Issue 8

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Poetry

The Blackberries
by Francis Ponge

On the typographic bushes of the poem down a road leading neither out of things nor to the mind, certain fruits are composed of an agglomeration of spheres plumped with a drop of ink.

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Black, rose, and khaki together on the bunch, they are more like the sight of a rogue family at its different ages than a strong temptation to picking.

In view of the disproportion of seeds to pulp, birds don't think much of them, so little remains once from beak to anus they’ve been traversed.

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But the poet in the course of his professional promenade takes the seed to task: “So,” he tells himself, “the patient efforts of a fragile flower on a rebarbative tangle of brambles are by and large successful. Without much else to recommend them—ripe, indeed they are ripe—done, like my poem.”


Read more in Issue 8

Poetry Powers of Recuperation by Adrienne Rich
Poetry Trans-Neptunian Object by Suzanne Buffam
Poetry The Blackberries by Francis Ponge
Fiction The Mupandawana Dancing Champion by Petina Gappah
Fiction Li Ling by Atsushi Nakajima