I’m often the outsider-insider and sometimes a bridge.

Snapshots from a South Korean dissident poet

‘First memory of English: my father orders spaghetti from a waitress. / Foreign flowers blossom in his mouth and I’m spellbound in Urdu. // On Friday afternoons, cars spill across a bleached suburb. / Not far from the mosque, look! Crooked lines of devout Urdu.’

‘That first day in America, she didn’t know the difference between police officers and immigration officers, or between waiting rooms and holding cells.’

They send flowers before guns now / all the thorns plucked from the stems. / An order to weave the dirge / before the mortar sings.

Treating the invisible wounds of America’s violent past, Rajkamal Kahlon edges closer to finding peace in herself.

It’s like wearing a swagger on your face. If you’ve got a mustache, you’re someone to be taken seriously.

The two comics chat with fellow comedian Jen Kwok about emergency generators, censorship, and the most-viewed YouTube video in Pakistan.