Journey

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Dylan Foster

If only I was with you
on the way
to the mountain
to find a rowan tree

with its ripe
red berries
standing on its own
near the stream.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

2 Kilometer Confession in Manila Baywalk

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Benj Gabun Sumabat
I am not from Manila. I could not navigate the streets like you draw them on the back of a receipt while we wait for the microwavable sisig in 7-Eleven. I pin my location and pin the destination. Sometimes, I yield to the illusion of a one-way route, of something that can be determined and predicted. The city is kind in the afternoons; this baywalk stretches into a sight. On the sides, people were watching the sun set. From this position, the artificial white sand is a spread, but from a high-rise view, it’s just a portion of what we thought. In Tacloban City, I rode a jeep and a van with just a few Binisaya words in hand. “Gamay,” I lied when they asked me if I could speak or understand Binisaya. Then they proceeded to talk to me in Filipino. In Ilocos, I spoke Ilokano and they responded to me in Filipino. There were other words you taught me, yet I am scared to say them to strangers. While walking, I slip into my typical Ilokano “ngarud,” and you ask me what it means. Before even explaining, I said “sorry” for speaking a language you don’t understand. I could not explain. “An expression,” I slide with a smile. You proceeded to say that your maternal grandmother is Ilokano; I said that my maternal great-grandfather is Bisaya. Perhaps, this is how we stretch and find common ground. This is how our tongues splinter into difference yet branch out for a trail. This is how we confess to each other. My problem is that this city takes so much and gives so little to me. I want to see you, without language, and understand your impulses and frailties. Bite your lips. Coil your pinky to mine. Trace me with your lingering eyes. Own me and all these things that are lost in tongues, and make me feel that I belong, for once, without explanation, without the need to translate.
Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

An Imperfect Lawn

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Ion Corcos

It is late afternoon: an inclined shed against your fence,
bay window opening to an immaculate lawn,
the lampshade in your kitchen beside a lonely pantry.
We take a walk in the shadow of an Atlantic storm;
you face elsewhere: to the improbable, the clock,
always turning to a seesaw, the park bench an anathema:

it’s for old cinders, you say, and drunks (or the assimilated –
as if all difference can be sieved out, unless, of course,
it’s put through acid or diluted on an ingredients label.)
In shadow, it’s about indifference, the unreluctant quiet;
not the way a yellow leaf falls upon another leaf.
We carry on through the first drops of rain,

and, instead of naming, I persevere; and before long, resolute,
I see the lawn imperfect, the shed restored, a swallow
sweep into the disappearing sky.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Because I’m in the business of making images,

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Daryl Qilin Yam
  1. I’ve been taking these 15-second videos of things and places where a picture would normally suffice. In one example, I’m on the roof of a museum in Kanazawa, where an artist collective has installed a screen: blackbirds drift by, in both the film and the sky. But I can’t leave out the two people standing before me, taking it all in, as though on my behalf. Their enthralment is as good as mine.
  2. In the business of making images we published a chapbook of poetry by a 27-year-old author who died a month prior. I cried at the conference call, about a minute after my boss had broken the news over my softening brain, and then cried, multiple times, at the bookstore that hosted the launch.
  3. I’m crying? In a bookstore? A facsimile of another bookstore that died, by the way. I shan’t explain it here.
  4. I say “business” cos, at the award ceremony, my mother told the president of our nation that she hopes my work will continue to have “economic value” (everyone laughed), and also cos, at the end of said interaction, the president’s wife pondered on the connection between my profession and my partner’s (he’s in radiology) and I responded: “We both deal with images.”
  5. I was so witty!! I claim it!!!
  6. Also: there are the images we make in our minds and the images we make with our machines, and it’s taking everything I’ve got to remember that there’s people that are dying, Kim.
  7. Another example of a 15-second video: one I took yesterday, when I found myself by the promenade of the Rochor Canal, when I realised it was easier to walk to the office than take the train from where I was window-shopping. The world appeared to reward me for my decision: I loved the image it made on the surface of the water, the tops of the trees and the yellow-blue troposphere shimmering in bands; everything looked quiet, but also on fire. There were some cars moving imperceptibly, over a faraway road built over the canal, when a crow flew by! right in front of my camera! One blackbird / after another.
  8. So we were determined to publish two chapbooks, one by Adeline, and one by nor. In the business of making images, the chapbooks were anti-profit endeavours, at least according to our costing sheets, which meant that we had to strategise: our chapbooks had to be conceptual and clear, quick to grasp and enticing to our customers; they had to be pretty, and released in time for the holidays, so that they could be LESS SING LIT and more OBJET D’ART. We had PLANS. To quote my colleague on the aforementioned conference call: “I just spoke to her a week ago.”
  9. Two weeks after she died, at a dinner party over Diwali: “I feel almost bad saying this, Daryl, but when I first heard about her death, I thought: her book’s gonna sell.”
  10. Instagram reviews of our chapbooks are quick to emerge: Cherry loves Adeline; @radha_reads loves nor. When nor, the chapbook author that’s gratefully still alive, tags me on an Instagram post about how wonderful it is to launch two books in a calendar year, I comment <3 <3 because I have no words, and because I first learnt virtual communication via MSN Messenger. And let me inform you, dear readers / you heard it here first: the foremost image-makers of my generation are using 🫀 in place of ❤️.
  11. How fucked is it that I, a writer of prose, still gets to write this still-ongoing poem? All while Adeline’s dead.
  12. In a 15-second video that I love, one of the first I ever started taking on my phone: dark, all dark, aside for the shining bulb of a streetlamp; a light rain’s a-fallin’, snow-like beneath the lamplight. But music’s leaking out from my headphones, for which I was once chided for in the library, but really, whatever, cos now this tableau has a score. And it’s Rhianna! And she’s asking the world, ad nauseam, oh what it’s willing to do, oh oh.
  13. In another 15-second video that I took recently: I’m in Karuizawa, by the side of a narrow road in the late-November dark, and the cars keep whizzing by in passing phwoars; amidst the barren trees, a road sign declares: 6日間で / 3件の / 死亡事故. Daryl! Daryl: there’s people that are dying, Daryl, and there are people that are going to die.
  14. An evening stained
    by the staying of an afternoon.
    It had rained
    or perhaps, it was about to rain

    judging from the swell
    of this canal.
    There was a blackbird on a bin
    and I winked 🫀

Blackbird flying over cityscape
Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Pink well

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Tess Ridgway

I work to care for myself, I put my pillows in the sun to air
& daylight dead skin, I escort spiders outside in a jar
I shell out a little trauma

In a floating room I sit in a blue armchair to voice things I wish not name
that night my dreams make it mincemeat in a wound, a fistula in a cow’s side
blue cheese forgotten in an eroded cavity in my thigh

Shame cut a neat hole an acid drop through my palm
a seared pink well, I allow salt water to pass
to fill to empty

I work to make my body safe
mid-morning sun is good for bipolar depression
I cop the sun, face skyward, eyes closed
until my mind’s painted white

I’m a garden, a breathing mess
a good gardener makes notes
tend observe report

I am fruit trees
I bear figs settled jammy implosions

I am basil leaves
curved green shoes

I am lavender
frilly question mark petals

My leaves are soft, if not to touch
then to look upon
My leaves speak the wind’s chaos
sand poured over my shin

I have roots
white sinews whisper to microbes
sprawling a whale’s skeleton
there is a silent magic down there
in the loam, in the dark

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

(un)#fitspo

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Kate Larsen 


Fit is not a destination.
It’s a way of life.
Shredded.

I am strong.
I am powerful.
I am climbing to the top.

Working my life
around my workouts.
I am my own fitspiration.

Hashtag self-motivated.
Get up and get it done.
Check out my bikini body.

Self-made gym girl. 
Healthy choices.
Selfie queen.

The only disability in life 
is a bad attitude.
Hashtag truth.

Had to share.
Raised a sweat
getting that fitspo.

My feet 
were off the ground.
Hashtag proud.









Cheese is not a destination.
It’s a way of life.
Shredded.

I am sore.
I am hungover.
I am 125 bucks a month in gym fees I don’t use.

Wearing my active wear
out on my sofa.
I am my own best excuses.

Hashtag un-motivated.
Roll over and go back to sleep.
Check out my Bellini body.

Self-serve gin girl.
Tasty choices.
Dairy Queen.

The only disability in life
are the structural and systemic barriers
that restrict people from participating in society.

Had to share.
Almost raised a sweat
getting that photo.

My feet
weren’t even in my shoes.
Hashtag I tricked you.





Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Idylls of Drought

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Nick Rattner

If you asked me where you really were
what would you say if you were me.

You know the rusted oil cans and glass
bottles down inside their long gone fizz.

You lifted broken dinner plates in the hedge row
like smiles after their face disappeared.

You keep going with no point to turn back from,
no past or future to stake a claim.

You knew no point but to make the other laugh
and all that gone you knew it best

to leave this country.

*

Our dog crosses the west field
without lifting his eyes.
He finds the scent of a shampoo
you used as soap left probably
as you let your hand trail
in the buckthorn husks. I want
to say you smelled like fields
blown into a room but find
the room empty. The dog walks in,
his honey skin covered in burrs.
If he remembers anything
I imagine it’s how you’d rest your hand
on the gnarled table of his head.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Journeyman

Posted on February 12, 2026 by James Lucas

All the time he’s ripping open
motel room coffee sachets
and cajoling stubborn kettles
into ensuite sinks
and each time he pays double
tournament rates
for a room in Bathurst
and through all the hours
driving tolled ringroads
with a sunrise-sullen
ear-budded passenger
and throughout the pre-season
10-nil thumping
from the leggy assassins
who play one division up
and even as he’s massaging
a budget overstretched
to the development tour
two weeks in Spain
and each time he’s harassed
by silence on the sidelines signs
or hobbled by pre-season
signed undertakings
of parental non-interference
designed to discomfort
him leaning over
advert-plastered hoardings
to deliver the individualised
second-half game plan
there’s always this feeling
he’s looking down a tunnel
to a post-match interview
with someone else’s daughter
expressing gratitude
for her parents’ years of sacrifice.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Alpha-Power

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Rozanna Lilley

Be a He-Man!

ENHANCE YOUR
FEMININE
APPEAL


Add to your

H

E

I

G

H

T






Become the master
of your mind and body
no diet, medicine
or drugs required

Fill in those awkward
moments at parties with
these cream-of-the-pack effects
learn to deal pre-determined hands

Build ships in bottles
(costing only pence they sell for pounds)
grow dwarf trees bearing
miniature blossoms & fruit

Re-silver looking-glasses
be a ventriloquist
entertain everyone
complete Know-How for 10/6

If the postman can reach you
Alpha can teach you







You may COME AND GET IT
WRITE a letter or simply
TEAR out this page



Note: Alpha-power was a company, based in Sydney, which advertised mail-order self-improvement courses in popular magazine PIX.
The text of this found poem is from PIX 8 August 1953 with Bookman Old Style font used as a close approximation of the font used in the
original advertisement. Digital and hard copies of the magazine are held by Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy
ACP Magazines Ltd.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Gusts

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Craig White

Shelf Camp, Mount Anne
He tosses you a silver hip flask:
Drambuie warms your cockles.
The slew of Milky Way inches overhead —
static cracklings in a vaulted otherness
as seas plumb down, down.
Sharp-edged stars quiver.
A sailor’s eye (his hand like a sextant), charts
celestial objects and their pinch-pull currents.
You are miniscule and light.


~
Wear and tear made an absence of you last year
among mountains, plateaux, and saddles,
~


Copper Cove
Your shirt is a spinnaker come loose,
your hat blows up like a pulled lip.
You kneel to small wonders:
a crescent shell, purple-shaded,
fading to egg yolk — a week-old corky,
and here an ossified tree limb with a crook —
a bent and scabrous knee,
and there — baby sea spurges.


~
forests and button grass plains, lakes and coasts.
~


Summit, Mount Geryon South
Perched on a dolerite column,
fine-grained dark grey,
scuff-marked with lichen,
legs dangling and stubble-jawed,
you behold
a rookery run wild.1


~
Your memories’ leavings of these places
~


Lake Elysia
Afternoon light tightens:
a piece of glass held to the sun
kindles Mount Geryron’s flanks.
Breeze agitates the negative:
spires and hung-bellied clouds tremble,
crack of blue (a ruffled sea),
gnarled pencil pines and crinkle-cut-leafed
Nothofagus gunnii —
lake’s edge woodblock prints.


~
you love, buffet you, drawing open
~


Archers Knob
You clomp across the bridge with its wire mesh,
tapping a ball pein hammer on a sheet of tin.
Grendel backwater lips between the treads.
Spindly melaleucas lean and loiter:
old men getting under the feet of old women.
Their flaky paperbark canoes drift and spin.
Obscured by the paperbark forest, ducks, herons,
bitterns and grebes, each a musical note.
In coastal wattle and amongst leaf litter,
birds flit and dart and sing.
A wattlebird warbles a gargle and cough.
Three yellow-tipped black cockatoos
sharp-beak seed-laden banksia cones,2
alight and criss-cross each other’s flight paths —
flock into the loose wholeness of a jazz combo.
All along the trail the hopeful auditions of frogs
are the waterdrop sounds of flicking
a finger at your hollowed cheek.


~


the shining fastening of Aeolus’ oxhide bag.



Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Freight

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Wes Lee

i.
A man nodding on the bus, tired from keeping everyone
else alive. Trundled five nights home.

ii.
Balloon men spiking like lunatics in the forecourts.
Rain spatter on the windshield.
At 20 km/h, these are the places for visitations.

iii.
‘Let’s get rid of this,’ he said as he touched the clear
hospital wristband, slowly pulled my arm to its length.
Snipped that which had grown under my skin.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Bangka → Australia

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Josephine Shevchenko

No Tom Toms in the 70s, growing up
was knowledge acquired like palm
trees, tall as the rain. At six I cracked my forehead
on a kombi’s bench ftch ftch ftch ftch, forming
a new topography a nurse’s sickle and a zip-shut
line. On my map road tar bubbled like tiny lungs
and the kitchen steamed words like ‘campur’ and
‘menggabung’ Who am I now? Ubud aged 9 buying
a Kylie Minogue cassette. Name on a map, geography
unknown. My walkman singing “ooooh
locomotion”. And then economics reared
like a newly woken volcano and kabumi!
My Earth shook, latitude and longitude split from eye
to tongue. Yana’s flat, cane basket tossed peanut shells to
the breeze and the papaya tree lost its head. My artless brain supposed itself enough.
We moved to Australia ‘for good’; weatherboard & horse dirt, brown crescent fingernails
I hid beneath my desk. A new map with white-washed school-yard and taunts
I didn’t understand. Who am I now? Grammar School gorilla girl,
compass-less and shrunk like an ant without a line. ‘You’re so ugly!’
in a boy’s spittle, ‘Too poor to get a TV’ in pulled hair: My classmates
marked me like cartographers I learned to walk without myself wearing my
leg hair like indifference. Down the road, between an iris’ purple lips. A
bee is sucked in, a creature sure of entry and a koel cries again and again. “Are you?
Are you?” My only friend is marked too: eczema wounds like blood-countries on band-
ages, eyes like orbits in depth-of-sadness brown. “You collect lame ducks,” said a teacher,
but I was one too. I’d learned that Kylie wasn’t cool
but failed to learn what was. We didn’t do
cool in the tropics

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

prayer (xxxviii)

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Jonathan Chan

Melbourne, Australia

after Nam Le and Gang of Youths

over the undulating roads and
the graffiti lined alleys i asked if
the concrete is as alien to the land
as the land is to the nation, statues
on horseback imposing over the
blooming gardens, marble grounds
the shrine to sacrifice, a facsimile
of the parthenon, engraved with
traumas of the pacific theatre:
Malaya on one column, Korea
on the other. in a corner
of the city the brokers describe
the ephemera of the spiralling
patterns, the seven sisters and
the dots, the animal footprints and
bushfruit. the nations within,
beside, against the nation,
acknowledgment without
reclamation. jangling guitars
ring and ring, the aching voice
resisting resignation. how silence
will not fall in the shadow
of regret. how hurt will not deplete
a willingness to try. how everything
contends to keep the heart tender
and strong.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Not Enough

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Brant Angelo S. Ambes

For so delicate, we carry 270
bones. For so mighty, we lose
64 bones. A bone fits inside
a dog’s mouth. A dog’s mouth

fits in a fresh meat. We grieve
over what’s fresh, for who wants
a cold body? A body fits inside
a plane. You sleep to kill time.

Can you kill something not
alive but beats fervently? Time
gives way to unearthing, the
cage rattling open. A cage

can fit a bird; the bird fits in
a cage. Why will you escape
when there is a hand that feeds
you? The problem with

confinement is being fine. What
I would give to fit in this world.
The world fits inside me. Swells
in my palm. Carry boulders in

outer space. You cannot say it’s
heavy if there is no gravity. Why
does the plane resist the crash?
What else can fit in this lifeless

bird if not bottles, and what else
can fit in bottles except your laugh?
Your laugh can fit inside me. I can
fit inside you. You can fit all of me.

A poem fits in my fingers. Can I
fit you in one? I have returned
from the land swallowed in flood.
My hands can’t fit water in them,

but they fit in my chest. Your heart
fits in your chest. Dogs bite bones
when they grieve for fresh meat.
The bird took flight and did not

look back. I drank your laugh,
smashed the bottles, shards deep
in my skin. My wings strained
on the weight of your heart.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

What the shadows told me

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Micaela Sahhar

(for Ellen and Abdullah,
after إميل حبيبي and واصف جوهرية)

As it is written, they had become
bigger than the plane of Akka

for (in the sinking sun) they merged
with their own shadows. Of whom

Habiby writes, perhaps it was a portrait
of the poet as a young Palestinian, holding

his mother’s hand. On one precise day,
anno domini and a late Autumn Monday

the great diarist and oud player left the stone
walls of his temporary shelter, exchanging

monastic sanctuary for a life of vagrancy.
But unable to bear it he afterwards left

entirely while the shape of him remained, to range
between his Jerusalem home and Jericho

(first place of exile). To reason with it was
to know : the inscription of gone things

need no reminders. Within the border
of a photograph, six by nine centimetres

(though likely conceived in inches) I finally see
two more dark lines beside my little father’s. In

Amman, coaxing their smallest one to face a light
they bent across their bodies in late sun, which

joined the poet of Al-Bira, and his mother, growing ever
vaster. Around this time our lives (Darwish, Sahhar

and Jawhariyyeh) were indistinguishable. But
since the discovery was made only recently

what the shadows told me was an answer
to the question Habiby poses on page sixteen

(of several editions) that to the contrary we
will never disappear.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Thanks for the Opportunity

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Adam Ford

I’m trying to work out how you’re supposed
to reconcile your career path with the doors
people close on you. I’m trying to be polite and
professional in the face of professional, polite

and impersonal rejection. OK, well, thanks I say,
thanks for considering me, have a great day,
thanks for the opportunity. Thanks for all those
learnings and discoveries. Thanks for the brand

new no thanks to add to the collection I shuffle
like worry beads while trying to find the balance
between just being myself and being the me you
hypothetically might have wanted if you hadn’t

had to make such a difficult choice. Maybe if I had
smiled more. Maybe if I’d talked less or rehearsed
my answers one more time. Maybe if I’d set up in
front of the bookshelf or used the blur filter instead.

Maybe if I’d paid that hundred to that interview
coaching agency. Maybe if I’d clicked more hearts
on old bosses’ posts or signed up for premium.
Maybe if I did the vacuuming when I said I would.

Maybe if I left less mess on our cookbook pages.
Maybe if I was a more attentive son and brother.
Mean old Mister Meritocracy drops me a DM to
tell me that bad things only happen to you know

who and reminds me what it means when you
don’t get what you think you deserve. And I say
maybe life sucks or maybe I do, either way I did
what I did and they did what they did and now I

have a what next to come up with. It’s not you it’s
us and It’s not us it’s you are both equal to No, and
our lives go on, some with and some without me.
Would have been good, hey? Oh, well. Moving on.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Meniscus

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Rachael Wenona Guy

We who live in the fissures between
smooth monoliths of acceptability
find no easy peace.

Doesn’t grass sway predominately in one direction?
Don’t murmurations thread across the sky
twisting and pulling into skeins of consensus?

If society were a vessel we would be the crazing in its glaze
speckle in the celadon hairline crack blemish –
all things of beauty and fascination
nonetheless.

If humans were follicles on the vast scalp of the earth
brushed smooth by the comb of averages –
we would be kink cowlick stray lock.

If I were dog I’d be lean and hungry scavenging
at the edges of a cantankerous pack.

If I were fish suspended below the meniscus between
embrace and exile I’d patiently wait lipping at morsels
as they drift by.

No. That’s not quite what I’m thinking –

I’m picturing a vast ballroom, the synchronised turn and sweep of the dancers
who comprehend the dance. I’m picturing the lone body who’s failed
at the choreography and is spinning in an idiosyncratic dervish of their own –
Spinning, spinning in a pool of light
attuned to a different
kind of music.
That’s all.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

The neighbourhood of Little Looking

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Kendrea Rhodes

The paradox of laughing wings, glinting in shadows and corners,
silhouettes in mirrors not telling anymore (they made stuff up).
Patterns everywhere.
Waves of vanishings and everyday houses,
everyday adults gliding glorious mowers
over evergreen grasses. Our neighbours
on the corner, kings of the court and nothing to hide, see
their grand wall-windows and double trilling doorbell. A vow: never
press that bell, not even if dared. But odd days arose,
a robin darted to my side of the fence saying
it would go to the shops (they made stuff up). We’d talk and play. I was young to hear about
patterns. Sleeping beauty and the sovereign prince. Suburban stories, particles glimmering
in sunlight, scoured dutifully, daily. A Disney tale, catlike in a quantum way: alive, dead,
alive, dead. And the robin flitting over my fence, spinning in a kaleidoscope of whisperings
(they made stuff up). Together we traced the cat’s movements, the drop of its shoulders,
coil of its haunches, twitch of its tail. And then. The long summer. A dead cat
when distracted and the robin alive. We laughed and danced, and the fence stood strong. We
ribboned off rainbows, singing to the sky for sanctuary—until the season of leaving Little Looking.
Until siblings flew further than fences (they made stuff up). The cat,
alive, repeating patterns. Patterns unsettled only if
seen. We saw
too late. We.
made. stuff. up.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Atlas

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Emma Ashmere

Only a long neck they said, born with or did it grow bend as she squinted north over sea sky pews perms fences maps expectations, and like the poet of the pearl-wearing era whose bare neck needed London advice she’ll find her own London dripping into an unheated typing pool, the ailing empire engine, musica industria, numb-handedly hammering acrostic bills, iambic inadequacies, receipts for nozzles, flanges, diaphragms, female-male plumbing attachments, the ha ha vocabulary of joinery, haven’t you got a boyfriend yet, dawn as drunk as dark as dusk, temp confidentialities, long necks like yours need 1980s pearl-equivalents, yes but what about swans, a boa of their own, black swans cutting diamonds through locked Mayfair ponds, the smell of another river where the murder was, her schoolgirl shout easy-oar or easy-all or easy-awe, plausibility is everything, she’s short enough scrawny enough as the oarless fifth to the four-part rhythm of muscle, limb, rudder-string, wood, water, gunwale, brass, blade, slide, feathering, is this belonging, her swerve around a floating blue-faced possum and Popeye the tourist boat wins a race apparently, winning means being thrown in, but the neck brace, unlike movies you can’t look up or down or left or right or back, it’s there where their oars drip, their landing leaving place, heaving up the wooden tub, the boys get leaner lighter sculls, diamond water dripping where blood was, reenacted, cop as actor extra audience, the drowning of, the dragging in, her feet stuck with blonde grass, the sweat-halo of stroke, bow, two, three, sliding towards her back again, peering over them, through them, she loved some of them, murder happens to wrong joinery, she’ll fly north young, return with a string of jet at her neck, the line between before and after, the accident we never talked about, at last the MRI, two effacements, blockages, C1 C3, proof part-architectural, part-redirection, her atlas rearranged.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Housewife’s Prayer

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Basudhara Roy

Let me be tight
small
so dispensable
that when my own name is called
let me not be considered.

Let me keep less
so that it is easier to dust
and let my life be plain
patterns proving perennially
difficult to clean.

Let me not be white
so that I can be run
with coloured laundry.
Let me also be wrinkle-free and spared
the irony of the ironing board.

Let me be edible in all seasons
non-allergenic, lean, palatable to all.
Let me contain more dietary fibres
no cholesterol
my broth only mildly sweet.

Let me come
with no warning.
Let me not need refrigeration
or gentle-handling.
Let my packaging be strong.

Above all, let me be well-labelled
and have a short expiry.
Between
manufacture and best-consumed
the period not long.

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Geebung

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Barrina South

bruised purple clouds
find each other
on the evening storm
riding down the last of the light

bracken ferns hold
droplets
The Poet’s Wife
intoxicating with fragrance

joining the orchestra of poets
sitting in zazen
soaking scarred ankles
in the dam

I wonder
Do I fit in?
Do my words reveal?
Do my words work?

mook mook, calls
full moon to rise
lichen tea had a peculiar taste
I can’t quite remember the night

dawn, awake
a black feather
beside my head
at my feet, a broken vase

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Pacific American Anxiety Gallery

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Jeric Smith

after Rigoberto González

PORTRAIT ONE: SOLDIERS’ RETURN

On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, Japanese soldiers and Charlie Smith walked through
Dense jungle together
On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, Japanese soldiers killed Charles Smith
Buried him and others on Police Hill
On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, Japanese soldiers executed the Englishman
Paces past desperation ravine
When you expect a landing to be made by the enemy, dispose of the prisoners in a hurry
So the Japanese soldiers revisited the site of execution to dig up prior bodies
On or about 29 December 1944, Palau, an Englishman by the name of Charles “Charlie”
Smith, alias “James” was not a prisoner of war by nature
Charlie or James or Jesuit missionaries or the Untalan-Hondonero family
should not have been prisoners of war
On or about 29 December 1944, Who is war?
Japanese soldiers cremate the bones and rebury them in a single hole

PORTRAIT TWO: ISLANDERS EXTINGUISHING FIRES

Emergent fires suppressant contaminants
Deployment systems recall crash dummies
Young boy hands young girl hydrogen atoms replaced by toxic fluorine
The palm tree rhinoceros beetle-infested fires upending its uses and myths
Young girl catches fire on thighs of young boy
Decimated ecosystems kingfishers mated in captivity
Young girl touches young boy’s burning back creates limestone breccia
Young girl spits in hands brushes through young brother’s flaming hair
And kelps and sea forests sway in de-oxygenating currents
Young brother hands young sister his eyes blurred with neoplasms and lymphomas
Young sister throws into the ocean their diseased gaze drifting so far they are now
What we call horizon the farthest diasporas
Their hands holding nowhere without fires
Their bodies archipelagos radiant jungle heat

PORTRAIT THREE: RITA BORGIA SMITH ON PAPER

I find the name of his lover, Rita Borgia Smith, my great-grandmother,
In a report, an analysis to support an official recovery operation,
Non-confidential version
Great-grandma Rita, sneaked food to her husband, Charlie, while he was in captivity.
She traveled through the jungles without being detected at least three times.
She gave birth at least three times. Their children: David 18, Elena 15, and Henry 1
When Charlie was hidden in the jungle of Palau
Bullet residue on paper, 87 pebbles on Philippine beach, saltwater crocodile skin moccasins
Worn on invaders’ feet
Pixels on screen, BDUs on American soldier backs as anchors dredge native mangrove fauna
Into capacious silt
Rita dreams in uprising of silt her youngest child gnawing sweat-saturated cloth
clinging to her body
Rita feeds Charlie prayers of wild orchids and bush warblers and morningbirds

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

Consulting

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Tim Loveday

we needed a consultation session to agree to future consultation sessions; no one could quite agree on who should be consulted; the issue was too loaded an issue; we needed to unload; we needed to reconsider our loading; this brought into question the concept of we; the easiest answer was a piss-take; would some time in France exceed our expectations; who could afford that; a we then was problematic; compress the zip; we staked our claims on stake holders instead; the barbeque joint was sure to isolate; we isolated some holdings; a carving knife; a tuning fork; we tuned our attention to simple solutions; blood let & porterhouse; consult the consultation with; did this sound threatening; we met them in the bathroom for a piss-take; we wanted the motivation of fear not the fear of motivation; we followed the meeting with a movie; we went and saw a movie; no one remembers what it was; not about but a boat; what motive there was for the movie; it moved us into seeing; seaside; this state was stateless; into another state of being; not interstate; state your intentions; we housed you; we were blindsided & bereft; we were porter; we needed a game plan; we planned a game that might draw out a drawing; this would reveal itself; pictionary; we were drawing answers on butcher’s paper; the butchers were not happy about this; they did not want to be drawn on anything; the paper had to go; there was two sides to every one paper; we targeted box-making; free juice boxes; we practised targeting real problems; we looked outside of ourselves; this hurt our eyes; some real people showed us some reals; we wanted to zoom in on what needed to change without the loaded-ness of zooming; too quick; change had to happen slowly; the zoom was not loading; we felt tense; we were stuck in a particular tense; this mode of thinking was incompatible with a mood of consultation; we are expectant; consultation requires precision of time & effect; we affected a mood; we can’t agree on that; we debate the preposition & the conjunction; some take issue with what’s been issued previously; the past they call it; the previously gone & done with; the previous issue; we’re not responsible; we bring in a consultant; shake hands; these palms are as wet as an icy road; this cold & icy interaction concludes things; they regard this as redundancy; they kind regards our email; we hope for all the best; it is a slippery affair & they tell us as much; we hear mulch so touch grass; this is touching; it is much more mulch so we pursue other reserves; we are open; we organise a field trip to out in the open; sunlight is the best disinfectant; we want it regulated; relegate; disinfect the best sunlight; we time our entry; we question the validity of this finding having found a dead foundling; the foundling findings are foundation-less; the toxicology report indicates the presence of a report on a toxic ecology; don’t report this; how to dispense of the foundling then; we are skewered on this issue; we skewer left; we skewer right; we’re skewering the foundling; we aren’t against this sort of waste; we are against it; we don’t want to waste time; time is timeless; don’t get ahead of yourself; that’s wasting away our future; you seem tense; no that’s present; do yourself a favour; present the present to yourself; we can’t agree to that; what to do about the past imperfect; that’s already happened; that’s happenstance; no happenstanced; quit droning on about it; it being that other thing; that drone; that other way of being;

meanwhile a children’s hospital collapses;

Posted in 119: FIT | Tagged

The Nativity

Posted on February 12, 2026 by Alpine Moldez

Dinner is early tonight because of the Mass we’ll hear at dawn.
We must eat and sleep at once if we plan to wake early at dawn.

I crushed some garlic: cloves as pungent as the whispers of our shame.
You poured soy sauce into a bowl. Dark, opaque like the skies at dawn.

I sprinkled some salt and laid some bay leaves; gentle, as in prayer.
As in the mercy that once descended on a manger at dawn.

You then sautéed the pork tenders with pepper, ginger, and the rest.
The oil spits were sharp, but they delivered. Like rosy rays at dawn.

Palm vinegar stings, so it comes in last. Assaulting, but needed.
Its sweetness lingers once the sourness is steamed, revolting at dawn.

Our adobo simmers. There is a child taking shape in the pot.
Like hope conceived in silence but born with chuckles common at dawn.

Not all rooms are ready to take us in, like Joseph and Mary.
This Airbnb is our stable, our home till the Mass at dawn.

Outside, streets smell of burnt bibingka and nutty puto bumbong.
Inside, we pass the rice: fragrant and sticky like dewdrops at dawn.

We hum in the steam of adobo with rice—two people, happy—
feasting on their own secret Noche Buena, ready for dawn.

Love, your name is the Mass I get up for, my prayer without shame.
I sign it with steam and salt, like adobo glittering by dawn.

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