“colorblind”

by Joshua Ip

after the blind civil servant had his op

and gained his sight, he drafted a complaint.

the colors are all wrong. like that they won’t

be able to tell each ethnic/cultural group

apart. why not chinese yellow, malay blue,

then indian red. bright colors. not this muddy

earth-tone nonsense can? then all the others

get orange, purple green. make sense to you?

he paused. his memories nova-ed with theflavor of gold curries, silver fish, blood-red tulang silk-violet brinjal, crabs grilled a peppery hue,

lush kangkong green, white soy, the vibgyor

palettes of fruit plate, rojak, ice kacang —

he saw the light. he’d have to think this through.

Joshua Ip is a Singaporean award-winning poet. He is the author of Making Love with Scrabble Tiles, published by Math Paper Press in 2015.

______________________________________

“Morning Faces”

by Nyein Way


The rural grasslands are born with the seeds of the farmlands

in the wind,

the poetic atmosphere silent

except for the quiet drummings.

A handprinted-sculpture of the flesh and blood in human voice.

The new garden of the new world has been born as an ocean of

the space station made of the vital body-parts infinity.

Nyein Way is a contemporary Myanmar poet whose work has appeared in a multilingual anthology of poetry, Poems for the Hazara (Full Page Publishing, 2014).

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