Weekly Round Up: Akwaeke Emezi, Fleabag, and HIV Treatment
Non-binary Author Nominated for Women’s Prize for Fiction Non-binary author Akwaeke Emezi has been nominated for the £30,000 Women’s Prize for Fiction for their first novel, Freshwater. Controversially, it is the first time in the twenty-seven year history of the award that a person who doe
Poetry
He’s just a boy, you tell yourself as you lean into the sad corners of his mouth, curling up, becoming small amongst those creases, tracing that auburn cowlick like a damp ring road, loneliness in the bedroom between you both, his jarring youth seemingly lost under the weight of the room’s waves
China and Clay
It was the morning of Christmas Eve – never a big deal in their part of Calcutta – when Putul came in with her mother in a hand-me-down jumper. The Mistress of the Mansion was awake, sweeping the dead leaves in the garden towards the southern wall. She never truly honoured her title, which irked
Shibuya hospital
August 31st 2017. Tokyo City, Shibuya hospital second floor There is an incredibly ominous feeling that accompanies knowing the exact place you are to die. I have been lying in the same spot for nearly a year now. Tubes snake their way under the blankets, latching onto me in humiliating place
Tomorrow: A Blueprint
Kerbside, night, and someone who’s not quite you, don’t worry, I’m not quite me either. and rain, and left a taxi pulls away, with that where’s-home ache in its eyes. she’ll light a cigarette, her hands cradling warmth: need met in clinging. oh and neon draped like a frame, meaning somethi
Battered Bodhrán
I worked at the Battered Bodhrán on Hackney Road. Six days a week, I’d come in at 7pm and leave shortly after we closed at one in the morning. They paid me seven pounds per hour, which added up to roughly a thousand a month, or nine-fifty after National Insurance. Of that, seven-fifty went on [&h
Not this
We’d been arguing for a while already before I became aware of the plant growing over the windowsill, reaching into the room through the open space left by the raised window as the light outside assumed red evening angles and multiplied the dimensions of things, its exploring fronds so distant fro
Gaia
“Look at its spine, Josh,” Daiyu said. The hologram flickered in front of the two of us as she scrolled through 2-D slices, presenting cross sections of a creature resembling a small, ape-like mammal. Or maybe a monkey, I’d forgotten which one used to have the tail. The perspectives th
Far Away
What are you doing just now? Perhaps you’re rinsing a coffee cup Warm water caressing your hands Sea waves lap over ankles Deliberately digging your toes into the sand Speaking with a relative And something they say confirms that hope or fear you have about these days. Sunk in the sofa with siblin