July 18, 2025 - "Park [ing]" by Miriam Bahrami
Miriam Bahrami is a photographer and charcoal sketch artist who is originally from North Carolina, and has made homes in Vermont and Spain before journeying to New York City, where she currently resides. She speaks Farsi and Spanish and aims to foster a sense of curiosity and exploration in her work, which can often feature New York herself.
July 11, 2025 - “Pearls” by Miriam Bahrami
Miriam Bahrami is a photographer and charcoal sketch artist who is originally from North Carolina, and has made homes in Vermont and Spain before journeying to New York City, where she currently resides. She speaks Farsi and Spanish and aims to foster a sense of curiosity and exploration in her work, which can often feature New York herself.
July 4, 2025 - “Brother Blood” by Kushal Poddar
The brother who opens your id
and loses the key,
makes you drunk and piss
in your own yard as your wife
watches from the first floor boudoir
returns.
You know the grey. You know the why.
You know the honey
and the sting he hides.
You lower your guards in the ring,
let the blood ooze, trickle
down your chin and yet do not wipe
the corner of your mouth.
He offers your children lift
to their school,
takes them for fun instead.
Nothing sharp, not more harm
than one pale ale too many,
your wife sees a blade
whenever sun catches his glasses.
He returns. He disappears.
You know where. You know why.
Kushal Poddar, the author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
June 25, 2025 - “Goose - 1” by Kushal Poddar
This, a good place to begin
the circle, dear jogger, opens up
the park and the morning.
You should not stir the goodness
or the goose.
The skein of the waterfowls are scattered
in the pasture.
Today's mood made them shells holding
a hollowness and a howl for the sea.
*
When the exotic wings glide in
the park the goose fights for her
boundary at first.
Zen eventuates. She settles between
the flocking birders and the winter's
slaty sun.
We, the local walkers, already gave her
pet names. The goose stare hard
with its hundred names, native pride,
doubting vigilance.
Kushal Poddar, the author of 'Postmarked Quarantine' has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of 'Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe.
Twitter - https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
June 23, 2025 - “Cracks” by Callum McGee
Graeme McNeil was brushing his teeth for the night when he heard his wife scream from downstairs. He paused, straining to hear more, then gurgled and spat in the sink. Before he left the bathroom he placed his toothbrush back in the glass above the sink, twisting it so the bristles faced away from hers.
Sheila was standing in the living room, shards of broken glass at her feet. An icy draught drifted through the gaping hole in the centre of the window, making him shiver under his dressing gown. He moved past her to the window, crunching over the glass in his slippers. A large stone lay on the carpet by the radiator. He picked it up and felt its weight in his hand. He raised the blinds and scanned the dark street for signs of movement. Nothing stirred, except the gentle swaying of bushes in the wind. The only light came from the harsh glare of the lampposts.
‘Who could have done this?’ Sheila said, still standing behind him.’
‘Someone who doesn’t know any better,’ Graeme said. ‘I’ll call the police.’
He could feel her eyes on him as he walked over to the telephone.
The McNeils had lived in the village for almost twenty-eight years, nearly as long as they’d been married. They were both retired and their sons had already moved out and started their own families. Graeme had been the village postie, up every morning at six o’clock to deliver mail to their neighbours and friends. Sheila had worked in the local nursery, a job she loved so much she still volunteered there a few hours a week. She threw herself into community activities and in retirement had become the unofficial ‘village planner’, helping to organise school fairs, bingo nights and sports days. She carried around with her an A5 notebook in which she scribbled down dates and ideas for future events. Sometimes she also wrote down the village gossip.
***
Now Sheila was watching him from the living room sofa, her notebook open in her lap. He was sitting in his chair by the window, reading the paper and eating a slice of cake. It was Sunday lunchtime – the day after the incident. Graeme had swept up the shards of glass and thrown them in a plastic bag, ready to take to the tip. He’d then stuck some masking tape over the hole in the window, but a cold wind still whistled through the room. Half a dozen families had already dropped by the house to offer their condolences. Doreen Farquhar down the road had baked them the cake – a lemon sponge.
‘They’re all talking about it,’ Sheila said.
Graeme didn’t look up from his paper. ‘Let them talk,’ he said. ‘As long as they stop coming round.’
‘How’s the cake?’ she said.
‘Too sweet,’ Graeme said. He grabbed another slice from the coffee table and crumbs rolled onto the carpet.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes. Sheila leafed through the pages of her notebook, but she couldn’t concentrate.
‘Who could’ve done this?’ she said at last.
‘Probably just some daft teenager thinking he’s clever,’ he said through a mouthful of cake.
‘But why this house? Why us?’
‘Who knows? Things just happen.’
‘But what have we ever done to folk in this town?’
‘Who says we done anything to anyone?’ he said.
Graeme finished off the rest of his slice, licked his fingers and then folded the paper. He turned on the TV and let out a sigh. She watched him for a moment, then got up and went to the kitchen.
***
When he got back from the pub that evening, she was waiting for him at the kitchen table, drinking a cup of tea. Her face looked hollow under the bulb’s dim glow.
‘Your dinner’s cold,’ she said. ‘You’ll need to stick it in the microwave.’
‘Righty,’ he said. She didn’t get up, so he crossed the room and took his food out the oven.
When he sat across from her to eat, he noticed her notebook on the table beside her.
‘Anything coming up this month?’ he said.
‘Just the bingo,’ she said. ‘The same as every month.’
‘Bingo,’ he repeated, like it was a new word to him.
‘You should come,’ she said.
‘Not after last time,’ he said, spearing some lasagne with his fork. ‘That game’s fixed.’
The wind had picked up, and he could hear the fence creaking in the back garden.
‘You said nine,’ she suddenly said. She looked at him from under her specs.
He felt his lips working. He’d never liked it when she watched him eat.
‘Eh?’
‘You said you’d be back at nine.’ Sheila slurped her tea and watched him.
Graeme had once meant to tell her about it – the slurping. But that was over thirty years ago. He wondered if she got irritated by things he did. She was bound to, after so long together.
‘I tried to get away, but folk kept buying me drinks.’ He swallowed. ‘Because of this business with the window.’ He’d left the food in the microwave too long and it stung the roof of his mouth.
‘What if they come back?’ she said.
Graeme reached for her hand and squeezed it.
‘I won’t let it happen again,’ he said. Her hand felt small and frail in his.
They sat like that for a moment, then Sheila pulled her hand away and got up. She went over to the sink and started washing dishes, keeping her back to him. He glanced again at her closed notebook on the table, then shovelled another forkful of dry lasagne into his mouth.
***
She sat on the sofa doodling in her notebook while he slumped in his chair, watching TV with the volume low. It was Thursday afternoon, and the rain and wind were battering against the window. Every so often she looked up and watched him. He didn’t make a move to turn the TV up. He followed the moving pictures with a confused look on his face, his lips forming silent words. The tape covering the window was peeling off, and raindrops spattered through the crack. The room was cold and damp.
Sheila shut her notebook and drummed her fingers on the cover.
‘When are you going to call the window repair man?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow,’ Graeme said, keeping his eyes on the TV. ‘It’ll hold for now.’
‘Mañana, mañana,’ Sheila said to herself.
Graeme looked up. ‘What’s that mean?’
‘It’s always tomorrow with you,’ she said.
Graeme snorted. ‘Alright, give me time,’ he said. ‘I’m still processing the whole thing. I’m in shock over here.’
‘I was down here when it happened,’ she said. ‘I witnessed it.’
‘Aye, well at least no one was hurt,’ he said, grabbing the remote. ‘That’s the main thing.’
Sheila looked across at him. He gripped the remote in mid-air, his thumb hovering over a button. She could remember how safe she’d once felt in his strong hands, the hairs on his knuckles like copper wire. Now his hand was visibly shaking.
‘I do wonder,’ she said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Why it happened.’
‘This again.’
‘I just can’t think who’d do it. I’ve been racking my brain and nobody pops up.’
‘Don’t waste your time racking,’ he said, turning up the volume of the TV.
She picked up her pencil and looked at him side-on. ‘Maybe there’s something,’ she said.
‘Something?’
‘Maybe something you’ve done, Graeme?’
She watched the wheels turning in his brain.
‘Like what?’
‘Well, you know the way you are with people sometimes.’
He turned the TV off.
‘What you on about?’
She consulted her notebook. ‘Last Saturday, when you ignored John and Linda Morrison at the shop.’
He had turned away from the TV and was now facing her.
‘That woman’s got verbal diarrhoea,’ Graeme said quickly. ‘We’d still be there if I didn’t —' He paused. ‘How come you recorded that in your wee book?’
‘It’s not right.’
‘Ach, John’s thick as mince, don’t think he even noticed.’
‘You see? The way you are with people.’
‘That’s not enough to chuck a stone through a window.’
‘Maybe not, but you’ve got to watch the way you are with people.’
Graeme snorted. ‘The way I am with people.’
‘And there was Thursday 17th October,’ Sheila said.
‘Was there now?’
‘Don’t you remember? When you gave wee Alfie Simpson a rollicking for kicking his ball in our garden?’
‘It was hardly a ‘rollicking’, Sheila. I merely advised the young lad he would be better off shooting away from our house.’
‘You didn’t need to puncture the ball right in front of his mates and hand it back flat as a pancake.’
‘That’s the only way they’ll learn.’
‘You made them all cry.’
‘Ach, kids are too soft these days.’
Sheila licked her finger and flicked through more pages.
‘You enjoying yourself?’ Graeme said.
‘These are the facts,’ she said.
‘I’m telling you none of that is enough to target this household.’
‘What is enough?’ She stared at him.
He didn’t answer. For a minute they both listened to the rising wind rattling against the window pane.
Sheila then stopped on a new page. ‘I’ve also been meaning to tell you about last—'
‘Hold on a minute,’ Graeme said. ‘What about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Aye, let’s do you now,’ Graeme said. ‘You and your constant planning and meddling in folks’ lives.’
Sheila let out a short puff of air. ‘I haven’t done anyone harm.’
‘That right?’ Graeme said. ‘You sure about that?’
‘Name one thing I’ve done,’ she said. Her voice had got high and quivery.
‘Gossiping?’
‘I’ve done no such thing.’ Sheila got up and stormed out of the room.
***
That night Graeme slept on the living room sofa. He tossed and turned, shivering from the icy wind blowing through the hole in the window. At one point he got up in the dark and examined the glass, tracing his fingers along the web-like pattern. The cracks had spread, spiralling down to the windowsill. He turned on the TV and tried to watch an old black and white western, but he couldn’t focus. He was listening more for movement from upstairs. All was quiet. He went out into the hall and put on his shoes and coat. He made sure to close the front door quietly behind him.
Outside, it was bitterly cold. He walked briskly down the street with his head lowered, feeling himself propelled forward by the wind at his back. The streets were so familiar he didn’t need to look up to know where he was going. Every front garden, every tree, every path, every pothole and crack in the road – they all flashed through his mind like images in a photo album.
When he turned off down a cul-de-sac and reached the Morrisons’ bungalow, he stopped and looked up. Both cars were there, one parked in the driveway and the other along the curb. There were no signs of activity inside the house. All the lights were out.
It had been a one-time thing four years ago, not long before he retired. One Wednesday morning he’d knocked on their door with a parcel, and Linda invited him in for tea and cakes. They blethered about the weather and other nonsense for half an hour, and all the while he felt she was looking at him in an odd way, and not just because there were cake crumbs stuck to his beard. Graeme had always secretly found her attractive and good for her age, though the woman talked too much. It wasn’t long before she was leading him upstairs, and into her brightly lit bedroom. Her husband John was at work and wouldn’t be back till six.
After that day, Graeme had left future parcels beside the wheelie bin in their back garden. He had wanted to see her again, but it was too risky. After all, words spread like wildfire in a wee village like this. At the time he’d told himself these things happened everywhere, probably more than folk realised. He had needs that weren’t being satisfied. He was human, after all. It had already turned stale with Sheila long before that morning with Linda.
Now it had finally come back to bite him. After so many years, the guilt must have got to Linda and made her confess it all to John. Graeme didn’t think John had it in him to retaliate, but he guessed he was wrong.
He took one last look at the bungalow and turned back for home, pushing back against the powerful wind.
***
The next day, Sheila met the ladies for lunch at the village coffee shop. According to the forecast, a storm was on its way. Outside, fallen leaves danced along the pavements and cartwheeled through the air. She spoke less than usual and spent most of the time watching her friends’ faces for signs of hostility. They chattered away, but nothing showed in their eyes. Not even a flicker of ill-feeling towards herself. Yet she still felt a hot, rising guilt building inside her. For what, she didn’t know. All she knew for sure was that the house had become too suffocating. Graeme kept so still in his chair she often wondered if he'd stopped breathing.
After lunch she drove to the city and spent a couple of hours in shops, taking her time walking down the aisles. The shops were mobbed and most of the shelves empty with folk panicking over the approaching storm. But Sheila didn’t mind. There was a different energy in the city that she liked. She was less likely to bump into someone she knew.
When she returned to the village, it was late. The trees in the park were shaking, and wheelie bins were rolling up and down the streets. She turned into the driveway, and immediately drew breath when she saw Graeme in his usual position, glued to his chair. Anger burned inside her. As she hurried with her shopping bags through the wind and rain to the front door, she thought there was something odd about the way he was sitting this time.
And when she entered the living room, she knew something was different. The room was freezing and smelt wet and earthy. She looked past him to the window, but it wasn’t there. All that remained was an empty rectangular space. The pane had shattered under the force of the wind, and hundreds of pieces of glass lay glinting all around the room – on the radiator, the carpet, the coffee table and even on his arms and feet. But he just sat there rigid, staring at the blank TV as if nothing had happened. Sodden leaves and empty sweetie wrappers swirled through the room.
She set down her shopping bags and waited.
Graeme didn’t move. His lips were working.
Callum McGee was born in Edinburgh and grew up in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. His stories have appeared in Litro, The Honest Ulsterman and Postbox Magazine. He works as an English teacher in Portugal.
June 13, 2025 - To our contributors and to our readers and to those who have sent us work previously and have wondered whether we’re still here —— we are.
Each year since 2017 we’ve tried to build something sustainable, a home with a solid foundation —- where poets and writers and photographers and visual artists can submit their work and know that it will not only be received, but also read, viewed and responded to. What desire is more human than the desire to be seen. Throughout the life of Curlew —- apart from the run that we had from 2017 - 2022; over the last three years, our team’s collective effort at consistency and sustainability —- though genuine — have fallen short.
We could blame New York —- the city’s rising costs and the difficulty of living a sustainable and life there. We could blame the federal government and its leadership and the dwindling resources and opportunities that are available for literary organizations like our own. Or we could simply blame life —— the hazards and realities of being pulled in multiple directions and having endless commitments and responsibilities to fulfill —- professional, social, and otherwise.
And maybe in the past, at least speaking personally, I have. My life in New York was a beautiful and sweet and fierce challenge —- and from that challenge, together with a great deal of luck at having met just the right people at just the right time, this magazine was born. But what is a magazine apart from a collection of people —- human beings — who share an interest in wanting to use their creative gifts to make, shape, share, and enjoy their lives —- while also —- and often, challenging, calling into question, and taking to task the status quo — systemic, personal, collective, and otherwise.
I write all of this to say, to our contributors, to our readers, and to those who have sent us work previously and have wondered whether we’re still here — we are. And over the last year, we’ve been reading your submissions, keeping house, and building up structures that will support our sustainability.
The Curlew Daily returns next week. Issue No. 10 is out the first week of July.
- Jordan Myers, Founder
September 18, 2024 - “Road trip” by Elizabeth Lerman
She steps closer to the edge and feels rough pavement press against the bare soles of her feet. She had forgotten her shoes in the room, in the garden, maybe, and she had not missed them, had started to like the way each step was a sweet, shared moment between herself and solid ground, had felt less like she was floating away, now that she could feel the earth beneath her, and so she keeps them off the rest of the evening, the next morning as they eat breakfast and pack up the car, and even as they drive, she rests her bare feet on the dashboard while they talk back and forth about the night before.
September 16, 2024 - “Day drink” by Elizabeth Lerman
Allan stands in front of you and you slide your almost empty glass towards him. He takes it and places it beneath the tap.
“How you feeling?”
“Like shit”
“Beer’s not helping?”
“Gonna feel like shit either way, might as well enjoy something.”
“Getting older is going to kick you in the ass.”
“That’s what Benny says.”
“How is he?”
You are about to say fine but you stop yourself.
“Not great. He needs something to do.”
“Tell him to come by sometime.”
“I’ll tell him, don’t know if he’ll listen.”
“He really is as stubborn as May.”
“Imagine living with them both.”
“Won’t be forever.”
“Got an end date for me?”
“You know, Ruthie,” Allan’s tone sharpens, “you got somewhere to stay when you need one, I know it’s not what you want, but you got that and –”
“– not everybody does,” you finish, “I know. Allan, I do know that.”
September 14, 2024 by Jordan Myers
Near the Atlantic
writing
by the light of the window /
reading
beneath the night of September /
walking
September 13, 2024 - “Night swim” by Elizabeth Lerman
You tell him you want to go in the pool one last time and he says he’ll be your lifeguard. You hand him your towel and step in up to your ankles. You say, look at the moon, at the way the light is landing on the water, and he thinks you are stalling but really, you aren’t even thinking about how cold it is because it looks like a painting, like a picture you are making ripples in, a moment you are moving, and he counts down from ten, waiting for you to go under, and so you walk deeper into the water, tell him the moonlight might turn you into a werewolf, and he laughs, says, what? cocks his head and starts his countdown again. You go under before he reaches zero and think about surfacing as something else. You stand in the shallow end and look at the moon, so close to being full. He wraps you in a towel and rubs you dry as you whisper, goodbye, to the water, the slow nights, to the sort of stars you don’t have back home. Inside, you make your shower last. You are trying to find a reason to stay.
September 12, 2024 - “Laxo” by Veronica Scharf Garcia
Veronica Scharf Garcia has exhibited her art throughout the Americas in Florida, New Jersey, California and Peru. She grew up on several continents (the Middle East, Africa and South America). Most recently, Scharf Garcia is living out of suitcases while traveling throughout Europe.
September 11, 2024 - “Movere” by Veronica Scharf Garcia
Veronica Scharf Garcia has exhibited her art throughout the Americas in Florida, New Jersey, California and Peru. She grew up on several continents (the Middle East, Africa and South America). Most recently, Scharf Garcia is living out of suitcases while traveling throughout Europe.
September 10, 2024 - “Centre of the Ring” by Wedge Tai
“This” and “that” having no antitheses is the pivot of Tao.
When the pivot is placed in the centre of the ring, one can deal with infinite changes.
---Chuang Tsu
A bottomless vortex, at the same time
a spinning top lashed incessantly by man’s desires,
whirls faster and faster, into the dark emptiness.
And you, are a grain of sand in the current.
The axis of the vortex is a moonbeam, sprinkled
over the snow-covered plateau, on which lives
no human, except a few pines holding their cones,
and the snow, loitering on the wind to and fro.
The hormone of capital permeates, boosting
straggly twigs from your heart. You must, as a tree,
cut them off to keep your trunk straight upward,
until your head is laden with myriad stars.
Then please come to the ring centre, and tower
as the Tide Control Pillar. In a blink,
what circles around you is no more the vortex,
but the Milky Way pulled off from the sky’s waist.
5. According to Journey to the West, the Tide Control Pillar is a tall thick metal rod that gods placed in the sea to control the tides, but it was later converted by the Monkey King into his powerful weapon.
“Centre of the Ring” is a poem from the author’s collection 2510, which has been featured on Curlew Daily over the last week.
Wedge Tai is a Chinese underground poet living in Beijing. Born in the 1980s and currently working as an English teacher, he writes poems in Chinese and in English that reflect dire political realities and the resistance thereto in the communist regime, and thus hardly gets published in mainstream press. He is the author of the self-printed collection, Disgrace Disclaimer.
September 8, 2024 - “West Beauty” by Wedge Tai
A hundred years, is but a leap of a sparrow
among the trees. Layers and layers of time’s
covered your mound, just as the amorous frost
swallows a stubborn rock into her womb. But I am
a frozen lake, fearless of the reaping wind of age.
Rowing a cypress boat, in the middle of the river,
that boy with long locks, is the very one I adore.
Even death cannot change my love for him.
The home items still radiate your warmth
and your breath, as if you had never left.
Your freezing tenderness and your glowing
rigidity, are a primitive machine that takes me in,
and presses me repeatedly as pig iron.
Rowing a cypress boat, to the other side of the river,
that boy with long locks, is just the one I love.
Even death cannot separate us.
You said, I was a piece of ore from Venus,
too happy on earth to be homesick. Actually,
I am more like red coral in the ocean, while you
are a damselfish swimming about, who is
at times mesmerized by the sirenic jellyfish.
Oh my mother, good heavens! Why can’t you see?
Oh my mother, good heavens! Why don’t you agree?
Now, you’ve long become a bush of white coral,
lighting the darkness underground. But I,
as a grosbeak, am confined in the steel cage
of my own body, dreaming every day
about returning with you to the deep sea.
3. The title refers to the famous beauty called Xishi in the Spring and Autumn Period of China.
4. The italic allusion is taken from the ancient Chinese poetic classic The Book of Songs.
“West Beauty” is a poem from the author’s collection 2510, which we will be featured on Curlew Daily over the next week.
Wedge Tai is a Chinese underground poet living in Beijing. Born in the 1980s and currently working as an English teacher, he writes poems in Chinese and in English that reflect dire political realities and the resistance thereto in the communist regime, and thus hardly gets published in mainstream press. He is the author of the self-printed collection, Disgrace Disclaimer.
September 7, 2024 - “South Nothingness (Namo)” by Wedge Tai
Having no thought is the root; detachment from all forms is the body; persisting in no idea is the essence.
---The Sutra of Huineng
Only by clipping your wings, and squeezing
into hive-like pigeon-holes, can you prove
that you are an eagle.
Only by chopping off your feet, and cramming
yourself into a capsule car, can you demonstrate
that you are a cheetah.
You are a butterfly, that roams among
illusory flowers; or you are a flower,
that expects an illusory butterfly’s visit.
More often than not, you are a caterpillar
nibbling away the leaves under yourself,
until you have nowhere to stay.
All that you covet, is nothing
but bubbles of the seawater of desires
blown by the colossal mouth of capital.
You should be a cactus or a hedgehog,
that turns prajna into long spikes,
to prick the bubbles, and pierce capital’s lungs.
2. The Sutra of Huineng is a Buddhist classic on Zen by the Sixth Patriarch Huineng in the 7th-century China.
“South Nothingness (Namo)” is a poem from the author’s collection 2510, which we will be featured on Curlew Daily over the next week.
Wedge Tai is a Chinese underground poet living in Beijing. Born in the 1980s and currently working as an English teacher, he writes poems in Chinese and in English that reflect dire political realities and the resistance thereto in the communist regime, and thus hardly gets published in mainstream press. He is the author of the self-printed collection, Disgrace Disclaimer.
September 6, 2024 - “East Land” by Wedge Tai
Confucius said, “The wise are not troubled, the benevolent not worried, and the courageous not afraid.”
---The Analects
For millennia, your ancestors, your fathers
and you, have grazed and mated on this land,
and finally wormed into the brown earth,
never wondering what laurels above taste like.
A whip, like a ferocious hissing viper,
repeatedly bites into your backs.
Drenched with blood, you have always thought
that even snakes will be fed full one day.
When one of you was chosen as the Sacrifice,
the others quickly huddled into a roll of toilet paper,
watching a crimson snake winding on the ground,
extolling the sharpness of the butcher knife.
Later, a violent red storm swept away
all the footprints of your forefathers.
Ecstatic, you bid farewell to the past, only to find,
the next day, the sun was still that same sun.
The whip had been burned into ashes; its crack
still kept cloning itself over your head.
It worries your gaunt body during the day,
and at night, it gnaws your inescapable dream.
Those ancient ideograms were castrated
by the bloodthirsty sickle; those yew-scented
totems were dismantled. Thereafter,
you could only survive as a eunuch.
Some of your family and friends, a decade later,
were eaten by wolves in the northernmost
world of ice and snow, some evaporated
in Tarim Basin, and some even lurked within.
Window opened, the air you’ve never breathed
and the views you have never seen
all poured in. You began to look beyond the hill,
and dream of the clouds floating over the crest.
Indeed, you ought to learn the lion’s defiance
and courage, but must decline the poppies
it presents. Go deep into the hearts of
the sages, and nurture your mind into a gingko.
It is time, that you burnished your heart
of raw stone into nephrite. Let your feet
grow claws like daggers, and make your head
shoot out long horns as spears.
“East Land” is a poem from the author’s collection 2510, which we will be featured on Curlew Daily over the next week.
Wedge Tai is a Chinese underground poet living in Beijing. Born in the 1980s and currently working as an English teacher, he writes poems in Chinese and in English that reflect dire political realities and the resistance thereto in the communist regime, and thus hardly gets published in mainstream press. He is the author of the self-printed collection, Disgrace Disclaimer.
September 5, 2024 - “North Sea” by Wedge Tai
The traditional illumines the modern;
the past projects the future.
---Epigraph
Three-meter-thick ice lies under your feet, just as
desires compressed in your heart. North wind is
a scalpel, that removes your flesh from the bones.
The arctic fox, like a paper ball randomly discarded,
rolls on the snow. A seal sticks its head
out of an ice hole, and is pinned by the teeth
of a long-waiting polar bear. A hot red hibiscus
immediately blossoms on the niveous plain of ice.
In North Sea lives a fish, which is called Kun.
Kun’s body extends thousands of miles.1
You exit the Experience Hall, shed your down coat
and creep into your shorts. Boundless seawater
agitates your desolate eyeballs. Where the red
hibiscus once flourished, naked crowds lie
in the sun, air-drying their moldy lusts.
Great liners water wonderlands skyscraping hotels,
like tumours bulging out of the body,
waver in the warm breeze with slopes of poppies.
Turning into a bird, Kun becomes Peng,
whose back measures thousands of miles.
It rages and soars, with wings as clouds masking the sky.
The italic quotations come from the beginning chapter of the ancient Chinese philosophical classic Chuang Tsu.
“North Sea” is a poem from the author’s collection 2510, which we will be featured on Curlew Daily over the next week.
Wedge Tai is a Chinese underground poet living in Beijing. Born in the 1980s and currently working as an English teacher, he writes poems in Chinese and in English that reflect dire political realities and the resistance thereto in the communist regime, and thus hardly gets published in mainstream press. He is the author of the self-printed collection, Disgrace Disclaimer.
