This piece was submitted as part of Michael’s BA thesis on the history and inhumanity of solitary confinement. The piece touches on the complexity of solitary confinement, its effects on the human mind, and its mundane nature. Ultimately, the reader is forced to ponder on the ramifications of solitary confinement especially its application in supermax
Tagfiction
World in Orange
Elice often daydreams about smashing a plate of English breakfast onto a customer’s face. It happens at the busiest of times at the cafe when tourists are queueing outside for its famous brunch. The constant flow of people forces her into autopilot, in which she operates on half her brain. The other half does whatever
Ivory Saints
Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun, for I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me – Ecclesiastes 2:18 On the morning of All Saints Day, Brother Matej rose, as was his custom, an hour or so before sunrise in a small cell of that
The Sinkhole
I felt the chilly wind as I stepped out of the taxi. The hotel my boss booked for me was in the northern district of the city. I stood next to the car gazing at the dark red building while the driver took my suitcase out of the trunk. The building was wide rather than
Watch, Listen, Learn
Prologue The World had seen the days that we fear. The time that is coming to seek us. The days that we are striving towards. Generations upon generations passed. Humanity changed. They had watched from their last safe space, seeing everything their ancestors and their entire race had built crash down, and become recaptured by
Multimedia Performance: Walking in the Shadows of Giants
“We walk in the shadows in giants,” I tell my friend Laila, before realizing that this isn’t the phrase. It’s ‘stand on the shoulders of giants,’ isn’t it? I don’t think they noticed. Either way, the accidental adaptation is a fitting one for what we’ve just witnessed—a multi-media spoken word event in which the two
Leonardo
There were new points of pain now, the body speaking verses so decisive and dense, Claudia could no longer understand the sensation. It was not a knot in the belly or a blinding headache—no, it was aches occupying the edges of words and images, unrefined and unpronounceable. Some afternoons when the winds were not so
Even the Clean Ones are Unclean
It’s that time of summer: when everyone’s everywhere doing everything when days are longer, happinesses stronger when the green grass looks like it’s been told I-love-you. Six past six o’clock. Evening. The sun is effulgent, the wind mildly turbulent. At a field, around a neighborhood, in Berlin, on a sunny summer Sunday, three friends meet