Quicklime
They froze Frieda in quicklime; They did it in front of a mirror, always inspired by the glass screen. Screams, screams! Everybody leans in for a peek. Quicklime, and her hands move fast; motion freezes faster with skin-fizzing bubbles. Actions pass, and her shape turns calcite-white and solid still
Blight
A tangle of growing things filled your belly: made your shrinking stomach bulge. Strings turned taut; drawn across each bend and curve now struck bare. Arid, audible – a space between each branch yawning. Fissure in the breeze. Chewed or gnawed: your fraying edges expanded the light between yo
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