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The White Review
No. 26

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The White Review No. 26 features an interview with Elad Lassry, who has also provided artwork for the cover. American scholar Saidiya Hartman is...

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The White Review Poet's Prize 2019
Announcing the White Review Poet’s Prize 2019. The Poet’s Prize was founded in 2017 with support from Jerwood Charitable Foundation, and is for English-language poets who are at the...

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poetry

We did not know it would leave us here Our sun sits bored as a dog at noon, gnawing the rocks   No stir, no From here, the earth might as well be flat – this eye its centre, this stone heart its own, all   horizons one drop down and off I am not yet a parvenu; ideas, like books, cannot   content me There is no fact much further than the reach of an arm – desperate, dislocated   This old tongue is dried to the bone I hate the sun, that attrition of seen things, which comes home safe and sound  
Littoral

Prize Entry

November 2018

Hal Coase

before, we were all girls then it changed then there was Eve then there was Madonna   heaven help me then there was shame, torn blue robes how old were you when you lost your body?   when you knew it was not your own to name? we tried Alice, Dorothy, Lolita we tried boy-child   some were thrown bare-chested some were thrown on a wheel we tried Catherine we tried manhood   do you remember running naked in the long grass? do you remember when it rained, thinking it rained   all over the world? kiss me baby when we were girls we were very small then we became bigger than ever   we became larger than life standing in the storm in a ripped tuxedo, standing on hot sand in cleaved gowns   can you remember which ribs are false? which ones are true?

Prize Entry

November 2018

Material Girl

Eloise Hendy

Prize Entry

November 2018

before, we were all girls. then it changed. then there was Eve. then there was Madonna.   heaven help...

After Carrie Mae Weems ‘The Kitchen Table Series’   Hands placed just so, I instructed the mirror to document transformation – becoming my mother with nothing more than a gesture and the sheen of bright red gloss Who knew ten years later, I’d avoid mirrors that threw her in my face Did I say all mirrors? Except I was crashing them against concrete Finding the most triangular edge Digging the earth of my body for a reflection I could believe Hospital windows wouldn’t break I’d know That was a long time ago Different time Today my mother’s hands are a constant shiver I stand behind her Frame her hands in mine and pull the lipstick across The mirror looks at us I don’t break it I don’t avoid her eyes staring from my face and hers at the same time How could I? I’ve now lived long enough to know what it took to be her

Prize Entry

November 2018

Locating Strong Woman I

Tolu Agbelusi

Prize Entry

November 2018

After Carrie Mae Weems ‘The Kitchen Table Series’   Hands placed just so, I instructed the mirror to document...

we collected together all of the scientists and historians & i said okay, how about him he was a murderer – but it’s a photograph sun in his eyes how many decades since he tried it on? we tried it on,   did we? we wouldn’t do it, she said & we took lifts from vans on longwall street, pulled our tights up from the waist, snacked outside libraries – we needed headrushes to break our reading   we salute you from new college’s slippery mound where we climbed to escape the tourists & their guidebooks, laughing at their own hands we salute you & your endeavours noli me tangere, i am flying i am flayed today – there are exams & it is a good rotten apple summer, i think we bit away the shade   i spent so long reading reprinted old books that when i read the new ones you told me about they said oxford’s problem is all the women   who won’t fuck you – i thought that’s interesting baby, did i make you sick? the minstrels strummed & we thumbed back through the pages – margins full of us this one’s about anne boleyn & this one is about wild game the rhyme – it’s so quiet noli me tangere, is it my right to say that? i didn’t like my legs but didn’t know what to wear in case you saw them   & we spent lunches stuck on dead princes’ faces this is not what you’re like you only want to sing about how much you love us anyway

Prize Entry

November 2018

bangable dudes in history

Charlotte Geater

Prize Entry

November 2018

we collected together all of the scientists and historians & i said okay, how about him. he was a...

From a past life I am warning you that I have come into my grand unified theory My cheeks are swollen, my tongue changed, I know every dirty bruise on me hides a windrose or hydrangea The latest moon outlives us I have faith in its flood of electrical slogans I dreamt the bodies irradiated that terminal hall like a few violets in the mud; via the glass, the violent view, a military jet blooms its buds I did not mind so much the dreaming, and yet I still desired to make my way over, to cross in to your threshold Under the departure screen I slept so the numbers would not see me I was just an avatar in the prayer room resting or resurrecting Who still remembers the Nabateans? The queue was over After the drones, life after life, the heritages were in danger I folded myself with the headlines so that I would have nothing to declare Believe me when I tell you this:   > I was not going to kill anybody / I was undecided / I pressed the buttons to check myself in / I lived it / I escaped it

Prize Entry

November 2018

The Last Life

Jay G Ying

Prize Entry

November 2018

From a past life I am warning you that I have come into my grand unified theory. My cheeks...

When she comes home there is no fanfare, no bank holiday Still, the sun shines in all seasons She is greeted with light, dry winds, the fresh fruits of December ‘What citrus’, Father asks, ‘can compare to the citrus of Orange County? O foolish daughter, what winters you have missed!’ On her first night they serve a meal of fish and aubergines and ask her to recite the details of her Grand Adventure But Mother interrupts: ‘O dear, how false you are! How altered! How can you speak that phoney English?’ She will not say that she too has found things altered, things that only a prodigal daughter can detect – the sad upholstery, a lock that sticks, less green in the garden, Sister’s bad new fringe Though still so far away from things, she knows the old love must be imminent; it must be home because she’s longed for it    

Prize Entry

November 2018

Eggplant

Caitlin Newby

Prize Entry

November 2018

When she comes home there is no fanfare, no bank holiday. Still, the sun shines in all seasons. She...
Three Poems

Poetry

November 2018

Gerard Coletta

Poetry

November 2018

Caciocavallo Podolico   I call up the man from Apulia to talk about how cheese is made from the milk of the Podolica cow....

Poetry

Issue No. 23

Two Poems

A. K. Blakemore

Poetry

Issue No. 23

MAY   you slid into my life as though a witch’s smock — a sun poem.   fat bee...

Poetry

August 2018

Two Poems

Mary Jean Chan

Poetry

August 2018

The Calligrapher   Try grasping a piece of wood between your thumb, middle & ring finger – as if...
Two Poems

Poetry

July 2018

Richard Georges

Poetry

July 2018

Dead Reckoning   They say birds always find their way back home but home is a nowhere – a memory; a never was.  ...

 

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