‘Poetry,’ wrote W. H. Auden, ‘makes nothing happen.’ The vitriolic political furore that erupted around poet Tusiata Avia and her poem about Captain Cook, ‘The Savage Coloniser,’ around this time last year would seem to suggest that this is, in fact, not the case. This was a case of something very much happening, indeed, breathtakingly…
They love lie detection tests and detention bracelets.They inflate a soft toy globe, they puff with notable lips.They discuss persecution complexes.They have devastation visited upon them.They always hark back to analogue times.They anguish about the good, the bad, the God-bothered.They make a welter of air kisses.They demand a simultaneous translation.They are drifting along a flight…
By the Sheep Gate Are these the lame, blind, infirm and withered who’ve flung off motel towelling robes, slid their complimentary slippers under the loungers? (Holy ground—they know it.) Does an angel stir the waters? And creation’s primal call: is that deep’s talk to deep I catch in every drop of utter blue babbling through the pool? Each molecule…
If my heart were lassoed by some beautiful woman whose pockets were lined with immense wealth, and she tried to drag it back to the wealthy suburb of Illinois where she was born and raised, I would grimace, resist, plead that my heart only beats in the city, defibrillated each morning in the vibrations of…
There in your kitchen, we crack brown eggs over your sink.Hushed, we redefine our childhood legends. Yoruba tales whisper about the cunning tortoise who would listen to the meeting of the birds and make a feathered shell with his own two hands. Rubbed raw and pink in Jerusalem bathwater.Or—no. Maybe not Jerusalem. Maybe Ilé-Ifẹ̀. Maybe it’s…
My Education from 1964 to I Forget Souls You can tell the rolls of dust under the bed are ghostsbecause their bodies are see-throughbut they have their own mind, their own fierce, unpredictable, grey mind.Your mind crouches inside your hard white head. Ghosts are actually souls. Ghosts, souls, dust—all the same. Your soul is a white…
You want to order from a local restaurant, but you need to download a third-party delivery app, even though you plan to pick it up yourself. The prices and menu on the app are different to what you saw in the window. When you download a second app the prices are different again. You ring…
I typically avoid hard foods. These mantou are under-fermented: as if someone has poked a white ball with a needle, leaving it pockmarked and deflated. Biting into it might be tough, without the softness I prefer, but I don’t want to try. This results from my inexperience—uncertain about the right amount of water to add.…
As children, wild and unwatched in the streets of Kerman, we played dodgeball religiously. Every day, no exceptions. Those days our bodies were still as swift as hummingbirds, as agile as fish, swooshing away from the yellow ball thrown at us as if it were a comet on fire. The most glorious moments of the…
When you see your ex with a baby strapped onto him for the first time, don’t act surprised. Even though you haven’t seen him in years, obviously, and you’ve just bumped into him outside the cafe where you both used to sit with your laptops, attempting to study, but too distracted by each other, legs…