• before, above

    Qamar Firdaus Saini Issue 1: RISE, July 2023 ham ham squeaks to let the night in. his hind leg’s upright, body pulled above the horizontal, wheel spinning, gathering the dark.see how it washes and bogs this room. i lie. my body a spindle, our memories of seattle spooling – the park at kirkland, molly moon’s…

  • the wound is where light enters

    Qamar Firdaus Saini Issue 1: RISE, July 2023 i think about cows and how you don’t eat beef for non-religious reasons. there is an after- taste i can’t describe – when our tongues meet i remember the twang of guitar strings, my shoulder dislocating from the weight of your head, my anchor, or our combined…

  • SOURSOP

    Euginia Tan Issue 1: RISE, July 2023 an ear shaped fruit listening to pulses from wrists, twisting the thorny green harvest into baskets the depth of small tubs it hears the slice of knife oozing guts of white pulp black beads of seed gleaming like eyes wide awake at the crack of dawn a palm…

  • Post-Construction #1

    Lune Loh Issue 1: RISE, July 2023 @: Not much of the ooziness left in myhappy. am composed of shining, thefaceted which is its own collapsible. *: All these chances not for granted,given that it’s taken for. she finds amnot in the dice; meaty numbers roll.Off our spines in cartographies:marks red and pulped and aware…

  • Moss

    Michele Lim Issue 1: RISE, July 2023 Yuxian first found the moss on the back of her bed post. She had been trying to move her bed from one end of her room to the other, thinking that a change of scenery, however small, might do something for her mental health. But all she gained…

  • Photo of the MV Sewol Sinking

    i.m. David Wong Hsien Ming Issue 1: RISE, July 2023 Napkin on clouded jade & blue mould up from under, thin smile saying nothing stays white. Ponyboy’s gold reasonable in hindsight. Easy to say it’s the same doom but here 250 didn’t get a couplet, let alone a catchphrase, didn’t get let alone. • Imagine…