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.

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The STEM Issue: Poetry Roundup

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The Mixed Issue: Poetry Roundup