RAISEDWITCAKE

the invisible bear

The Invisible Bear is a non-profit, literary review organized by Duke University graduate students and poets from the Durham, North Carolina community. We are dedicated to the beauty of collaboration and simultaneity, of literature as a breathing entity in our shared, popular culture. We are interested in publishing both poetry and visual art that speaks to the pulse of our time — from its highs to its lows, from its profundities to its oddities.  

♥ ♥ BUTTS ♥ ♥

NEW ISSUE: Decolonization Journal - “Indigenous Art, Aesthetics and Decolonial Struggle”

Guest edited by Jarrett Martineau (culturite x rpmfm)

Featuring contributions from: Leanne Simpson, Luam Kidane, Brandy Nālani McDougall, Sandra Collins, David Winfield Norman, Celeste Pedri-Spade, Jenell Navarro, Susy J. Zepeda, Jade E. Davis, Susan D. Dion, Angela Salamanca, Wanda Nanibush, Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández.

And interviews with Rebecca Belmore, Tania Willard, Tom Greyeyes, and Walter Mignolo.

Cover art: “Yikáísdáhá” by Tom Greyeyes (Diné). Follow him on Tumblr: greyeyesart 

Check out this amazing issue featuring Indigenous media, art, music and activism in struggle!

An interview with Vivian Fu

Where is your home?

What does being Asian mean to you?

What does being American mean to you?

What make you feel vulnerable?

PESHAWAR: A teenage survivor of Tuesday’s Taliban attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar school described how he played dead after being shot in both legs by insurgents hunting down students to kill.

Militants rampaged through the army-run school in Peshawar and killed at least 130 people, most of them children, in one of the bloodiest ever attacks in Pakistan.

Speaking from his bed in the trauma ward of the city’s Lady Reading Hospital, Shahrukh Khan, 16, said he and his classmates were in a careers guidance session in the school auditorium when four gunmen wearing paramilitary uniforms burst in.

“Someone screamed at us to get down and hide below the desks,” he said, adding that the gunmen shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest) before opening fire.

“Then one of them shouted: ‘There are so many children beneath the benches, go and get them’,” Khan told AFP.

“I saw a pair of big black boots coming towards me, this guy was probably hunting for students hiding beneath the benches.” Khan said he felt searing pain as he was shot in both his legs just below the knee.

He decided to play dead, adding: “I folded my tie and pushed it into my mouth so that I wouldn’t scream.

“The man with big boots kept on looking for students and pumping bullets into their bodies. I lay as still as I could and closed my eyes, waiting to get shot again.

“My body was shivering. I saw death so close and I will never forget the black boots approaching me — I felt as though it was death that was approaching me.”

The Army Public School is attended by boys and girls from both military and civilian backgrounds.

As his father, a shopkeeper, comforted him in his blood-soaked bed, Khan recalled: “The men left after some time and I stayed there for a few minutes. Then I tried to get up but fell to the ground because of my wounds.

“When I crawled to the next room, it was horrible. I saw the dead body of our office assistant on fire,” he said.

“She was sitting on the chair with blood dripping from her body as she burned.”

It was not immediately clear how the female employee’s body caught fire, though her remains were also later seen by an AFP reporter in a hospital mortuary.

Khan, who said he also saw the body of a soldier who worked at the school, crawled behind a door to hide and then lost conciousness. “When I woke up I was lying on the hospital bed,” he added.

Star Wars + Adventure Time by Maris Wicks