August 2025
In this issue
Contents
No Picnic for Me
The writer narrates an experience at her art school which leaves her with the realisation about having to fight for each bit she wanted.
Paper Dreams
In our house, we have an entire wall built of books. The English is so hard that even I cannot get through more than a cupboard or two.
Blues For Max Beckmann
A bump came up through the seat, another bump. They had landed. A string of runway lights gliding past, then a row of blue and orange Lufthansa tailplanes
Hims
A few days ago, colleagues at a work function had been standing in a circle. He was pallid-work-him glass in hand, standing to one side.
Shadow (Light)
I miss the parts where my siblings and I would pile into my parents’ bed on the weekend, my father still half asleep and my mother long awaken.
Holy
Mrs. Greene just shakes her head. For a moment, she seems about to speak, to demand something again—
Paneer Bhurji
She is sixty-seven years of age, she looks her age, and to me she seemed to have aged overnight one day in September 2019.
Safe Haven
On the couch again, she propped her feet up on the turquoise ottoman and picked up her book but found she couldn’t concentrate.
An explanation for the clause bequeathing everything to the secret Parisian society, les UX
Finally, we compromised and replaced your biography with this poem.
Two Poems by Ashwani Kumar
Chewing Bengali paan, mixed with spices and lime, runway girls follow him to the town hall, for a symphony of molten desires.
Meditation in Appalachia
Lesson learned; I will stop counting, but you’ve taken my booze, taken my music; I’m only a man after all.
You
Your signature phrase so Britishly conditional, the words cross-grained with hope and irony,