the chatter of men and women
and fish in the room calling out her name over and over again was unbearable a courthouse of carp all slippery down the chamber sliding against the defendant as he spoke we could hear ever more loudly the noise of a gavel gulping for air or maybe someone in her statement softly crying? he asked [&he
he and i, we followed a cat in Shanghai
∎ Words by Yasmin Linh Nguyen. Art by Jules Desai.
Fisherman
My little eyes are whittled wide. They slip through clouded water, sleekly oiled, starved of tide, to find the feinting fish. My whetted nets will drip with jewels that dart and dive at every angle. I need to strip them of their silver-plated scales, roam like a fishing hook to every fissure, nook,
A Poem
The open window invites in flies, who do not yet know they will scatter dead in droves across my bedsheets. (How softly their grey little bodies drift towards the floor!) In these months I too feel death upon me. I sleep with my eyes open.∎ Words by Lindsay Igoe. Photography by Paweł Czer
Two Years in Service
1. I met Zhipeng the first day I got to my battalion. We were bound together, both set to finish at the same time in April next year. Everybody else in the company would finish in March. Zhipeng spoke broken Mandarin and broken English. He spoke Chinese to me for a whole day before realising [&helli
Poetry is useless
i dive into a poem naked to find clothes too loose to fit; a dead grandfather’s batik shirt buttoned down a sun burnt chest […]
Bruly Bouabré’s ways of seeing
Seven disembodied heads float in a circle, cheek-to-cheek, their chins pointing to a face in the middle. They look like old men: wrinkled foreheads, receding hairlines, long, drawn-out faces, and empty eyes staring out ahead. The shapes of their eyes, noses, mouths are crude and repetitive. This mig
Comics
*** Cartooning is like poetry with intention; the art of pointing out the ridiculous by enshrouding the pointing out with seriousness. In this selection of cartoons, I hope to point out the absurd in places overlooked, and inspire others to think about other aspects of their lives that seem serious,