Category: Issue 12 / 2021

from Horse Boy Horse-boy, you wandered into this poem and you can stay After all I have nothing left but you      you, my hands, half a boat I am usually more of a narrative than this but when you came      well I am a parental advisory      in other words a life with footnotes As a child you dropped… Continue reading ruth tang

from orchids to rice The Story of Tan Hoon Siang [taken from an information board in the National Botanic Gardens]: During the Japanese Occupation of Singapore (1942-1945), Japanese officials entered the home of Tan Hoon Siang and saw a Vanda dearei in bloom. They concluded that if he could successfully cultivate orchids, he could also… Continue reading Anna Onni

GLASS VASE CELLO CASE for the song by Tattle Tale I cannot whistle over the rim of a bottle, which is whyI play the drums and not the flute. I have never had a dreamin which my body is made of melting sandbut maybe I should start. I dream in ooze and rotand acid. Girlmeat… Continue reading Andrew Kirkrose Devadason

On Hypnosis, Unscripted       A shaman finds out his vehicle can’t move like a man—windows grow breasts, curtains scream for attention.      Nothing happens, but the room sweetens its bones.      A bronze floor lamp, two bar tables, five oiled chairs in one circle: a party of ghost babies laugh with life-size cats. The Scope of Darkness The cave wheels… Continue reading Fiona Sze-Lorrain

from The Shape of a Body Uncertain Once, it was written that therewas a man who slipped onto a shipand sailed off the edge. When the monsoon lash returned him,the man spoke of a sticky that pressed.The man could not eat the cooked. The man spoke to silence.And of the most,the man was blind to… Continue reading Hamid Roslan

A season of slime Through the early pandemic, blame: bat bloodspread across a city’s chopping boards.Ash paste smeared on all palmsand instructions to wail.As if everyone drove oil rigs into lush mud.As if everyone makes trunks seep with both hands.As if the workers who droop behind counters.As if those locked in dorms and pushed into… Continue reading Jack Xi

from The Projectionist Series DeVore and Frankenberg’s “Young man, don’t you know you might fall and get hurt?”—an old woman to Harold Lloyd as he scales the Bolton Building in Safety Last! The answer lies in the falling into the centrifugal patterns in Mildred’s eyes (perhaps an exquisite turn-of-the-century fusee duplex with centre and jumping… Continue reading Yeow Kai Chai

2 Poems

Untitled beyond the ash cloud                  what is left? ruaumoko  won’t  be  able  to c  o  n  t  a  i  n      h  i  m  s  e  l  f             but if he does      lying still walk across the road and look                                                  down through the skin of the volcano       see            the street below       cobbled, covered, underfootdebris formed of our shared history slicing through                              rolling forms                           roads                                          pathscomposed of:       names                        newspapers                  voices      fragments of meteorite      an overcast suitor a shallow drinking bowl with scalloped edges mangroves                   Ash                Ashso… Continue reading Ana Iti

What Did It Give You? I’m sorry, Veruca, for all your sorrows—One foot in the gutter and the otherin a state of abject horror.Your miseries are worse than mine.Bless us, oh Lord, for our sins.They are many, and in quick succession.She loves me, she loves me not—If you pick the flower before it’s ripened,you’ll never… Continue reading Carolyn DeCarlo

waterbody_2 A foghorn sounding through fog makes the fog seem to be everything. ◦ everything      makes            the fog                                    seem                                    to be                         sounding                              through sounding ///       the rain falls                  light                  tossed as smoke            between trees       in the valley      while the dog                        chews an invisible      bone                        remembering how good it was                  & not knowing the                  size of time ◦ Anne Carson, ‘An Ode to the Sublime By Monica Vitti’, Decreation: Poetry,… Continue reading Frances Libeau

Five ways of looking at yourself in a cracked mirror 1. spot what is human and what is super- human / a distinction that could lead to a series of mis- understandings / I searched under marked paths for what is beyond parallel / If every timeline asked you to jump would you? 2. the… Continue reading Chris Tse

from Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life “We can go get dinner. Or we could throw ourselves into the harbour, what do you want to do.” I had bought a cabbage from the grocery store earlier and I still had the cabbage with me. I placed it in the third chair at the table at the… Continue reading Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle

The story of it all There is always a way to find the path forward except when except when. The path forward they say. I know they say a lot of things about other things. I kn ow that I have known many things     over time. I forget how it is to be in the light… Continue reading Emma Barnes

where i got the idea of apart from for Papatūānuku listen ————————————————————— listen to movementswhat are they likenowthat She has hadso longto stretchHer own bodyoutwards ————————————————————— it was either to stubbornly get mud all up the back of my legsor it was that i kept my shoes on until the jams in my toesbegan to… Continue reading essa may ranapiri

Neither solid nor liquid Haveyoueverbeento the space where themoanameetstheshore? Kimihia katoa nga putake o te kaupapa, ingia I kitea, kimihia te rongoa.1 When a child is born the water comes first,Then the child,Followed by the afterbirth.What we call our whenua. The ocean expandsIt open and shutslicking the shore’s edgeits hinge has almost fallen off Slapping… Continue reading Hana Pera Aoake