Kissing Other People or the House of Fame

Kay Gabriel

— where when you’re back we’ll be having rice and pulses
hold in gasses kiss and flip off the one or two remaining pigs

A book in two halves, Kissing Other People or the House of Fame opens with a sequence of poems that roam the grotty, sublime streets: patting rats, reading pamphlets, enduring labour, acquiring falafel, waving to friends. Then the book flips on a seam and invokes Chaucer as an unlikely guide through a series of dream-blocks, each autonomous yet resonant with attachments and perversions as they come and go, repeat and echo. The book is as staunch as it is warm – one arm extended in a hug and the other cupped over the mouth to shield a secret (weapon).