First Home
The front door was pale and blotchy But its fist clenched my key, unpeeling the hall. It squatted cold and stared, clutching a leg Of ham whose skin flaked fat-yellow on the floor. I found some plums in the fruit-bowl. Their flesh sagged. Their purple sank. They swallowed when I touched them. Then y
The Rhymelessness of Orange
The tangerine played hard to get, Full-pipped and bursting ’til it wept In half a drop – and in the bed it Let itself, still pressurised, Implode. And now, I see the eyes (Tomorrow’s seeds) come whining. Lungs segment and shine with Pithy veins of difficult. The reeling brains unsqueeze A
history didn’t hand me a blueprint
and / time is always running / it’s the one thing that never stops / we can count the seconds / and minutes / and hours / and ask how we spent it / […]
The Fig Tree
The fig tree in the garden is ripening faster than we know what to do with – Figs lie on the counter like a school of purple fish. In a box by the door, more are pressing down. The weight of fig upon fig puts rips into their skin. It is a strange room. There […]
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.
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
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 […]
BAIAE
Noon estranged all living things, Taking black heaven; Sucking in the sea, the (seven) hills. We trek. Irretrievables progressed, are away. We edge off The rim of everything; the sea stasis attends A gull’s catechisms, face wrapped in Evening wedding veils That genuflec