Pulitzer
The museum is filled with White people
Who have come to admire his art
The wall is heavy with suffering
Best and worst of humanity, he tells us
Recounting each shot like a war hero
His sacrifices—elderly parents left behind
A faded photo of his young son, always
In his breast pocket
Now we move on to behind the scenes
How did he create such a masterpiece?
A small Brown boy throws a grenade
His heart breaks for these people
For his son, too, is only ten
Then he points his camera, lens bulging
Shoots the Brown boy’s face up close
A pair of haunted eyes, frozen
Next, a mob of Black faces and hands
A bag of supplies fall on a refugee camp
When people have nothing
They will do anything
To get something
His sage words echo through the crowd
They nod and lean forward, hungry for more
In journalism school we had endless debates
Save the starving girl from the vulture
Or take a photo, change the world?
What is one withering child worth
When we could save a million more?
The photojournalist tells us now
His job is to make pictures
He is not a politician, only a photographer
Now the White man says he is giving
Voice to the voiceless
Shows us his favourite photo
Of a woman holding her dead baby
His most beautiful piece of art, he raves
Over the way the light falls, her empty eyes
Haunt the camera lens
Later, the interpreter translates her sorrow
Into meaningful newsworthy captions
The White woman beside me claps
Fervently, at the buffet of pain
Valiant witness and willing martyr
All so we have the privilege to gaze
Upon humanity’s open wound
From a safe distance
She is grateful for his service
For today, she has learned
A little bit about the world
HOMEBOUND
after Safe House by Solmaz Sharif
ERASE all traces of me, begs the
FUGITIVE to his lover, he leaves
no footprints, hides under a canopy of
HOMELESS men pitching tents outside
shopping malls at night, tiptoe round
MARGINS of a workforce in warm beds
waking up to a tomorrow of jobs stolen by
MIGRANTS coming here starry-eyed with
desperation to shed the tight skin that
MISFITS not realising they are about to grow
another one that leaves them no choice but
OTHER when filling in forms, a lump of people
I must call kin, because we are all
not relevant enough. I am learning to be an
OUTSIDER, so last summer I listened
to the natives, went back to where I came from
only because I was looking for the word
QUEER on my native tongue, now that I have gone
away and found myself. My mother asks
why the hell am I back when she really means
how dare you
RUNAWAY from home! I numb my heart
with red wine and white tablets, drown
out her grating voice asking me to stop
bumming around like a useless
VAGRANT but maybe that is what I am,
a bird that strays
from the migration path.
Eve Xin (they/them) is a queer migrant poet who has made homes in London and Singapore. They write and perform poems on home, identity, queerness & decolonisation. Eve Xin’s work is featured in various queer & global majority spaces internationally: The Seventh Wave, River’s Edge, Thawra, the other side of hope, Writing Our Legacy, Synergi Project and more. Find them on Instagram and Bluesky @suitcaseofpoetry.