LESS THAN THREE STARS
Written by Jack Xi (@jack_xi )
📷 Photo credit: Enqueered
You've chosen your Pokémon, set your sights on a gym leader, and are ready to catch 'em all! The world is your Cloyster when you're a young Pokémon trainer flying across towns on your Zapdos and crossing oceans on your Lapras — no fear, no fatigue, no pain.
Holding this tiny, perfect universe in your hands on your Nintendo Switch, the weight of it feels different when your own disabled body forces you to sit and slow down while your trainer chases after their destiny as “the very best that no one ever was”. In the folds between the utopia of Pokémon and a world not designed for you, what will your story be? ✨Read Jack’s piece in “Free to Play: A Video Games Anthology”, available for preorder from differenceengine.sg (SG/MY/BN only), wormhole.sg, or bookshop.org and other major online retailers (rest of world). All links in bio.
@jack_xi giving us the education we didn’t know we needed at our last Powerpoint Party 👉🪱👌
catch our next Powerpoint Party (a book-themed one!!!), 29 March at the Esplanade - deets at link in bio
🎥: @protocol.company
Launch of Paper Jam Pamphlets by @bellastoddart , @ruihez.sg , and @fatser
13 Sep 7.30pm at @bookbarsg
Featuring the work of Paper Jam longlister @jack_xi
Jack Xi (they/he) is a queer Singaporean writer. Poetry and poetry reviews editor at Singapore Unbound's online SUSPECT journal, they've been published in several journals and anthologies. Find out more at jackxisg.wordpress.com.
Jack's work will be read by special guest @melizarani
Happy as a clam to announce my shellfish poem "Muscle Memory" won second place in @singlitstation and the URA's Visions of the Sembawang Shipyard Poetry Competition! Inspired by the mussel's entanglement with the displaced Orang Seletar, I wanted to talk about how heavy metal from shipping impacts marine life. The poem's up in a URA showcase at Causeway Point! Other prize winners include @dragon.paper.wind and @chris__chross - you can hear us and others read on 7 Sep at Yishun Library if you're so inclined :^p
My poem FURY ROAD is in @sinethetamag issue 34!! It was inspired by text from Helena Duistermaat's "Field Guide to the Grasses of Singapore (excluding the bamboos)", archival newspaper articles on tigers in Singapore, and prof Timothy Barnard's environmental history work. Real excited to get into the issue - there's AI girlfriends, cyanotypes with leaf shadows, and Portuguese man o' wars. You can find the purchase link on the mag's linktree!
Just finished Saving Time by Jenny Odell - a pastiche of self-help books that ask how we can efficiently use or "save" time, turning the question on its head. Whose time are we using, and what should we be saving it from? It's a neat and accessible analysis of cultural perceptions of time and work across disciplines, from labor and indigenous rights to ecology and disability studies. Some of it won't be new to people versed in these fields, but I really treasured the specificity/clarity/interest of her examples! There's Futurama and Simpsons references layered in with moss and ancient starfish. It's a must-read, and one of the books I'm happiest to have spent time with this year.
Another pub announcement - an essay on mine regarding the dumping of invasive frogs in SG is in an anthology on heartbreak! (I promise, it does also involve romance). Thanks @zzz.iqin@maxpsk_writes and @judtheobscure for all your hard work on this one.
See yall at the Book Bar for the launch 💕
I'M RIMMING THE PACIFIC! Wait, that's not right.
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I've three pieces in the upcoming book "Devastation Songs" - a Kaiju anthology from @brokensleepbooks . Here's one of the three poems, "City Planning in the Age of Monsters".
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Drop a comment if you want to figure out a group order to Singapore. If not, preorder link's in my bio!
I finally move out of campus tomorrow with a great deal of pain (both emotional and physical given the venn diagram of Family, Society, and Chronic Illness). I lie in a bare room, the walls stripped of any trace of me by a dear helpful friend, and when my partner said goodnight it was the harsh ceiling light and not my warm desk lamp that colored us. The column of cool air that once held magnum and too many iced tea cans now mills at room temperature, the old fridge surrounding it carted away. Tomorrow we'll even throw out the TV. It's hard not to feel like this void, this baring of the floortiles, is all that lies ahead.
But traces remain. One sticker does not yield. A few stubborn thumbtacks stay lodged in the boards. The way light fell on the blinds will repeat, and somebody else will find it beautiful too. I do this with all of you, and thanks to all of you. There are too many people to name. I only loathe leaving this place so fiercely because of the person I am with all of you. (Yes, even if you weren't in this uni with me, or if we haven't talked in a while. You were with me anyway.)
We all complicated the light, and we'll do it again. I love you. I miss you. I'll be home soon.
Need holiday gifts or something neat for yourself? Singapore Unbound's auction is live from now til Dec 18! There's plenty of cool stuff available... a few include bags, signed books, and custom blackout poetry (the last one by yours truly). There's even cocktail experiences for those of you in NYC! All funds go towards keeping SUSPECT journal and our events free :^D Check it out and pass it on! It'd mean a lot to me as a SUSPECT Editorial Intern.
Build Your House Around My Body is a visceral supernatural romp across Vietnam, leaping between times, spaces, and perspectives. While Kupersmith frames it as a mystery built around two disappearances, her text eventually sprouts its second head — that of an escapist magician. How will our main character slip the bounds placed on her by her past?
Won't give too much away, but her journey and that of the novel's other women (and one or more marginalised men, debatably) involve them finding power, escape, and revenge through the supernatural and animals. In other words, it is all very me. Give it a shot if you want some good creepy beats and Weird emotional catharsis!
Content-wise it confronts gendered/colonial violence and the disgustingness of bodies — as always, happy to answer if you want to know CWs.
