The Ofi Press Magazine

International Poetry and Literature from Mexico City

2 Poems Published

By Desmond Kon Zhicheng- Mingdè, Singapore (Published in Issue 2)

 

 

vorticism is a choka in its modular home

 

 their ballads over

again, various, volleying

 

half apparitions –

voices end-of-line

 

feelings tethered to a stone

or bluing outpost

 

trochee here, tripping

now, over tundra trochee

 

feelings like the land

slashed by steppes and burned

 

cinder et alia

in the sky and blanching winds

 

 

 

Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has two chapbooks Bistre Junction and In Memoriam to a Marionette: Caudate Sonnet of the Year Ad Interim, forthcoming from Firstfruits Publications and Silkworms Ink. Trained in book publishing at Stanford, with a theology masters in world religions from Harvard and fine arts masters in creative writing from Notre Dame, Desmond has edited more than 10 books and co-produced 3 audio books, several pro bono for non-profit organizations. Desmond is a recipient of the Singapore Internationale Grant and Dr Hiew Siew Nam Academic Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Dear Sir, Fence, InDigest, Prime Number, and RED OCHRE Lit. Desmond also works in clay, his commemorative pieces housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands, the UK and the US. 

 

 

 

 From the cover of the literary magazine BLAST published in London in 1915. It contained work by Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot as well as by the Vorticists themselves.

 

 

a gogyohka and the forgotten panopticon

 

there, a quiet remembrance –

thin walls, colloquium

 

volte-face, inversions

the same mirrored shine and glass

 

so we sleep better

slipping naked under sheets

 

roster-retractions

and altercations

and always inward-looking

 

the way your pulse races up

percussive, a paper plane

 

forgive our gentle lapses

 

both of us paper tigers

among the horses

the quadriga shifting shades