The Origin of Human Empathy
Zoe Jane Patterson traces the human need for and dependence on genuine empathy. What is it, and can it be learned?
Why Menstruation is Still Seen as Taboo
An essay delving into period stigma across cultures.
Lolita, or the death of Nabokov
Nubile young flesh splashed onto a photograph as he stood mouth agape / Hips too young to be looked at but eyes knowing something of fear...
Arrivals and Departures
ambergris, entry 2 dated 8 april
Van Gogh
Tzy Jiun Tan projects the contours of a momentary, passionate affair onto the exuberant golden brushstrokes of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.
Skin
Tzy Jiun Tan explores “the feeling of “just right” and nothing more” in this love poem as tender and taut as a plum.
Hello
A poem like “soft knocks on the heart.”
Miss Havisham
An acidic, surreal poem on feminine rage.
It Comes in Pieces
A coming-of-age prose poem of a young girl becoming woman.
google search
A conversation between Siri, Google, the Atlantic, the Gulf, and two lovers. Vamika Sinha unfurls the struggles of long distance in this free verse.
While You Were Singing
A short story about a murder, two lovers, a Syrian drunk, and a jazz-singing policeman.
café au lait
To feel othered in a foreign city because of your gender, your race…to yearn to matter without trying. A new poem that sinks into the feeling of not fitting into a white world, yet craving acceptance.
Don't Let Me Be Lonely: Depicting Abstract Emotions in Writing
How can one distil or display, accurately, the complexity of something like love, or loneliness, in a single text? Vamika Sinha analyzes the work of Jamaican-American poet Claudia Rankine, and her poetic diagnoses of modern American society.
access card
Two Asian women tussle over two colonial languages that do not belong to them. Read more in this short, acid poem.
Walking
A soft, melancholic love poem while walking through a cold New York City.
Marie
Marie Therese was Picasso’s muse and underage mistress. Read more in this poem.
George's Jungle
A sardonic play from the depths of the fashion “jungle.”
Suburbs
Zoe Jane Patterson’s new poem takes a shivering look back at childhood.
Musée des Beaux-Arts
Written from the hallowed French museum, Chiran Raj Pandey’s new poem contemplates man’s suffering.