New World Writing Quarterly

Poem Following a Line from Philip Larkin

On the day of the explo­sion, cows
kept chew­ing and we went to work,
cough­ing out dis­may in pro­sa­ic bursts
and scrolling news, weigh­ing the chance
of an ear­ly win­ter. On the morn­ing
–more

Six hours alto­geth­er. Rp300k taxi fare; 10k was return on the train.

We had cho­sen the date bad­ly. Muslim New Year and a long week­end meant a queue at the sta­tion tick­et-office, seats sold out. The stand­ing option was declined; –more

1. More Days Than Nights

 Tiresias sits alone chew­ing gum like Lolita. Her dog, Little St. James, sleeps on her lap. Even though her implants are hurt­ing, she sol­diers on and will tease the dis­as­ter out of the moment.  The oth­er pas­sen­gers have –more

Treasures

You are eight when on a vis­it to your father’s aunt you see beau­ti­ful things. Great Aunt lives alone in a tiny red cab­in on the edge of a small town. Before her hus­band died, he built shelves through­out to dis­play –more

We would come to blows we got so bored. On bulk pick­up day, we rum­maged the tree lawns and the alleys. We plucked a water­logged gui­tar. It had two rust­ed strings that broke. We snapped them against our wrists until we broke –more

1

Outside the kitchen win­dow, the wind is whip­ping, jostling the tree branch­es with a vig­or I haven’t seen for a while. So of course I have to stop wash­ing the dish­es and dri­ve to the hill­top park.

Standing on the grassy peak, I avail –more

Roundabout

Mike looks at me like I make him sick. I may have done some­thing to make him mad, but I can’t remem­ber what. Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t, or maybe he wants me to believe I deserve to be scorned with his eyes. –more

In the Price Chopper, and I am about to grab a can of Niblets, quick Thursday din­ner, when Dow, who is teach­ing Bio this semes­ter, sneaks up behind me. There is all kinds of Phil Collins around us in the air, and Dow is his usu­al sweat on his upper –more

A trop­i­cal storm had formed some­where off the coast and was fore­cast­ed to turn into a hur­ri­cane, so we cut our vaca­tion short and drove home in silence. My wife Kate caught me hav­ing eyes for oth­er women at the beach. I had for­got­ten my –more

Hats

I got fired from my job at CVS for steal­ing Prilosec OTC to alle­vi­ate the hor­ren­dous side-effects of my chron­ic GERD, so I start­ed buy­ing nov­el­ty base­ball hats from China and sell­ing them on the side­walk in front of my apart­ment build­ing. My girl­friend –more

1. VR with 360, with immer­sion, with imme­di­a­cy: it is the ulti­mate empa­thy machine says one practitioner/promoter. Thing is, the writer in Art Forum argues, it’s empa­thy for your­self, in your­self, with your­self. VR is stuck in its vivid­ness –more

The Clip

You have just buried your sec­ond dog. The after­noon is get­ting sticky. You put the spade back in the garage, kick off the boots and pour your­self two fin­gers of Gordon’s. You sit down and lis­ten to the neighbor’s guard –more

I @mentioned Yang in our WeChat group chat at eight AM my time and PM their time, telling her I dreamed of her being a North Korean spy. In my dream she was only revealed as being from North Korea, –more

(René Taïcon: 1930 Archives départ­men­tales Pas-de-Calais 4Z482 Sous-pre­fec­ture de Saint-Omer, France) 

My moth­er was Fridolin, a boy of four­teen. He pushed me for­ward in the soup line, and dealt –more

It wasn’t real­ly a food court, which was a bunch of restau­rants in a mall or a build­ing lob­by. This was a buf­fet, dif­fer­ent offer­ings set up in a sin­gle din­ing space, a meal includ­ed in the price of a room, here in the hotel.

“It’s –more

Tonight, while we sleep, new cones are devel­op­ing in the eyes of ten mil­lion, nev­er before seen. If you have ever watched a time lapse of a water­mel­on grow­ing, it’s like that. Nothing for weeks, until mirac­u­lous­ly, some­thing. –more

Paintings

She paint­ed all sorts of paint­ings, my oth­er grand­moth­er. Lots of paint­ings of clowns. Nudes. When I was a kid she paint­ed the Space Shuttle Columbia. Not the one that explod­ed, that was the Challenger, –more

What I tell him is this—let’s shoot a film / not a seri­ous fea­ture / but a movie you make with your friends / no stunts or dia­logue / only us / goof­ing off / draw­ing in dirt / paint­ing white cir­cles with mops / clap­ping –more

- a region of south­ern Greece
- a mytho­log­i­cal place of rus­tic inno­cence and pas­toral plea­sure: par­adise, utopia, Eden, Shangri-La, nirvana
- a metaphor for an ide­al but unat­tain­able world

“Et in Arcadia Ego”

I missed the –more

Here’s one thing about my mum.

She used to col­lect paper. She had an old grey-blue fold­er, tat­tered, giv­ing up at the edges. Written on it, in her pre­cise yet boun­cy red mark­er let­ters, it read: “Cartotecnica e varie”. Which –more