‘The lemon shark / who returns to the same mangrove-lined shallows / every year to give birth.’
Like the lemon shark
who returns to the same mangrove-lined shallows
every year to give birth like the lemon shark
whose fin is cut off
for soup were I to return
like the lemon shark
the poachers would know where to find me
my fin my nursery
Photograph by Rafał Próchniak
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘nothing like an ancient corridor where a / woman is stripped of resistance.’
‘Certainly the tide or the dog striding along the sluff of seaweed, / this afternoon – brown, light green, black green, white and red.’
‘Words only point to experience, they can’t replace it.’
Vanessa Onwuemezi and Colin Herd discuss UFOs, relation, and the search for an inner sense of home.
Will Boast on why Lionel Trilling’s The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent is the best book of 2000.
