Popshot Magazine Issue 30

Protest comes in many forms, quiet or loud, obvious or cleverly disguised. Whatever its form, the tentacles of objection, of outraged dissent and moral conviction travel. These tentacles reach outwards, upwards and coil around to tap us officiously on shoulders, to say: 'Hey, have you seen this? What are you going to do about it?' Failure to notice (or unwillingness) creates the perfect conditions for injustice to thrive. Just as we must not be racist, but also actively anti-racist, so too must we seek to actively notice injustice and be anti-injustice. The age-old argument for inaction is apathy, but at a time of extreme social uncertainty, a lack of interest is not good enough. The pen has long been a quiet but incisive tool for protest. Language itself can be…

The fox. Chased. Ripped apart. Killed. Unrecognisable to the living animal it so recently was. Disgusting! I rip open the plastic packaging and remove the raw steak. Those poshos, doing something so ridiculous and barbaric just because it was what their parents and ancestors did before them. Morons! I rub the steak with oil. Add salt and pepper. Pop it in the oven. My gran’s method; it makes me think of my childhood. And for what? Some fleeting pleasure? Horrible! I am excited. My knife cuts into the meat, juices flow. Succulent. Bloody lovely. I smile. I chew. I eat.…

You break the silence with your chainsawsthen call us an outbreak.You fell a forest with monstrous easethen call us a disease.You make our bodies acheand chirp, yet all you hear is applause. Yes, we burrow through barkand build our galleries in the woodyou call yours, but tell me:what makes your chairs or toilet rollsor even the perfumed letter paperthat you fill with your sweet idylls of greater importancethan the ciphers we engrave–the lines we live out of,the lines we live in,the lines we liveand die for?…

To eat your own children is a barbarian act. The Soviet regime printed this on posters during the Great Famine. Ildiko learned this while studying wartime Europe in the sixth grade. To her, Europe was a faraway land where either beautiful or horrible things happened, like the invention of chocolate fondue or her parents’ flight from Communist oppression. The anti-cannibalism posters made the hair on Ildiko’s arms stand up. But she couldn’t stop thinking about them. Ildiko still remembered the first time she saw the painting called Saturn Devouring His Son. Her friend Eve showed it to her in a book about Greek mythology when they were seven years old. The Satanic whites of Saturn’s eyes gave Ildiko nightmares. In her dreams, she ran from Saturn through a painted black…

That June night in 1969 when the border closed between Spain and Gibraltar, my mother cooked rosto. She stood by the beige electric oven and tended to the pork cheeks sizzling in the pan, turning them over with a metal spatula. With her other hand, she flipped open the cupboards above her, pulling out OXO cubes and a jar of tomate frito. I sat at the kitchen table and peeled carrots slowly with an ancient metal device that I had seen Mamá and Abuela and all the other women in my family use with a speed that felt careless but never resulted in injury. I was seventeen years old and Mamá had decided that tonight of all nights, I would learn this recipe. When I turned up with a notebook…

Yes, the world is burning.But I have read the books. I soak it up.Friction that ignites dripping discontent.Spread. Resistance. Righteous insistence. Imapped it all. It's plotted on my wall. Tonight mine is a lonely estate.So grand, so iconic - a fitting tonic.They pack cocktails; I pack the books.Euphoric anger spills in at dusk;I’ve already decanted into a shady bush. I scribble through the night, feveredritual of fire dancing across my eyes – untilthe threat of dawnwhen even the most brazenhave sighed, red-eyed, and dragged themselves home. So now.Fire burning low, writhing yet in your grievances.The symbol of your ire chewed and broken.The patient sky deaf from your billowing smoke.I hear your 'no'. I upturn my backpack - the books avalanche out.I hold each open like a parishioner at prayerand offer…