Size / / /

For my child
in the new land.
The only spell
I ever learnt.
Of needles and sleep.
 
There'll be the warehouse.
Sewing machine beating
out years and days.
There'll be the markets.
Curled lock-ups at dawn,
hungry side streets,
armfuls of snides.
Stutter of tarpaulin and steel
against the morning dark.
 
There'll be the man at the gate.
Stand back, he'll say.
There's nothing to see.
His fists and radio-crackled voices
of a country where tv light
smooths to white-sheeted sleep.
 
There'll be running
over slanted pavement
as the bricks the metal
the glass
will not yield.
 
Say it.
"Some entered rivers,
became the stones and the weeds.
Some crawled into basements,
were the dark and mice behind doors.
Some sought out the soft ground
to spend their bodies
to the flowers and roots."
My child
in the new land.
This is the only spell
I ever learnt.
 
That you won't know their open-jawed vans.
Or watch car lights blur into rain
as they bear you through night.
Won't be curved metal wise
through the staunch tight sky,
or spoken into a windowless room
to learn just what you're worth.
 
That you'll sleep
as the earth spins as
the cities swell
and the walls breed
as the glass smashes
and the fires spread,
sleep safe as this lonely spell
holds you in a secret place
until a lazy gardener
cuts you awake
and no one remembers this.




Ruth Jenkins writes speculative poetry and interactive fiction on cities, coding and magic. Ruth's writing has previously appeared in Goblin Fruit, Scheherezade's Bequest, and Verse Kraken. Her website is fractoluminous.tumblr.com.
Current Issue
25 Mar 2024

Looking back, I see that my initial hope for this episode was that the mud would have a heartbeat and a heart that has teeth and crippling anxiety. Some of that hope has become a reality, but at what cost?
to work under the / moon is to build a formidable tomorrow
Significantly, neither the humans nor the tigers are shown to possess an original or authoritative version of the narrative, and it is only in such collaborative and dialogic encounters that human-animal relations and entanglements can be dis-entangled.
By: Sammy Lê
Art by: Kim Hu
the train ascends a bridge over endless rows of houses made of beams from decommissioned factories, stripped hulls, salvaged engines—
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