OCEAN–BLIND

A collective for young writers from the Asian diaspora.

[thiswinterheart]

9/26 weeks; endless journeyers. “The end is where we start from.” - Eliot (Little Gidding).  

[thiswinterheart]

11/26 weeks; in the event of its coming. Let the record show that I never claimed to be a good writer-person.

[thiswinterheart]

3/26 weeks; goodbye, in human years.

[soracities]

Natalie Wee, from ‘Least of All’, Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines

[ithelpstodream]

Meet Miss Sherlock and Miss Wato:

Created by Hulu Japan and HBO Asia, “Miss Sherlock” will have 8 parts and is set in modern-day Tokyo, Japan. Sherlock / Sara Shelly Futaba will be played by Yuko Takeuchi while Dr Watson / Dr Wato Tachibana is played by Shihori Kanjiya.

http://www.yomyomf.com/the-reboot-of-sherlock-will-see-women-leads-and-they-are-both-asian/

[soracities]

God does not live / in church. She made you her kingdom. Of course / she lives in you

Natalie Wee, from ‘Jesus Takes Me to Bed’, Our Bodies & Other Fine Machines (via natalieweepoetry)

[jupiterreed]

I no longer chase sleep. I’ll have another night out on the town. Ankles shipwrecked, upsetting stars, brain etching pale whites. I catch a glimpse of your shoulder blade on the water, but it always dries up before I can muster a sip. When the sun scabs, I’ll pilfer the skin  that falls away, and you’ll cut the moon out of your stomach. We’ll call it a Tuesday evening and I won’t forget—living is terror. We bathe in it. The church sounds. Breath. Holy, uneven. The metallic shadow of the city: cold rain and hands that find the places  where we deposit our mouths. Extract the blood, the honeysuckle. Your knuckles against  my jaw like a second pair of teeth. I'm gone, partially. Tonight we’ll be dangerous and fluorescent. The serrated lilt of a butcher knife. The light at the bottom of the stairwell with no traceable source.  Wings burned into spines. Half a hidden planet, (your body) under flame. Somewhere. Plainly as this, I will admit, my lover is still asleep  on the kitchen floor.

do you think we’re the victims of this story? || j.r  (via jupiterreed)

[magpiedreams-deactivated2018041]

oh, grant me the vision. envision me on my knees begging for what i already have. blind as night, i follow roads that have been walked. ignore the footsteps. find solace in waywardness. at least i am lost and have nothing. at least i am lost but cannot lose. now rain, rendering dirt road mud. and i am kneeling in water, well-worn. weary, worried, wanting. at the crossroads, wanted. at the crossroads, haunted by what was always waiting. sweet stream, wash the dust from my eyes. i have not seen, but i have known enough to stand up again.

– magpiedreams

[magpiedreams-deactivated2018041]

you want love but not enough to die for it. you want the hand in yours but not the tug. you want the promises but not the sacrifice. you want the beauty but not the disadvantage. you want the movement but not the blind spots. 

to be unbound. exiled from the produce aisle, untethered from the city limits, chasing light and headaches. to run until your white canvas payless shoes are worn through and the road is aching from it. 

something beyond symmetrical streets and faded billboards and a small sun that sets early and rises in muted red. something terrifying, so that bravery is handed to you harshly. 

this, your declaration. this, your selfish articulation. this, a list gathering dust somewhere where desire can be ordered differently. this, a confession that may not be true after all.

[jupiterreed]

i always sink faster than u

fifth grade summer & the fields are hazy with rain & you don’t tell your friends that we hangout but it’s ok because Christina says that when we graduate—none of this will matter at all & everything good is happening to someone else anyway. so ok, maybe it doesn’t mean anything when the pretty girls tell me nobody will ever ask me out & i spend another lunch break in a bathroom stall sharing daffodil tears with an imaginary acquaintance. i still dunno if it’s normal, feeling this dying flame interference, victim to the wind. and Christina & i will be in seperate classes next year, & you’re moving town. shifting to someplace with a bay & the star-trimmed impression of a city. seems like everyone’s got somewhere to go but me. i miss the shelter of shoulders, having the privilege of hands that do not tremble at the mere mundanity of touch. the cutting crew’s singing about dying in someone’s arms again & i think about how, i wanna feel that way too. someday, maybe. hopelessly. tremendously. the music turns a corner & rips the hem of my t-shirt & i fall asleep to radio gloom. (again, angel-head. pounding stethoscope-brain. the autopsies of eyes parceled like salt clinging to the rim of a cocktail glass) 

j.r

[thiswinterheart]

Will things be okay? (Question/poem game)

If we lined up all our nightmares          (the insidious the cold - the wranglers)Well, would they spell out          A curse?

I’ve been doing this a while, not long enough          (a couple weeks, a month, and then some)Time may keep different accounts. In ourFinal days, maybe she will swallow our lungsGive them to a child. Sweep us up. Let us sleep.

I would like to know the answer, myself.          (who has it, who knows?)Needles are sharp; I can’t sew but I guessI can learn. A man and a dog tracked theHimalayas, all the way to god’s heaven.          (they had their faults.)

Perhaps you and I could do it, if we tried          (not tonight, I’m tired, tonight.)I’ve swallowed smoke before, I’ve taken needlesInto my flesh.I don’t know the way to heaven, butNeither did they. The sun carries a thousand legends,But would rise without a single one.

I do not believe that all things mayFall into place. Not all roads leadTo heaven. Take a curse, and twist itSwallow it like smoke. Some days it’s all A nightmare, some nights I thinkWe could smoke the world out. Build a roadFrom the ashes. It may not lead to heaven, butAhead, ahead, ahead.          Not tonight, we’re tired, tonight. Tomorrow, there’ll be sun. Let us goAnd Time will keep our bodiesFor a while. For a while. It’s long enough. Ask me a question, I’ll write you a poem

[thiswinterheart]

2/26 weeks; countdown.

[nancyjhuang]

Check me out at CUPSI 2017!!! My poem “Aperture,” recorded by my teammate Jasmine Bell & nominated for Best of the Rest. 

[ocean-blind]

O-B Prompts

04/01/16

A wind that bites

Yellow courage

Woman as Ghost as God

Lachesism

[moonflock]

2. This is a kind of irony: the glint of light off your upper teeth. The permanent wetness of the sky. Never understanding the heat of your body. So I am thankful for small things, like the way the right tongue can unlatch language from sound. Sometimes I forget I have a tongue. I swallow without taste, I burn without heat. It’s a miracle, this rain. It gleams like a bellyache, like going to bed in taipei and waking up somewhere else. I’ll admit I’m afraid of analogies: who’s the prodding tongue, who’s the sore tooth. I’ll admit I don’t know what irony is. I watched us perform the weather: you as white umbrella/wet shirt, me as backwards rain, the want to return. To another city, another honesty.  Later, I followed you up two flights of stairs & forgot all plural words. What is the plural of rain? of blood? Maybe it’s true, what can’t be held can’t be known. Maybe it’s true, you pretended to know my name. I can pretend too, that there are things that can’t be repaid. Like being flooded or remembered. I can pretend your bed was white as sainthood, that the light came from somewhere else but our mouths. What you could give me, what I wanted. I will never know. 

[moonflock]

Dear Ming, Think of us as an act. Of survival. Think of survival as their best lie. We used to believe all the old lies: close your eyes & nobody can see you. Our grandfathers fought in three wars each & that means we are safe. Etc. Have you ever stood at the mouth of a river? Saltwater shredding itself against your stomach, limbs tossed aside, the only way out & in. Out & in. That’s the way politicians describe your body, a beckoning. Words ashing in your mouth before you can spit them. Tongue heavy as a stillbirth. Still, these days we can’t stop watching TV. Like the moon, we can only play at withdrawal. We follow & unfollow our own bodies like prey. We have coffee breath & stopped caring about it. In between the men, there are commercials where mothers read the script off their palms, say they did something bad to deserve us. In a past life, they fell in love with their shadows. In a past life, they converted their homes into natural history museums, dug up their bones & charged 5 cents to cop a feel. On stage, a politician reenacts natural history, the light falling in coins, his white hands groping for purchase.

dear ming (V), kristin chang (via moonflock)

[moonflock]

the dog festival, kristin chang (published in issue 3 of witch craft mag)

[moonflock]

call me friendly      fire, fatal pitch of light through      the jaw, you are too late to this scene:      my dress already wrecked on the riverbed, the river      kneeling in my throat. a woman      once sank her children in this river. now      it gives up its dead, spits bones      in the mud like rumors of a body,      no nation is ever big      enough for everything it wants, snip me      from my scenery & bob my limbs      down the river like infants what is ruin      if not the body becoming aware of itself?      let’s say a thing birthed in water      can become water. let’s say it is easy      to raise a daughter from the dead: the first step      is to slit a stranger’s throat, release its crows.      the second is to write a poem that leaves space for a      body. when ICE took my grandmother, she folded      inward like a fist, blood pouring through her ribs      like light through a forest of sap-mouthed trees. a stopped      heart is nothing like a slain dragon. two wars      taught us that a gun can deliver the body &      nothing more. what to do when your country      ignores all its best disasters. can a birth in      blood be rendered in light. can a girl outlive      her myth, bullet hole her song      & give every space a mouth

war song, kristin chang (published in two peach)