Soliloquies
Swiveling between memories in Sharjah, Dubai and Cairo, Noor Tannir’s vulnerable personal essay grapples with themes of anxiety, grief, and family illness
Breach of Contract
A poem in which a woman waits for her husband to die
Dependent Origination Trumps Old Age, Sickness, Death
A tiny poem that packs in Buddhist philosophy, love, and attachment into a mere handful of lines
Two Poems
A duo of existential poems by Irish writer Kevin McDermott faces life's hardest's questions
走得安樂嗎？
走得安樂嗎？(Did You Leave Peacefully?) is a personal exploration of what it means to die on your own terms. The audio weaves together a recording of Ah Bun, a gymnastics-instructor-turned-quadriplegic who wrote a public letter to the Chief Executive of Hong Kong asking for euthanasia, and Disney’s “I See The Light”
the applause of dead mothers
Han Khan evokes the memory of his mother through cooking daal. The poem takes the form of a Garland cinquain, a poetry form using fixed syllable counts for each line
Cornflower blind
How do we care for the dead? How much can they see? A hypnotic poem by Samantha Smith
Okuribito: A Dignified Portrayal of the Beautiful Dead
How do we care for the dead? Garreth Chan explores the intersections of beauty, mundanity, death, and family through his exploration of the film Okuribito and its soundtrack
hypothetically eight
This nostalgic poem paints an image of a mother laying her child to rest in more ways than one
Sorry I Have to Reschedule, I’m Preparing My Son’s Funeral
“Sorry I Have to Reschedule” explores a foggy soundscape of remembrance as the artist muses upon the premature death of childhood
Galaxy of Dad
Eamon Doherty's portraits of his father and brother pay tribute to their impact on shaping Doherty’s childhood
En Route
A prose-poem in memory of those on the Dubai-Calicut plane crash from last August 2020
Hick is a bad word
A biting, modern reflection on teen suicide in the age of Facebook, a “dating app for the dead”
Chest Pain
"The diagnosis was Enlarged Heart Syndrome. I failed to understand why they intoned the news like they were reporting a death—I agreed with the diagnosis ..." – new in fiction by Vongai Mlambo.
Utopia: Haiku Series
The latest instalment in our haiku column by Louise Gerodias.
ruin
A personal meditation within an existentially fraught world. New in poetry, by Vamika Sinha.
killing a fern
New in poetry, by Jane Ayres.
Hazed
“After we finished crying there was still a lot to do” – Hazed is a short collection of poetry on the total penetration of the palm oil industry in our daily life, as well as its oft unseen effects on animals, plants, and indigenous communities.
A True War Story
Vamika Sinha retells the water buffalo scene from Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story”, from the perspective of another soldier.
AC
“I believe in the expansion of color in the sky as the sun travels” – a quiet, nostalgic poem by Grace Nightingale.