Category: 77.3

The Philosophy of Mangoes Mangoes do not fully domesticate. They are lush, a little louche; no amount of slicing or dicing can disguise their inherent wantonness. Mangoes are green only so that when the time comes they can flaunt their ripeness, sprawling shamelessly on backyard concrete like voluptuous nudists. If you’re not going to eat us, mangoes seem to say, we’re still going to make a mess. A mango, with its thick branches, dense foliage, and pendulous abundance, is a kind of nightmarish tropical grape, tempting us with Dionysian abandon, threatening us with malarial fever dreams. It is always pouring…

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Fox Dreaming One morning, delivering Quest News to the suburbs, I saw a red fox Crossing the road. At least, I think So. The animal trots quick And furtive through morning Mist, leaves a memory as blurry As bunyip. I didn’t know It was to be hated. I was new here, Took it for a native, a messenger Of the wild. Later, I learned better: The fox is feral, an aristocratic Killer from the old country, best Poisoned or shot, forgotten. It Kills the small marsupials Of the land on which our cities Foundered. The fox must go home, Or…

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What is the apricot saying? “What is the apricot saying? In what language?”  Yoko Tawada, from ‘The last break at a poetry festival’ Brimming over the tarmac, winding with the bends and creaking to a halt at every  traffic light the bus runs commentary on the shape of the road. Passengers talk silently to themselves, or in a language I don’t understand to each other, while the driver is using hands and feet, to which the motor replies with wheels. I’m listening to the sight of a picket fence. Between the panels my eyes can hear glimpses of a sounding…

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The turning How the dawn does not end but travels ever westward, always arriving. How the dusk sails forward, and the float of midday, the stroke of midnight cannot dissolve – here, and here around the world. The woman waking, the man soothing the child who is afraid of the dark, the goatherd under the baobab, the florist in his van of flowers… And the morning, like the sun itself, stitching us all.      

The view from Chhampi (Nepal) The air has been sung so many times the cicadas, skins drawn thin on their hollow drums and the thrum compounding, feel it is they who are played – the sky’s long fingers in their cellophane wings winding them into the tune. They cannot choose to be silent – without them, the hour cannot turn. They are full, now, of tremor and their song trills above me, here, in the hill-top pines that rise on this crease of crumpled land, long needles and heavy bark giving all of us shelter. Like nets made of air,…

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Jennifer Mills, Dyschronia Picador, 2018, 354 pp, pb $29.99 A tail-swallowing, symmetrical place, where anything can be hallucination: a review of Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills Reading this book transported me to the days when I read fiction before studying it, under tables at school, in the library, on the porch smoking cigarettes while my parents were sleeping, wondering how surreal yet possible all these fictional worlds seemed. I thought about this moment in my life while reading Dyschronia (2018) simply because devoting one’s life to learning how to write inevitably jeopardises the sense of mystery that one initially found alluring.…

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You and I, my dear sister, you and I, just as we have always been: with my vision and your pragmatism, your receptiveness and my intensity, your catering and my generosity of spirit, my artistry and your critique. I have the sandwich in hand and, with it, trace out my words in the air … … and if the idea about the furniture rental system doesn’t work out – and unfortunately it’s not for the moment in my control but is in the purview of those without the expansive, entrepreneurial outlook you and I share, that is, those who follow…

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