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Literature, PoetryJuly 29, 2014

Excerpts from Kangarewe & Wittgenstein’s Whoopee Cushion

 Artwork by Henri Souffay, via ArtChowk

Artwork by Henri Souffay. Courtesy: ArtChowk Gallery.

The Missing Slate’s Poetry World Cup finished earlier this month, with more than 6000 reader votes cast to whittle the 32 poems down to just one winner. We’re ending the month with a selection of new poems from the Poetry World Cup champion, Singapore’s Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé.

d2 is for determinacy

insomuch that frege instructed kangarewe
to cut up the pine planks in perfect shapes
angular but with sharp and distinct boundaries
like how we define the world we live in
and chart its topography the way we hike
through shenandoah national park then
drive back taking the blue ridge parkway
where a cherokee miner invites us over
to old tanasi where there is nothing at all
but memory making its trail to chota
where a cyclist points in the direction of
old copper road and says follow the fennec fox
before the first mile and you’ll be able to
determine for yourself the truth of things
and what simple elements need to be added
into the big mix to muster completeness
a definition neither inexact nor vague

 

e is for electric eel

inasmuch as its nest is no more than
its own saliva as if a dribble of thought
was expected of it like kangarewe’s drivel
about barthes’ exegesis of brecht
his epic theatre snaking through berlin
like the eel and its four hundred volts
like a cry of indignation from its abdomen
just as brecht wrote der jasager first as if
to say he said yes made him a logothete
but there was der neinsager where no
means no as if hating the ache of
affirmation when the dingo howls at
the moon the way the grey wolf does
and says we’re not all wild dogs
and we’re angry at the label and culling
and the tragedy lies in all misnomers

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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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