Image: Trinh Mai, The Stars Will Tell Us, 2015. Image courtesy of the artist.
Shorelines Poets Showcase
Explore these shifting, evocative poems from three poets featured in Wasafiri 116: Shorelines: Southeast Asia and the Littoral. If you enjoy these pieces, read more work from the authors in our latest issue, available to order now.
Bristling with Thorns
In our own time we take to the air,
cling to threadbare soil
where we land. We are beggars
for sunlight and rain,
for blankets of decay. We take
no more than what we need
to thrive beyond measured borders.
Our scent, perhaps too subtle,
or pungent as the ground’s breath.
Our sides, bristling with thorns
minute and defensive.
The petals we stretch from tiny fists
do not excite you enough
to bring us close to where you live.
But we are not wild, just untamed
by your singular will.
Fear to Freedom
Fear itself is beauteous. If we’re
brave enough to see and watch
it, fear is so beauteous.
Fearing that he’d get repeatedly
caught up in Samsara Siddhartha
tried to find a state
free from Samsara. He did
find it then.
Fearing that he’d get repeatedly rejected to enjoy civic rights Martin Luther King tried to fight for a right to dream of the rights. He did
have it then.
Fearing that he’d get repeatedly oppressed and tortured George Orwell’s Napoleon tried to revolt against the oppressor. He did
escape then.
‘All is of fear.’ We can have such a say-so,
can’t we?
Because of fear, thousands and thousands of people survived Because of fear, prey has
escaped many a time.
When you cannot escape from fear let fear be your strength let fear be a stimulus that urges you to gallop. If we’re brave enough to see and watch it a part of the road to freedom is
fear that is so beauteous.
Observation
The day is a shadow. Long, unbending.
I catch a glimpse of you retreating into yourself, becoming unborn.
Vines sprouting from your limbs, fragile as branches.
Roots cut, the spread of dead stopped at your toes.
It wasn’t always like this.
But this has expunged everything before it.
Water to blistering coal.
There is no sweetness in this hereafter, just endless rounds of ending.
Rags smeared with dried blood. Parched mouth. Bone.
Wasafiri 116: Shorelines: South East Asia and the Littoral, our special winter issue guest edited by Nazry Bahrawi, Joanne Leow, and the late Y-Dang Troeung, features a range of creative, critical, and artistic work from Singapore, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, and Myanmar and their diasporas, exploring the littoral encounter of existing on the shoreline.