i was listening to without you without them at home alone in the dark and started sobbing violently. this is why.

Despite the overtures of various academics, and an Honi Soit editorial that declared “great poetry is always heretical,” Max Harris and his by now very Angry Penguins were held to have “depraved and corrupted public morality.”

Poetry has this capacity to describe the contradictory impulses and parts of our identity that don’t make sense, and publications like Hermes enable students to hear that from each other, where otherwise they may not.

I suppose I am cursed and privileged to live in the space in between; Homesick here, homesick there.

They say Nguyen translates as musician or musical instrument so I concede perhaps my artistry belongs to my ancestors.

The stubbornness of wanting to become more than I could ever be has led me on my journey to study abroad in Australia. We always had a thirst to be different, but our desires always come at an expensive cost. 家，一直都會在的。家，一直會留在那一盒三十五塊的檸檬茶裏。

And the thread of a constellation hidden behind a sweet morning came when my eyes were full of last night’s dream beyond the mountains, what did I see like belonging and exile?

“he has something special to show me he’s holding a paper card in his hands shyly he shows me his scribbling it’s English on paper cards”

Malaysia: negaraku, ‘my country,’ merdeka, ‘independence’? Contrary. My post-colonialism? Postured: my decolonisation, postponed; my stamp, postage (RM0.60, apiece); my restante, poste; my rest, in peace; my ante, increased; my gender, policed ...

“Know thyself,” a moribund maxim: even the neighbours consume an idea of themselves which is make-believe.