Syntax Error: Troubleshooting Failures in Coding and Language

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Anita Solak 

var expectations;
var doubts; 
var attempts;

function preload( ) {
expectations = loadStrings(“perfection.txt”);
doubts = loadStrings(“extensive.txt”);
attempts = loadStrings(“trytobeenough.txt”);
}

The kind of learning I’ve been engaging in has left me not knowing the names of things, or forgetting them unless I am using them at that moment. There is so much I don’t know and the act of coding is facing that lack again and again. My notes show this grasping.

According to Taeyoon Choi ‘learning how to work through a problem is way more important than doing it the “right way.”’ Persisting despite a lack of knowledge, perfection, or fluency is essential to learning anything. I can’t imagine approaching a project or a lesson without room for all the wrong ways I try myself into results.

I’ve learnt that doubting myself in one form is exactly the same as doubting across several forms of expression – the only difference being if the doubt gets too heavy while writing a poem I’ll switch to my code. If my code has too many errors, I’ll research interesting vocab. This revelation felt restorative for someone like me, who wants to be everything for everyone (and hides from the world when I can’t be). I had been waiting for someone to tell me it was okay to pursue multiple things at once, even if I failed at them all, even if none of these pathways would bring stability or a career. Sometimes you just need to be reminded that it’s okay to learn new things, and it’s okay to be shit as long as you’re enthused by the process.

I killed my maths brain when I was sixteen and never looked back. I’m not saying I regret this, but I think I’d have less trouble solving errors in my code if I understood basic maths. Learning that computational refers to the process of mathematical calculations as well as working with computers was disappointing for me because it felt like I’d discovered a really cool quest but found out I had to have a driver’s license to complete it. Code can be chaotic, a graveyard of math that won’t function because I haven’t understood the logic or language. I find this in my poetry too, in stanzas that seem fine but aren’t communicating properly with other stanzas in the piece. Eventually, you have to cut them or find new words.

***

Some words or phrases will always make more sense to me in my first languages. I write first languages, plural, because depending on whom my parents and I were surrounded by the language and dialect I heard and learnt would differ. Most of the multilingual writing I’ve done makes me feel uncomfortable because it showcases all the gaps in my vocabulary and all the silences I’ve grown up with. This work centres around family and food because that is what I have lived and known. To this day I feel like I’m trailing behind everyone in both English and Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. I had the same education every other Australian kid did–I remember playing Kewala’s Typing Adventure – but in my mind I will never make up for the five-year head start all the other kids had in English. What’s worse, my younger self felt ashamed of this gap and as a result I neglected my first languages for years.

In my late teenage years, just before we visited family in Europe, I started reading my old language-learning books and listening to the music my cousins suggested. I inhaled my copy of Izi indigo vila, and struggled through Kradljivica Knjiga, and the first book of the Series of Unfortunate Events, Loš početak. There are words in these books that I don’t even know in English but I wasn’t reading for the story. Despite not understanding what each word meant at least I could pronounce them correctly by sounding them out slowly. I laboured over every page, hoping the effort would yield a vocabulary and access to my family’s stories.

***

Hoping that coding would somehow allow me to continue to appreciate my poems even after I had written them was a strong motivator to apply for Toolkits, an online course in digital writing in 2020. In ‘Nature Poem’ Tommy Pico says ‘It’s disheartening / to hear someone say “there’s no magic left”’. I’d felt stifled by the pressures of money, family, and other expectations and it had left me with little energy or appreciation for creativity. Coding brought a kind of magic back to me that was quashed due to the necessity of:

var languages;
var writing; 
var newSkill;

//Small x’s and poorly named variables, 
//all evidence of a continuing story


Click and move cursor to interact with the code sketch. This is best viewed on desktop.

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Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged , , , , , , ,

9 Artworks by Rel Pham

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Rel Pham


TEMPLE | Rel Pham

Rel Pham is a Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, designer, animator and illustrator known for a strong use of electric, vibrant colours and a penchant for surrealism. Drawing upon old world fables and rituals for thematic inspiration, Pham explores the interconnected nature of our current physical and digital realities through screen-based video, animation and installation.

Pham creates hybrid worlds, rendering traditional scenes of Cao Dai temples and Western classical art in an illuminated palette of neon PC coolant fluid and radiant LED lights. He flattens our past, present and future to demystify the invisible numbers that surround everyday life, exposing the programmed spectres haunting our data through cautionary tales of being intrinsically connected online.

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Posted in ARTWORKS | Tagged

Why = f(x): A Retired Tumblr Girl’s Inquiry into Suffering, Stardom and Female Labor

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Wina Puangco-Mutuc

Suffering as a Function of Stardom

In Patrick Flores’s The Star Also Suffers: Screening Nora Aunor (2001), he describes confessional performance as being a simultaneous unburdening of the self and burdening of others with one’s pain, a transaction wherein ‘pain serves both as labor and capital of the struggle of a human agent […] to bear witness and testify, to make the necessary sacrifice of putting herself at risk and in a position of vulnerability and exposure to consumption and compassion’1. Flores is describing actress-turned-politician Nora Aunor confessing at the EDSA Dos rally in 2001 that she had suffered abuse at the hands of her long-time political ally, ex-lover, ex-costar (and ex-President of the Philippines), Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada. The confession is aired on national news outlets.

In the footage, Nora is pictured standing at EDSA Shrine in a plain black t-shirt (the official color of the EDSA Dos revolution) with a Good Morning towel draped over her shoulders.


Nora Aunor at EDSA Dos, hand-in-hand with Urban Poor Rights activist, Carmen “Nanay Mameng” Deunida

Her eyes are turned heavenwards and she is photographed hand-in-hand with Urban Poor Rights activist Carmen ‘Nanay Mameng’ Deunida2. EDSA Shrine is a place associated with both revolution and reverence. From the photo and video coverage, the Filipino (or at least Manilenyo) mind was free to assume that she was looking up at the monument of Mary, Queen of Peace. Her confession being documented this way holds cultural weight. Nora Aunor was the first non-mestizaje actress to make it big on the silver screen in the early sixties, allowing Filipinos to see their stories enacted by someone who looked like them: brown-skinned with a small nose, not approximating any Hollywood counterparts3.


Nora Aunor in Himala (1982).

Nora’s most famous films, Atsay (1978), Himala (1982), and The Flor Contemplacion Story (1995), have nationalistic leanings. They problematise themes like the fanatic nature of worship in religious communities and abuse domestic workers and Overseas Filipino Workers or OFWs are exposed to. Noranians4 are from diverse backgrounds: from academics and film critics, to doctors and lawyers, to grandmothers and aunties in the province.

As a result, most Filipino audiences have seen Nora in this pose before. Those of us who are familiar with her body of work know that this look heralds emotional upheaval, catharsis, and an oncoming monologue. Flores describes this confession as emotional but also strategic: a way to signal that Nora was shifting allegiances, an act which would put her back in the public’s good graces at a time when Erap was almost surely going to be impeached.

This passage from The Star Also Suffers: Screening Nora Aunor was one of the first I bookmarked and copy-pasted onto a Notion Table that would grow to contain nearly a hundred passages in the span of the eight months it took me to complete my masteral thesis, Functions:Poems, a collection of thirty-one poems (forthcoming from Grana Books in 2024) which borrow their form from trigonometric functions and their images from three of Nora’s Guy & Pip romantic comedies5. From the get-go, I knew I wanted my project to explore pain as a function of romance, but this quotation steered me toward its then-unarticulated crux: female labor.

Like Nora’s confession, the more personal my attachment to this endeavour of articulation became, the more political it became as well; the more emotional its core grew, the more strategic the choice to write it seemed to be. On the one hand, I, too, wanted to confess: to say this happened to me and it was terrible and I want you all to care and ache and never be the same – on the other, I also wanted the confession to be about the labor young Filipina women are subjected to in relationships, in media, in the public eye, on the internet. I wanted this collection to be a showcase of craft informed by context, of the ability to distill what it would mean for these forms of suffering and stardom to happen to people who look like me (brown, short, curvy, undeniably and obviously Filipina) into a suit of poems that was aloof enough to be taken seriously, but coy enough to have sex appeal.

I wanted to write a poetry collection that unabashedly romanticised the Maldita-centric melodrama of Filipino cinema. I wanted the persona to possess both the cold-blooded rage of the bitch paying her son’s hampas-lupa6 girlfriend ten million pesos to stay away and the earnestness of the virginal leading lady who is unwaveringly hopeful and will do anything for love, for family, for country.

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Posted in ESSAYS | Tagged , , , ,

Gibraltarian Stanzas

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Edwin Yeats

μὴ τὸ κράτος αὔχει δύναμιν ἀνθρώποις ἔχειν
(“Do not proclaim that empire holds sway over human lives”,
Tiresias, in Bacchae of Euripides.)

A boy runs down the steep, stepped street,
varying his strides and his leaps
to each step’s irregular space.
His bodily memory keeps
that rhythm of his native place.

The boy explores the layered clothes
in Mama Herminia’s wardrobe.
Nearly snarling, a stole of fox
breathes out time’s stale odours. Hands probe,
and rest on a wood-and-glass box.

The boy plays with the broken-down
clock. It strikes with resonant sound
long-vanished hours, as he wheels
the minute hand. The room shifts round
in the wardrobe’s mirror. It reels …

The city has, strident or mute,
the company of plant and brute
on the White Rock: the wildlife that,
winging the void or firm of root,
owns birthright to its habitat.

Life, being local, self-enables.
The cloud the uptorn Rock compels
yields it the benefit of dew.
High on the Jurassic cliff, wells
Darwin’s orchid,1 with squill’s drenched blue.

Surprising out of rocks, profuse,
their slender stems light-gemmed with dew
in the morning sun, the jonquils
bestow a fragrance on this New
Year’s Day, that almost overfills.

Was the paper-white’s origin
blank — the wan metamorphosis
of one who, mirrored, love implored?
It bears now, as the “fox’s piss”,2
imprint of our people’s word-hoard.

The local trades trace out their course —
ignored for monuments of war.
Mudéjar bricks remain true still
in Willis’s gunpowder store,
making known yet the Moors’ old skill.

The city’s great scene of affairs
is the roadstead. Once, steering there
by the Pole Star, pilots from Tyre
had brought fine, red-slipped, burnished ware
to emporium (not empire).

For casks of wine — heading and staves:
Canada exchanges with Spain
across this anchorage. Charleston
ships tobacco, Morocco grain,
cottons the Lancashire merchant.

With false, Jerusalem colours
the liberals clear, fate’s rudder
set for Golgotha on the beach.
The blindfolded bodies judder
as shot on shot tears into each.

A young Gibraltarian teacher
stands sixth in death’s rank. Remember
Gazzo, whose last a Capuchin
told. He, one night each December,
roams soundless el jardín de Glynn.3

Britain and the rival powers
begin to count down the hours
to Europe’s holocaust. Wolseley’s
incremental poll-tax scours
civilians from the Rock, he deems.4

Governor Nicholson regards
our people as foreigners, barred
by origin, connexion, tongue,
from self-rule. But from the Dockyard
a counterforce will soon have sprung.

Imperial measures contradict
one another. Some would restrict
the civil population’s size,
or deny it rights. Yet a picked
workforce the Dockyard’s growth implies.

Our people find their voice within
el arsenal itself. No din
of dominion, no soldier’s sway,
can silence it. Dockyard men win
us our first democratic say.5

I honour, with communal pride,
the Gibraltarian organized
working class, union men who knew
that the history newly prised
in Petrograd was theirs too.

Think now of a city at war,
with loved ones sent far from its shore;
more true than the one Orwell drew,
a city of workers,6 whose core
of morale insists on their due.

Risso heads the campaign: “They must
bring our families back; entrust
the people with self-government.”
As in other colonies, just
demands prevail through mass intent.

But satraps choose who will succeed.
“Fava is too gifted. He leads.
Deport him to retain control.”
Whenever Britain some rule cedes,
it first exacts repression’s toll.

All that endeavour brought to nought?
Do not say so. What those men caught,
of our selfhood in the making,
defines the goal to be now sought;
shows the prize, there for the taking.

The clock’s hands turn, turn and return.
From our deep memories we learn
who we are; from that, what to do.
Still the hands of the world’s clock turn:
history’s hour it tells true.

The autumn crocuses raise up
their slim, pink cups, and the rains come.
The boy sits in his window seat.
From step to step the water’s tum-
bles form cascades down Castle Street.

In the Bay of the Remedies
the sun’s dipping rays dye a keen
crimson hue. The sea expresses
in its swell’s grave obscuring sheen
Lord Poseidon’s lustrous tresses.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

no land promise [4]

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Nhã Thuyên

this place has gone months without rain, worms don’t hatch in time for the bird beaks of a drought, eggs get dispersed from their nests beneath leaves too parched, that’s right, that gardener, twenty years rhythm of turning on sprinklers, guarding grass sprouts, shimming broken roof tiles, patching cracked walls, collecting trash after every party’s last footsteps, and still seemingly waiting on the crows who for whatever reason up and left the garden some few years back maybe to return, that’s right, the crows still flooding black clamors every early morning, or doesn’t it seem, but the crows a few years back were different, he told, that’s right, still able to speak he was, or doesn’t it seem, just once in a blue moon hearing some word scraps, the barren land, the dessicated grass, press an ear to the ground just occasionally hearing the humming of insects, so it was the call of the crows that brought you here eh, crows of the past or crows of the now both could do right, just need black flooding clamors every early morning, just need black storms to flutter through the window bars, just need to gather dropped feathers, to make a work of art isn’t it, the crow feathers still plentiful, or doesn’t it seem, the barren land, the dessicated grass, seasons without rain, eggs lie dry beneath the leaves, insects don’t hatch, the band of visiting birds crave the taste of fresh pupae, only the gardner is still here, twenty years rhythm, hired from some yonder to come break down the wall, then invited to stay and collect the leftover stones, relics for distant visitors according to his archaeological expertise, then he didn’t know to go back to his some distant yonder for what, then he was invited to stay longer to construct a garden, from then on striking up friendships with the crows taking shelter in the ancient tree there, every early morning flooding a clamour of black, with black storms also fluttering through the window bars, until one morning the storm quieted and he was forever silent, or doesn’t it seem, once in a blue moon releasing a few scrap words, visitors like migratory birds, who knows where who is from and the reason for coming here, who doesn’t once become a visitor, who isn’t from some distant yonder, who doesn’t linger some place, who isn’t leaving some place, who isn’t always unable to arrive some place, who doesn’t have a reason to not return once more to some place, the crows who for whatever reason up and left the garden, that’s right, don’t worry, the wall’s done breaking down, this city has capacity to tolerate the lives from far-flung distances without root without origin, one must still keep living even when no tree invites you to sit, even when the earth is barren, the grass is dessicated, the band of visiting birds gradually leave the nest, even when not one yonder invites anyone there to come to a different yonder, even when all regions are no longer different regions, a gardener ever since eh, he’s only preoccupied with expecting the old crows who up and left the garden, to maybe return, although the crows still flooding black clamoring every early morning, just that matter alone, that garden, those early mornings, those black colors, those storms fluttering through the window bars, the rest he seems to have completely forgotten, the relics, the pieces of fallen wall, the chunks of stone dropped from some planet his hand picked up, bundled, placed in a display cabinet, or doesn’t it seem, perhaps the only way left is to forget each piece of wall, each chunk of stone, or doesn’t it seem, perhaps the only way left is to expect the pieces of wall to self-destruct and self-obliviate, the lives from far-flung distances without root without origin come then go, don’t ever approach and ask each other where you’re from and why you came here, why still here, why not still here, when you’ll be going, returning, going where, returning where, whoever still picks up the dropped crow feathers buried in the earth like that gardener, surely an art piece of his life, looking after the early morning that sprouts old crows, dripping black storms that flutter through the window bars, and then the lost rain that will be reborn in this place


không đất hẹn [4]

nơi này mưa đã mất nhiều tháng ròng, sâu không nở kịp mỏ chim mùa hạn, trứng rã ổ dưới mặt lá khô bong, ừ, người coi vườn đấy, hai mươi năm đều nhịp mở những cột mưa tự động, canh cỏ mọc, chêm ngói vỡ, bồi tường nứt, gom rác sau bước chân cuối rời đi mỗi tiệc tùng, và vẻ như vẫn trông chừng bầy quạ không dưng bỏ cây vườn chừng dăm năm trước biết đâu về lại, ừ, quạ vẫn túa màu đen náo động mỗi sớm, hoặc tưởng thế chăng, nhưng bầy quạ dăm năm trước khác kia, ông bảo thế, ừ, ông vẫn nói mà, hoặc tưởng thế chăng, họa hoằn mới nghe dăm từ vụn, đất cỗi, cỏ cằn, ép tai vào đất thảng mới nghe trùng rỉ, thế ra vì tiếng quạ mà tới đây ư, quạ xưa hay quạ nay cũng được à, chỉ cần màu đen túa ra náo động mỗi sớm, chỉ cần những cơn bão đen vờn song cửa, chỉ cần lượm lông rụng, cho một tác phẩm à, lông quạ vẫn đầy, hoặc tưởng thế chăng, đất cỗi, cỏ cằn, mưa đã mất mấy mùa, trứng nằm hạn dưới mặt lá, trùng không nở, lũ chim khách trú nuối vị nhộng tươi, chỉ vẫn người coi vườn đấy thôi, hai mươi năm đều nhịp, ông từ phương nào được thuê đến đây phá tường, rồi người ta mời ông ở lại gom vụn đá, tàn chỉ cho khách xa theo đúng chuyên môn khảo cổ của ông, rồi ông cũng chẳng biết về lại phương xa nào kia thì làm gì, rồi ông được mời ở lại thêm nữa dựng vườn, rồi từ bấy đánh bạn với bầy quạ trú nơi cổ thụ đằng kia, sớm nào cũng túa ra náo động màu đen, cũng những cơn bão đen vờn song cửa, cho đến khi một sớm ra bão lặng và ông im mãi, hoặc tưởng thế chăng, họa hoằn mới phát ra dăm từ vụn, khách như chim tạm trú, ai biết ai từ đâu và sao lại đến đây, ai không một lần làm khách, ai không tự viễn phương, ai không đang lưu lại một chốn nào, ai không đang rời khỏi một chốn nào, ai không từng đến được một nơi nào, ai không có lý do để không trở lại thêm nữa một chốn nào, bầy quạ không dưng bỏ cây vườn, ừ, đừng lo, tường đã phá xong, thành phố này đủ sức dung những đời muôn trùng không gốc không nguồn, người ta vẫn phải sống tiếp thôi cả khi chẳng một gốc cây nào mời ngồi lại, cả khi đất cỗi, cỏ cằn, lũ chim khách trú lần lần rời tổ, cả khi không phương nào còn mời mọc ai kia đến một phương khác nữa, cả khi mọi miền đều không còn là miền khác nữa, người làm vườn từ bấy đến nay à, ông chỉ bận lòng trông chừng bầy quạ cũ không dưng bỏ cây vườn, biết đâu về lại, dẫu quạ vẫn túa màu đen náo động mỗi sớm, riêng chuyện ấy thôi, khu vườn ấy, những sớm mai ấy, những màu đen ấy, những cơn bão vờn song cửa ấy, còn lại ông chừng như đã quên tất thảy, những tàn chỉ, những mảng tường rụng, những mẩu đá rơi từ hành tinh nào tay ông đã gom, đã bọc, đã đặt nằm tủ trưng bày, hoặc tưởng thế chăng, có thể chỉ còn cách quên từng mảng tường, từng mẩu đá, hoặc tưởng thế chăng, có thể chỉ còn cách mong những mảng tường tự hủy và tự lãng, những đời muôn trùng không gốc không nguồn đến rồi đi, đừng bao giờ lại gần và hỏi nhau từ đâu và sao lại đến đây, sao ở lại, sao không ở lại, bao giờ lại đi, lại về, lại đi đâu, lại về đâu, còn ai lượm lông quạ rụng chôn dưới đất như người làm vườn kia, hẳn là tác phẩm để đời của ông, trông chừng một sớm mọc lên bầy quạ cũ, túa ra những cơn bão đen vờn song cửa, và mưa mất đi rồi sẽ sinh lại nơi này

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged ,

Recital

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Allan Peterson

When she played the accordion
it seemed the audience might be there
just to see a young girl force herself to breathe
hands apparently squeezing her ribs and letting go
Under the flexible body the musical
geography of bone and within it
a pale drafty idea of stability
She picked up the black book of explanations
of music and breathing they came to understand
She opened to the page that asks for no dancing
no coughing or applause and placing her fingers
against the buttons and unlocking the ribs she began
from afar to skillfully demonstrate the air

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

MOON FALLEN

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Asvira

the sun sets in the east
the moon falls off its axis
a megastructure
maybe with fields inside;
tomatoes,
carrots,
corn.
it’s nice to have a
neighbour
a reflection
so far from us
i don’t know how to get there
so far from us
if i could just reach them then i’d
tell them about the sun
maybe they can help
would they speak the same language?
tolong,
bantu aku.
they would hear me then.

the sun sets in the east
throat crust stuffed stomach cheese
fat heart bakes at 180 degrees
a good neighbour share treats
makan, makan!
they’d taste em’ then
surely it’s enough
suka?
we can’t reach them
why
you’re right above
neighbour, please.
my sun sets in the east
i’ve no corn or carrots
the fields are dry
my tides roll away
come back!
tolong,
bantu sekali ini.

what invisible string!
i want it to be nice to have a
neighbour.
shoot the moon goodnight

so let my sun rest in peace

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Birthday Poem

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Gabriel Curtin

Everyone said twenty
was too many chillies
for one
recipe.

I insisted,
fondle them now
through the polyester tote:
dangerous and shiny
a jumble of soft, wonky bullets.

I have decided
chillies are where
I will find beauty today.

Beauty is what we’re born
for

(Toni Morrison in my headphone)

it’s not even
a privilege or a quest.

Still,
my quest begins
anticipating these chillies

scouring this house’s throats
after I’ve blended them with ginger
cherry tomatoes, shallots
and fried the lot down
to a thickness
all to bake
four fish in tomorrow
which I’ll eat with twenty friends, one
for each chilli.

My quest continues
with the cashier who says wow
that’s a lot
of chillies.

To which I say I’m making sambal
but she’s practicing Italian
with the customer next to me,

no longer interested
in my chillies.

I go questing while

agreeing with Toni,
because I need it,
because repetition makes time
seem something other
than decrepit
self-storage.
I’ve done this
twenty eight times now: nothing
if not repetition.
Shouldn’t I
know better
than to grump at slow pedestrians
swerving
into the path I attempt
the overtake in,
or weather reports
dispatching me to buy
chillies in pants
and a long sleeve on a day
demanding shorts?

This overheating itch and sweat
ovalling darkly
on my back is so familiar
as to be unremarkable —
my quest passes
over it,

lands instead on chillies browning
over medium heat now the lime
juice, sugar
and oil have been added.

It’s easy to want more of this—
elaborate preparations,
friends fawning while digging in—
though really I want more
of everything,
more! more! more!
More of my sweaty
shirt agitating me on today
of all days. The picture of life

a birthday brings: hoops
passed smoothly through
at uniform intervals.
And between each hoop, a stretch, each so
familiar as to be
unremarkable.

At some point the hoops, the stretches
finish up.
For now, beauty
quested and unquested:
chillies frying, sweat,
irritable in the hot street.

Though isn’t it biblical
—too much so
—finding salvation in the minor
or shitty as though god
happens
all the time, as though
it’s a tuning problem, as though there aint
no difference
between a seance and a school
assembly?
Which I believe there isn’t
and do also
believe there is.
Nothing needs elevating
or everything does.

Beauty comes at me neatly, I miss it

all the time squashing inconveniences
into something I’ve decided
is its shape,
(see my sweaty shirt, my
chilli bag)
and that birthday image
while we’re at it
it’s wrong, doesn’t matter

if it weren’t a hoop but an archway, a flap:
we don’t ever pass thru
a thing,
this forked and massive world
drops on us like a branch.
Even my decision to go questing is a kind
of inexplicable crash,
as is this year I’m just now spinning
into.
I’m sorry
I got the pictures wrong,
I’m sorry I went looking
for what I’d miss in the search, I’m sorry
I filled the house with spicy smoke
and used the pan
that doesn’t handle acids well.

It is an absorbent
pan, seasoned
with everything that’s ever been cooked,
ever will be,
in it.
I hope it’s not ruined.
Whatever we eat from it
has a hint now of chillies, though
less so each time.
At some point
I suppose
we won’t taste them
at all.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

My Soul is a Love Conservation Area

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Thanh Tuyen Le

“My Soul Turns into a Love Reserve” (2015, by the late Poet Ho Anh Tuan)


~~~~~~~~~
“Back to Cat Ba with you
Where the ancients of Cat Co beach held a bathing festival on the full moon night
I stepped on the footsteps of the ancient Vietnamese
I am pure in the midst of pure National Park
We are also a “biosphere conservation area”.
Thousand-year spring conservation area
My soul turns into a love reserve »
~~~~~~~~~
Back to Cat Ba with you
There is a cloud over the primeval times
Turn the golden sand into the mountain chest
There is “coral field” Van Boi
We anchor the boat in the middle of the bay with the sun
***
Back to Cat Ba with you
Meet Sapa Spring
Wandering the misty valley of Tran Chau, Khe Sau, Gia Luan
The sound of the horn and the sound of the waves echoing
Reminiscent of the sound of a H’mong boy’s trumpet
***
Back to Cat Ba with you
Meet the summer of Dalat
Hien Hao valley is full of pine trees
Release love verse to the plateau
***
Back to Cat Ba with you
Meet autumn in Nha Trang
I hear my heart wake up in the wasteland
The gulgula drops its golden voice
Releasing in the sunset afternoon the singing swiftlets
Coming to High Heel Islet missing Husband Islet dearly
Your fallen clog fossilises my heart
***
Back to Cat Ba with you
Where the ancients of Cat Co beach held a bathing festival on the full moon night
I stepped on the footsteps of the ancient Vietnamese
I am pure in the midst of pure National Park
We are also a “biosphere conservation area”.
Thousand-year spring conservation area
Our souls turn into a love reserve”.


Cat Ba National Park, 2015

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

open questions

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Rosie Isaac

The librarian speaks about librarians’
work at the conference table
he lists the ways they know
how to steer
and graze
an archive.

we learn
how to navigate a building with many doors
and get books from Bunnings-sized
storage facilities stacked in regional Victoria.

—

At the dining table reading,
again, hearing the tap in my kitchen
and the tap
in the other toilet drip.

The plumber came, and he fixed the tap in the laundry and the bathroom
but he said the others were shot.

They need to be replaced
he’d call the agent
who’d call the landlord
also called the rental provider
who doesn’t have a mobile phone
and is mostly uncontactable.

So, I can still hear the drip of the shot
tap into a small porridge pan in the sink.

I turn right to
slow the drip
and then left
because the plumber warned
not
too
tight

—

Around the neck
of the head of security
(big, bald and bearded)
hangs a lanyard with a pin attached to it.
The pin is that rainbow amalgam
of pride and trans flags, and
I note its presence
as incongruous and perfect.

He begins his speech
leaning back in his chair
at the conference table,
blue shirt with the top buttons
unbuttoned to loosen
a breath that breathes out
all the time in the world,
distinguishing between beep beep
and whoop whoop
signifiers of alert
and then alarm.

He says make sure to let security know
if you lose your pass
And the control room is always manned
And 2 guards and then
8 guards and patrols all night
and we can walk you to the tram if it’s late.

My lanyard is blue with no pin
it says ‘welcome’
in languages of the city

—

When it stops dripping it makes me nervous, repetitive domestic noise get on my nerves
until it’s gone and then its absence makes you nervous.

—

The crescendo will come
when the head of security indulges in a description
of what to do in case of

It’s never happened but it could

the detail will be luscious and rich

It’s unlikely but I have to tell you

because you never know who is coming through a public entrance.

An image comes to mind of a little library cradled
in the rough hands of the head of security

The guards with pendants around their necks
at the public entrances
can make a decision rapidly
they can pull
their tech necklaces
and all the doors behind them lock,
so,

In the unlikely event

—

I look at the tap and think
about the perfect tension
for preventing droplets
forming because nothing
is more boring than the
DEI module I have to
(must) do for work
The tipping point…Richard from KPMG says that social licence…I look at the tap to check for
a drip

—

Never in all the years I’ve been at the library

His fingers stroke the small dome lightly, like it’s a
kitten separated from its mother too young.

Can’t run? Barricade the door, turn off the lights and close the blinds, pretend not to be there, be
quiet, hide in the corner, wait, if you need to move, he says, stick to the walls and take cover, don’t
make yourself a target, not a big target like a big guy like him, he says, slink, if you have to move, but
don’t move, stay, hide, and never run with glee toward the police, because they might shoot you, he says
they don’t mean it, they are on a mission, he doesn’t say this last bit but this is the gist.

Another gist
the police are benevolent
just like him
the head of security

—

I didn’t know my blood type
so I tried to give
plasma
because that’s what the website said to do
if you don’t know

I like to follow instructions,
do the right thing.

After a long wait and a long interview, the technician hooked me up to the machine, asked me to
shuffle over to the side of the seat, further, yep further, he inserted the needle in a vein in my
right arm, it wasn’t in the centre, which they prefer because it’s more stable, anyway, the blood
refused to flow. I did the exercises as instructed via diagram, but the machine said my blood was
too sluggish, someone senior came to look because now my hand was tingling and she tried
adjusting the needle which she thought was against the wall of the vein, but it bruised, and she
said sorry we are going to have to end the donation

But I hadn’t donated anything

She got me to hold my finger
on a pile of gauze before
she wrapped my arm in a bandage
and said sorry again and the original technician gave me cream for the bruise
and further instruction

—

the bullet points on the small card in
the plastic sleeve read

  • report any suspicious behaviour or incidents
  • beware of tailgaters

the text message
thanked me and
apologised for
the bruise

—

Do the public engagement people
naturally resonate at a high frequency?

The head of security is a bass note
a large drop hitting the full saucepan
I can see he’s worked hard on this hum

I look back at the pin
on the lanyard
that rests on his chest
bobbing
as he chuckles
and we shuffle in chairs
around the table

Swaddling the little library, his palms
like an oyster shell made of flesh

I don’t mean to cause alarm

But!
He is the head of security! And this is the world!
And he has an important job to do!

—

I’d drunk the recommended number
of cups from the dripping tap

a drip rides on the tail
of the previous drip

—

Outside the library
three flags fly
backwards they read

SHRINE

SERVICE LGBTQ+ OF STORIES
PRIDE WITH
DEFENDING

—

Question 3 of 12
in the test section
on open questions

(note: answers are not recorded for this section)

Why do you wear the rainbow lanyard at work?

A. Open
B. Closed

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Later History of the Alphabeticals

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Graeme Miles

Herodes’ son couldn’t learn his alphabet
so the easiest thing was to buy
twenty-four boys his age and rename
each one after a letter. Their story
ends there, as children bought to form
an alphabet chart. Maybe some saved money,
bought their freedom. Zeta became
a wealthy freedman in the imperial bureaucracy.
Or they held reunions, called themselves
the Alphabeticals, lost touch with some
(no trace of Upsilon for years) then aged
and died off: Epsilon too young,
and finally only Mu to remember.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

In the Suburbs

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Dmitry Blizniuk

We live in the suburbs of a concrete paradise,
and this is not a country evening, but an abandoned animal
with eyes all over its gray and brown body.
It blinks, trying to see me better through the knotted, matted hair.
Here, after 9 p.m. the moon is boarded up with yellow planks,
and there is a heavy padlock on the gate to the Milky Way.
A bat gives a squeak: a clock-faced owl
has grabbed the poor one in its claws.
Tiny windows are blind with dirt,
and look like black and white icons with octopuses in them.
Tall weeds grow on the roof, and the porch is
a wooden playpen, two thirds of which are rotten through.
A dog’s barking sinks like a screw bolt in a bottle of
kerosene and purple magic.
Melancholy is like a piece of a polished rail that hangs from a star:
you bang and bang your head against it, but quietly,
without much swishing and swooshing. It’s so good,
it’s so good to live and die
to just live and die quietly,
without actually living or dying,
among the crippled and disappearing wildlife.
Look, here’s a coin, but of what epoch? The dirty tail is unreadable.
What epoch? What empire?
A human life is not much more valuable than a matchbox or a packet of salt.
Burn and cry, slowly, until morning, year after year,
under the shoe-polish-colored sky.
The childhood of the animal has passed here, and here is where it was forgotten.
It was chained to a ship, but both the chain and the ship have turned into dust.
Here is the place where you take off the wig of civilization
from your bald pink brain
and don a nimbus of burs, of sunflowers and sparrows,
and then the animal wakes up. It’s almost blind, it screws up its eyes,
but it recognized you,
and wags the tails of a tractor rut.
It’s dawn with the smell of hay, and motherland, and manure…

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Exhibition

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Aditi Arun

The restitutionist premise, that whatever was made in a country must return to an original
geographical site, would empty both the British Museum and the other great museums of the world.
— The British Museum, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities




References



Museum accession number 1987,0314.1. China & South Asia Collection, The British Museum, online.

“Parthenon: Why the British Museum Cannot and Does Not Want to Lend Its Sculptures of the
Parthenon.”, online , Dr. Robert Anderson, 2003.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Epiphyte

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Elsie Mellor

where bangalow palms and prickly tree ferns began
i remembered you. from the tarmac
to your small yellow car i missed half your words
relearning your strange accent, distracted
by this foreign world we were yet again traversing
of white sand, clear skies and diving pools.
he drove us along roads that wound like racing tracks
drifting from side to side lost and dizzied, you stuck
to my side, then my brother’s, like the same moving being.

a gentle wheeze of nicotine and lavender-rose
escaped the front door and i soon found
the things we had forgotten. floral duvets and photo albums,
two wall clocks set at different times.
the table fans whirring in unison, clapping the blinds
against the windowsill as if to say welcome home.
we took over the couch, four bodies collapsed and moulded in.
you muted the television and told us stories
of violent wars and cobblestoned streets, the ache
in your side when you thought about darwen tower
and the journey across desert and sea.
your cup overflowed with wine
as you shuffled playing cards with newly refilled fingernails,
the red tap-tap on the plastic backs
like a timer counting you down.

after lights out, we lay awake to noises we didn’t know.
our bodies showered in sticky sweat, breathing
the hum of cicadas and the faint smell of sugarcane leaking in
through the fly-screen window. we imagined
human-sized grasshoppers and bunyips in the creek.
you knew, and opened the door before midnight.
leading us outside you pointed to the swell
of cane toads lining the road. we stepped
between them carefully like a delicate game of lava
my brother pretending to be one, his cheeks
expanding and retracting in the humid moonlight.

in the morning you were tired, he took us to the beach.
my brother and i whispered about whether we should call
him grandad as he marched us up the sand dunes and told us
about the ocean and the next landform it would meet.
we found a pufferfish, dead and bloated
just back from the shoreline by a bed of seaweed and foam.
he held us back like it was a crime scene
we looked up at him then, eyes of wonder and intent,
his slightly brimming with salt water. he bent down
in that way old people do when they have stories to tell
and said, ‘let’s go find a big stick.’

you joined us in the rainforest where birdsong felt swollen
with rain. flicking a leech off my leg, you told me
i must taste extra sweet. in a quiet clearing,
you showed us a tree that had been taken over
by ferns. brilliant green roots clasped
onto the furrows of the bark, a tangle of antlers and scars.
it was the most magical thing i had ever seen
where thousands of mosquitos danced in the water
gathered at the bottom of each green nest.
and i wondered how the tree felt about being taken over
by something so foreign. you coughed deeply
when you laughed at our wonder
and held us tight like your two little trees
you, the epiphyte.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Meditation at Max’s

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Denver Ejem Torres

for the Poet from Siasi, Dr. Anthony L. Tan

All new thinking does not involve chickens.
Which really is a big surprise, since chickens are
our favorite sacrificial lambs―their blood takes care
of the spirits that needed to be appeased.
Over a chicken dinner my mind wandered
into the fowl-filled afternoons in Camaman-an.
As expected from a time-traveling mind
which is truly arbitrary, I stand before the Estarte paintings
at Museo de Oro. In one of the paintings,
the Spanish missionaries have just arrived
on the banks of our river. They came
not to eat our chickens, of course (I’m pretty sure
they did eventually) but for something else.
In the other painting, you would not see chickens
but for some reason my mind entered the backyard
and saw the chieftain’s staff chasing chickens.
I came to conclude that special occasions such as, say,
Salangsang’s baptism into Christianity,
a chicken must die. I mean, as in right now, here,
inside The House That Fried Chicken Built,
in my godson’s baptism, chickens die yet again.
The long history of chicken sacrifice makes me wonder
how chicken souls are doing in the afterlife.
Are they fenced in still? Inside some coops, classified
according to their circumstances of death
(the way humans classify their dead—as saints, heroes)?
Or as reward, do they finally roam free
in an endless field littered with heaven-worms,
like true free-range chickens?

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

A Short Time in the Yard

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Michael Riga
‘But the tyranny of low expectations smothered them’ – Stan Grant



The boys ruck below a yellow footy, going at marker’s-up
in front of Mt Baw Baw, a heron’s head that surveys the college in its blue shadow.
The moment’s hero jogs into the goal-square and floats back the ball to them, eye to eye, with the mountain.

Muzak. Lunch over.
A white flock of cockatoos spreads over their school,
First dimpled like a net puffing in the sea-tide, it fans under the sky
as they go to their lockers
under the white flag of your will.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

On Days I Ask Mom to Clean Out My Ears

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Jenny Maaketo
her thigh a pillow / props my temple & neck / my toes tuck / into farthest crevice / my soles rub / the arch of each sunken other / Mom pulls a bobby pin wide / my body a board game she takes out on occasion / it’s as if she’s playing Operation / cautious not to shock / as she tweezers into the opening / of my thinking listening place / diligent not to dig too far in / Mom scoops from me / scoops from me / shows me the specimen of my making / it’s my honey in the light / then she pats—all done / my closest shoulder erupts against her getting up / I wheedle my pretty please / keep going the feeling / she relents / settles back in her seat / she gives me the feeling I ask for / casting again for my amber wax / a warm rush / the sound of a hug / where the wet, red center of my being sits on a lone stool / a tiny version of me in me/ this me closes her eyes/ her head tilts and listens from within / to Mom’s muffled hush hush / as she strokes a hum rushes to my inner ear / she sweeps away our crashing / she sweeps me away from me / she quells the other feeling / she sweeps in a way that sings / she sings a wordless lullaby / to fill & swell / she fills & swells / the empty panic room / made from all her manic absences
Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Lament

Posted on May 15, 2023 by George Freek

I dream I’m a crow,
flying over a field of corn.
But the sound of a rooster
wakens me like a horn.
The morning sun rises
through a fog like tar.
Elm trees regard me
with despair.
Today my vision is bleary.
I drink coffee,
and gaze at a nasty day.
What good to remember
our life together?
You’re gone. Wherever
you are,
you’re far away,
and you’ll stay there forever,

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

I Find the Cosmic Tree

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Luoyang Chen

Through the tunnelling of worms
Rain sweats its fermented gold

Tipsiness kicks in
I am here, next to the Cosmic Tree

On the street, I pick up a bunch of
Geraldton wax, three words in my mind

Recuring: disruptive, child-like, weird
Am I what I thought I would end up

Being? The Cosmic Tree, elongated, has ariel roots
They uplift me to the opposite of cosmos

Where dream becomes reality and time twists
I am back to my pre-primary body at my current age

Riding a giant pelican, or swimming
In the form of a jelly fish, or casting a spell on a willow tree

And always getting lost in the maze of tiles
Being touched by unwanted hands

— the sound of a belt on my flesh, shrieking
— and the sound of rubber slippers, approaching

My father’s body reeks of alcohol
His mother is hit by a car the moment she has

Her psychotic epiphany
But I am seeing her on a tram to Coburg

And yet I am sitting in my mother’s BMW
Vowing to leave her and never come back

I am five, I am ten, I am twenty
I am in China, I am in Australia

“Never forget your roots!”, my mother says
But she doesn’t know that trees migrate, too

Thud

The Cosmic Tree is done with me
I am back on the street

Still sitting, no longer feeling tipsy
But feeling utterly feral, utterly lonely

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Letter to Ba From Ancestral Tomb in Jiangxi Province

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Sophia Zhao

Just as I have confessed to you time after time,
I am not grieving for granite & soil.
Three characters, no epitaph. A century
of mothers & fathers slung across your shoulders &
I am not grieving, because given enough time,
are not all ghosts wished into darkness?
Should their spirits not scatter, set out for dawn?
I can ask you to tell me about strength,
have you nose through the scrapbooks & archives
to wring stories out of scribbles. Right now,
though, it is not enough for me to pull the weeds &
bow again & again at the ground. I have done all I can—
found myself in the mirror, imagined our faces
repeating themselves like a question. For so long
I have trudged & stumbled, dragging my feet
after you. In Jiangxi, the moss grows
from one year into the next—I imagine
it stammers, failing to find warmth from stone,
the shapes of which eventually fall into vanishing point.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

a trip on day soil

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Livio Farallo

the sun’s shoulder is a
graveyard
laughing in tiny bits
of rain. a train, forgetting itself, clatters
and a loud river pays no attention.
i wouldn’t have
walked but there was
no other
way
to smother the barks of startled fields
or
fling the blanket from the wheelchair’s
legs. the salad for lunch was
a
radio full
of static: shingles punched
into
confetti. i remembered an old tarp
in
the garage sagging as if it
had
myasthenia gravis
but useful as a double shot. and
newton,
sweating under shade
in
wig and frills, forgets to eat;
forgets his
gullet is a blunder-
buss
refusing
gravity;
forgets what a pocketful of snakes
will do to anyone’s
weather.

it was as if
the simplicity of wanting gravel
to
resonate
until it crumbled
was like begging soil to turn on its
own.
and hatred sprinkled
on corn muffins
and elevators,
men wearing
ten-gallon hats a
century and a half
ago, gila monsters picking
their teeth with forks. so i

lay down and
pull the desert along,
drop
the cattle skulls.
a pocketful of
silverware
would only scorch
a mountainside
with clouds hopping away,
laughing as children.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

MAD LIBS: insert animal names here, instead

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Grace Liu

and mom, I said —
the (dolphin) at the public pool
stole my first kiss, the grey wet
snout like a gun on my face,
chattering and whistling
in my ear

and mom, I said —
the (hippopotamus) in the library
wanted me to stay, his mouth
gaping, the teeth chipped and strange
and that long flailing tongue
hanging out like a noose

and mom, I said —
the (zebra) on the escalator
in the shopping mall stood striped
and silent behind me,
his bizarre hair bristly and sharp
on my skin

and mom, I said,
I was in primary school when
the teacher brought us to the zoo
and made us learn their names.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Accretion Farming

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Laurence Levy-Atkinson

New Year waves make landfall along the coast
And among the oohs and aahs
From onlookers, it becomes apparent
How many things are made by beating.

Those smooth rocks the kids all
Slip down like slides, are only possible
Because the sea beat the edges
Off them. They were once sharp

Enough to cut glass but
Thousands of years of violence
Will take that from you, no worries there.
Even the cliffs we all perch on

And the mountains high overhead
Wouldn’t be here without some
Malevolence, some angry force that once
Struck the borders of the country

Until they were shaped more appropriately.
It stunned a lot of people at first, to learn
That the world was made the same way;
That great objects beat together

In space, produced all of us.
Perhaps it’s not such a surprise then that
We take to it with such ease. As natural
As sea water down a flat stone.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged

Stick Woman

Posted on May 15, 2023 by Audrey Molloy

In the park next to our block,
on a floor of dry twigs and leaves—
Grace and I, on low striped deckchairs,
a flask of water and some dates between us.
The little ones run rings around the trees.

We are drawing Port Jackson figs, you see.
My daughter says it’s harder than you think
to capture trees, to get them down.
Their bodies don’t have endings, she says—
they’re wrapped around themselves.

That’s the trouble with too few dimensions.
I tell her you can trick the eye: draw the gaps and shadows,
and the tree reveals itself. The artist too—
my fig has buttress roots like dragon’s haunches,
its branches curved and lush as daikon.

The little ones creep up behind us.
We can feel their hot breath.
They steal the dates, gulp the ice water.
My son makes stirrups of his small hands,
helps his sister get a leg-up to the lowest bough.

She scrapes her knee, curls on my lap a while.
Beads of blood appear on her dark under-skin.
I dab them off, streaks of red sap on a tissue.
She takes my charcoal and loose paper,
draws a stick woman and three stick children.

Later, I’ll pin her drawing to the fridge, next to Grace’s,
and my turgid tree. I’ll rinse the lettuce,
top-and-tail the radishes.
I’m no longer lush. I am a stick, a twig,
kindling for their fire.

Posted in 109: NO THEME 12 | Tagged