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PoetryApril 9, 2013

gǎn qíng yòng shì :: impulsive and impetuous

“It was game season, and there was blood and lust in their eyes. It was no different from Rome in the old days. Gladiators, lions, slaves, the ringmaster, thrust in a ring together. No different. No different at all.” In the next hour, Geronimo practically talks to himself, gives himself a lesson in violence as spectacle. “What are the forces of tradition? How do they bear down on these peoples? We are in their debt really. We don’t get to see this kind of steadfastness in the city. Such an unwavering belief in what should be done, what needs to be done, and how it should all be done. All that urban chic, all the material wealth, the sheer waste. The blitzkrieg of the senses, that’s what our legacy will be understood as.” An anthropologist returning to the city is like a gazelle let back into the wild after years of captivity. This is an intentional inversion, Geronimo says. The zoo from which it escaped is as much a wild terrain as the vast open field, the wilderness that everyone seems to root for. The primal has its dangers too, as the noble savage has shown us. He shouldn’t use “savage”, but the word has reclaimed for itself a new right to be, a chic authenticity. “Violence presumes the spectacle,” Geronimo says, establishing his thesis. In the same hour, outside the window, a mother has picked up a toddler by its collar, and another woman is whipping its back and legs with a strip of leather. There is no rattan cane lying around, so she picks up the closest thing to it. The toddler has its arms on its mother’s hip and thigh. The toddler is hysterical and crying, kicking out like a wild animal. All this happens outside the window, across the street. It too is a recapitulation. It might as well have happened in another country and century.

 

~Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has edited more than ten books and co-produced three audio books. These span the genres of ethnography, journalism, poetry, and creative nonfiction, several edited pro bono for non-profit organizations. Trained in publishing at Stanford, with a theology masters (world religions) from Harvard and fine arts masters (creative writing) from Notre Dame, he is the recipient of the PEN American Center Shorts Prize, Swale Life Poetry Prize, Cyclamens & Swords Poetry Prize, and Stepping Stones Nigeria Poetry Prize, among other awards. Desmond is an interdisciplinary artist, also working in clay. His commemorative pieces are housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

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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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