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PoetryJanuary 1, 2013

The Banana Plantation

Photography by Aiez Mirza

Roberto passed a joint to me with sand ploughed fingers

in the jungles miles above Limon while the others

did headstands inside between sips of wine

and rum from the bottles. Nobody talked

to Roberto – he was so beautiful

he stole your voice.

I didn’t want to kiss him, I wanted

to memorize how he shook shells

as small as pinky nails from his dreads

and how his hip bones protruded like fins. My father

says that the ocean will swallow

me one day, he said. The woven hammock

chewed into my bare thighs while he perched

like a kingfisher on the porch rail

and told me how he worked

his father’s banana plantation every morning.

The smoke filled my head as he rocked

me gently, golden fist around hammock knots,

thick accent stumbling around foreign words

and all I could picture between his rolling r’s

was the sunrise

surfing ritual, pink slipping from sky.

How his chest was chiseled

stone from the breakers. How the saltwater rutted

into him, shining off his shoulders,

even when the waters let him go, even

when his feet thrust into old Nikes,

even when it was time to weave

between the bushes, slipping

plastic soda sacks over one

bunch after another.

~ Jessica Tyner

 

Jessica Tyner is from Oregon USA, a member of the Cherokee Nation, and has been a writer for ten years. She currently works as a travel writer with Yahoo!, the entertainment columnist for Hound the Press, and a contributing editor at New York’s Thalo Magazine. She has recently published short fiction in India’s Out of Print Magazine and poetry in Slow Trains Literary Journal, Straylight Magazine, Solo Press, and Glint Literary Journal.  Her first novel has been picked up by Swift Publishing House. She enjoys teaching yoga and has a bad habit of collecting first editions.

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One last love letter...

April 24, 2021

It has taken us some time and patience to come to this decision. TMS would not have seen the success that it did without our readers and the tireless team that ran the magazine for the better part of eight years.

But… all good things must come to an end, especially when we look at the ever-expanding art and literary landscape in Pakistan, the country of the magazine’s birth.

We are amazed and proud of what the next generation of creators are working with, the themes they are featuring, and their inclusivity in the diversity of voices they are publishing. When TMS began, this was the world we envisioned…

Though the magazine has closed and our submissions shuttered, this website will remain open for the foreseeable future as an archive of the great work we published and the astounding collection of diverse voices we were privileged to feature.

If, however, someone is interested in picking up the baton, please email Maryam Piracha, the editor, at maryamp@themissingslate.com.

Farewell, fam! It’s been quite a ride.

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