Swiping White
When Pittsburgh-born author Celeste Ng tweeted that she didn’t usually find Asian men attractive because “they remind me of my cousins”, she couldn’t have foreseen that she would be castigated anonymously as “another white-boy-worshipping cunt” and accused of raising the next Elliot Rodg
The Blurred Genres of Filipino Cinema
The corrupt congressman stumbles through the garbage in the rain, hurls a briefcase of money into the heart of the landfill, and looks around anxiously for the body of his child. “Open your eyes, and you’ll see her,” says the avenging citizen, looking on from above. I first watched Graceland i
Where Are You From?
Not London. Cities with other litanies: Snow Hill, Nechells, Harbourne, Lozells. The late bus from Birmingham, cupped by the fierce hand of the Black Country, and house-proud Solihull, stealing looks, stuck out on its own down the Chiltern line, to Marylebone. Cities with other rivers, other bridges
Whitby Harbour
You can’t quite put a finger on it – whetted, held up to feel the wind. Maybe it’s something on the – &nbs
Verse ex Machina
Our human souls have been allowed to stand alone, Your love with spirit confirms the sunk brow of God The lines materialise on the screen. They are, admittedly, recognisable as poetic. Then you examine them for a little longer.
Tasbih
(I don’t want this poem to be in English) I once called you rosario, a crucifijo clenched in the hand of Abuela whose lágrimas are a stuttering lluvia que cae al rancho. It cuts carretera-stones, prays for the roadside skulls of drunken sons. I want men to stop leaving her: for Abuelo Güicho to
Lost at Sea
The morning of 7 July 2018 dawned like any other at the whaling station of Hvalur hf, Iceland’s last extant commercial whaling company. Until it didn’t. The night before, one of the company’s whaling boats had returned from sea dragging its usual catch of a fin whale on one side, and something
Somewhere in Düsseltal
The young woman pays Frau Manuela Grobbel the 200€ deposit. Well, she follows Frau Grobbel through the house with the money scrunched in her hands like a Monopoly player about to pass GO. Her name is Ebba. After paying the deposit, she receives a ring with two scratched silver keys. One is for the
Portokalia
“out of nothing I have created a strange new universe” – János Bolyai We were left an orange, sunset-blotted, not the golden apple we forgot. We were left a portokalia, when we stopped seeing, piles of leaves and mounds of mud gathered around the garden under our feet. We were left lost l