouses and shot at me with salt rifles swore at me — those men already in the garden bed were reasonable stuck to words but the women hurt mother always said they had no children like that nursery teacher who yelled at me and tugged my hair
there was a girl in nursery who bullied everyone but especially me and my best friend she grabbed my hair which was already long back then and smashed my head against the edge of the glass aquarium she had the most toys which she rubbed inside her knickers before nap time and then offered to everyone while i braided the hair of the girl sleeping beneath me so i could play with her barbies my mum’s a hairdresser the girl hit my best friend with a metal rake built a hut out of big lego bricks for herself and when i tried to sneak past so she wouldn’t see me she started screaming and lied to that stupid teacher — who pulled my hair — that i had destroyed her hut and then i got punished it happened so often that she lied about me and never did the teacher believe me never because i could never stop laughing when provoked and then i was at fault; i was disturbing others i remember once in music class we listened to opera and i almost pissed myself — the first time i heard opera and it was hilarious ist es immer noch not to mention meal times when a boy called andris always made me laugh so i didn’t eat i just sat at the table laughing and watching andris because of that i was sat at the so-called special needs table with another boy whose mum always packed food for him he got to drink juice boxes and eat crisps i’m so afraid of lying a lie is powerful that girl’s twin sister died in primary school we were on the top floor of the boarding school building one boy in our class shat in the sink before that he peed past the urinal everyone understood it was deliberate he was caught he had just gone to the loo during class and someone before and after him had gone and said returning to class that he had shat or pissed — i can’t remember he went completely berserk — threw stuff off the table at the form teacher (the same one who liked queen) flipped the table kicked the chair and ran out crying a few years later he got tick-borne encephalitis but fully recovered and i thought people die from that
let the music begin after the long beauty
i totally understand why people my age with a pricey city bike scavenge bottles from bins in old town and north tallinn i took forty bottles to the recycling machine — got four euros that gets me four-fifths of a bottle of wine if i could gather forty more i could get a decent wine i think the hourly wage would be higher collecting bottles than at sveta definitely higher than a lecturer’s hourly rate
Excerpt from the prose-poetry book Garden Bed (Värske Rõhk, 2024).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gregor Kulla (b. 2000) is an emerging voice in contemporary literature, a professional musician and a performance artist. Their literary work seamlessly intertwines artistic disciplines, presenting a sharp, experimental style that captures the complexities of (post)modern identity. Kulla’s first poetry book, Peenar (Garden bed), has garnered widespread acclaim for its candid exploration of the mundane magic of everyday life as a young artist, queer sensitivity, neurodiversity, and the liminal spaces of belonging which are often illuminated by the effervescent glow of occasional drug use. Delving into themes of youth, (a)sexuality, intimacy, and detachment, Kulla’s writing might be described as ridiculously honest, kaleidoscopic, and relentless in its depiction of the psyche of the new generation of intellectuals.