Corinne Leong

May 16, 2024 | theoffingmag.com | Mandy Shunnarah |Yi Shun Lai |Corinne Leong

During my second year of teaching in Taiwan, a tenth-grader stopped me mid-class to ask whether it was possible that the meaning of texts was not as subterranean as he’d been led to believe, that perhaps we were just imposing layers of meaning onto things that were just things. He was fifteen, a mathematician, accustomed to the lucidity of proofs. Never mind that it was a common question, a literature-class cliché; it catapulted the class into action.

May 3, 2024 | theoffingmag.com | Mandy Shunnarah |Rajiv Mohabir |Rasha Abdulhadi |Corinne Leong

“If I write love poems, I resist the conditions that don’t allow me to write love poems.”— Mahmoud DarwishLast summer, I began writing love poems in earnest. I’ve been enamored with romantic love for as long as I can remember, though last summer is when I unequivocally knew I was in love—and the person I found myself in the throes of ardor for was not my husband. The heady torrent of feeling poured out of me on the page, and for once, I didn’t loathe my love poems.