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 […]
Good Fortune
Good fortune, that he was passing. Warm, clear joy In pale gold Like a splash of sunlight On a tiled floor. Ask for exactness. Ask for words by art to enact, thus: His warm palm laid Between my shoulder-blades.∎ Words by Hannah Patrick.
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
Tilting Nights
Sometimes she would stand, hands folded, resting her gaze by the window. She would wait until lights fell flat for laughter on the streets for bodies following faces as words trail slowing feet. She watched the tiny worlds between floating hands as fingers parted ways and how sometimes rain grazed o