I’m not sure if Antonia intended to feed Maya to the lions from the beginning, or if it was an idea that dawned on her when she saw their yellow teeth. She loved her boyfriend, but something about his child unsettled her …
Recent Posts
ars poetica
in the open city, i move like an eel. i am electric and curved like a smile razored. in the open city, i live on hot food and hot music …
Living Between the Haram and A’ayb: Women in Gulf Societies
A woman is not necessarily a good Muslim just because she follows her society’s ideologies. A female boxer who eschews her society’s ideologies of shame, can still be a devout Muslim …
A Message to Cisgender Artists
A common trope for cisgender artists is to create work about transgender people, but only address the person for their physical characteristics or medical transition …
Haiku Series: Hearth
Continuing our haiku series with “hearth” a collection of poems about what it means to be home.
Good Love is Hard to Find
The evening service is already in full swing. People sway and sing to the band onstage. Father Francis rocks side to side to the increasingly upbeat music, like a boat in distress. His palms open to the fluorescent ceiling and his eyebrows knit together as he concentrates hard on communing with the creator. As the music hits fever pitch, he shouts, crescendoing, “OH JESUS CHRIST, OH GOD, OH JESUS!”
In the Corners
He pisses in the bushes
Turns around
Tells me he loves me
I tell him I’m hungry …
Paula Rego’s Delightful Violence
If Wendy is not dead already, she has accepted her looming death with a sad kind of nobility. This scene never occurs in the original novel. By situating a drowning inside a beloved and well-known children’s tale, Paula Rego reminds the viewer of an uncomfortable truth: childhood is not a landscape free from exploitation or violence. Rego’s Peter Pan illustrations are an exploration of the danger of childhood …
The End of the World Poem
The date for the end of the world was chosen arbitrarily …
An Obituary That Should Be Written Sooner Rather Than Later to Megaman by edwrdsaeed
ignoring the Two games in the / middle, because / They do not have my mind on a hook / streaming my brain back to combos …
The Historical is the Personal — Reflections on Postcolonial Guilt, Mi Koo Buns, and Writing History
“Where did your Malaysian accent go?” A close friend asked me after I came back from my first year at university. We were sitting at a café with sleek glass windows in Kuala Lumpur. “Give me a few days, it’ll come back.” Till then, he had to deal with speaking to a foreigner …
