The Productivity Issue: Poetry Roundup
Each issue we feature pieces of prose and poetry from Asian women around the world. Here are this issue’s pieces!
Equinox by Kari VanderLaan
Harvest bee,
Queen.
Bramble-soaked with
ripe, rich felicity.
Cloudless in your
arrivals.
Lend me a
whisper of your passage.
On Taking A Leave by Shinjini Dey
You should be working,
but you’re on the tide, skinned by a desire —
or the particular landscape of a desire
and its branding like a blow
the imperative on and out through your front teeth
a whistling, a holler, a cat-call
from a jeep passing so fast you’d feel remiss
mistaking the vernacular of the horn and the abuse;
and not still
the accident of absences
You ask what disappearance is even possible in this world?
An electric
bag held between two poles, zipping a flow here
and a current there
a dead crow eating one alive
cut throat
saturation
They say you’re going to go places, but you’re not there yet
zipping a flow here
and a current there—the here, the there
a placeholder pity
You could name it all if you tried, promethean gift of man
a place to belong
between a rock and a hard place
the adamantine but/for
logos, a logo.
Shinjini Dey has been trying to not write so she could read everything. Now she works as a freelance editor for a living in Hyderabad, India.