Magma Selected highlights a single poet who is emerging or whose work deserves to be better known, allowing us to publish a wider selection of poems. Our Selected Poet for this issue is Rushika Wick

Oh I am a charlatan, a fake
Cleopatra’s rectum
give me a glass and I’ll follow you
into the vertical fields of mind.
It doesn’t take much to have me
fawning over Berthold Brecht
and other such paraphernalia,
I’m there
where dappled rain spills wine out
of glasses spattering across cloth,
wide winds
sweeping up a storm of nothing
and into nothing further than
the reaches of what could be,
a kind of peace flickering
in and out of focus like the first day
of life
or when I catch your glance unaware.
I’m there where our fingers brush
catching the billowing table cover,
coffee stains documenting
slaughtered moments-
a camera of blue cotton,
I’m there at the fraying edge,
fluttered by the threads
quick-unpicked,
a long heat on me.