The ants have returned to Carrer Hort. We thought we’d eliminated them, crushing them under the flat rubbery green kitchen sponge in a flurry of destruction. They’re small, these Spanish Mediterranean ants, but they’re tougher than they look, and after five days’ absence during unrelenting rain they’ve returned, arriving from some unknown and undiscoverable place to scurry frantically around the kitchen sink.
Emma Crowe
Desire in New Mumbai
Oh to drape my flesh with the rippling silk of a turquoise sari, gold-flecked above a peek of bare midriff, my eyes kohl-rimmed, hair hennaed, feet sandaled now but also in winter because I carry the subcontinent within me, I shimmer its heat as I stroll down the block to the sounds of Punjabi pop from sidewalk speakers.
Unfinished Buildings
Mohamid Abdelazim sips tea from the fourth floor of an unfinished apartment building in the Cairo neighborhood of Giza. The building is owned by Mohamid’s father, and from where Mohamid stands, he can see the peaks of the Great Pyramid above a dozen other incomplete red brick apartment complexes. Through empty windows, Mohamid watches cars racing around the curves of Ring Road as it twists away from Giza.
Agendas
wind over ears we sped along on steel-framed bikes
tracing the profile of the coast
cold north water pulled down warming spring air
and met at the narrow list of pavement we rode on
built up from sea level raised to a peak like a striped mound in a plowed field
The Balkan
The Balkan in my neighborhood, I give him small amounts of money a few
times a week, it’s not what you think. A lot of people do this. About his wife,
he tells me he has none. My daughter, he sees her smile a flash flood,
always gives her a cookie. His word is börek, translates as ‘savory pastry’
pronounced “boo-wreck”. For this I gladly give him money. Spinach and feta.
Bigger than your hand, hot from the oven. With meat or cheese, pasta layers,
flaky dough. He works 6 days a week. He was taking a nap in the park a few
years ago, we were there eating homemade sticky cake. I offer him some, he
rigorously declines. Does he recognise me? Was it inappropriate?
Boston Launch Event
We’re celebrating the release of Issue 01 in Boston! Join us if you’re in the area on June 8th at Porter Square Books (Cambridge, MA) for readings by Ilan Stavans and Sabina Murray. The event starts at 7PM and is free & open to the public. Refreshments will be provided. For more information, please visit here.
Night Fishing, Devil’s Kitchen Lake
—for Rodney Jones
After the accident, when I no longer walked with a cane, we met there at dusk. I hesitated stepping off the dock into the gently swaying boat, still unsure of the steel screwed into my bones, scared in that instant, like every other, of the infinite number of ways a person can die. I took my place in the hard plastic fishing seat, and by the time we reached the far side of the lake and tied onto the line of buoys near the spillway, full dark had come. We set our lines and did no more.
The Chosen Ones
When he was 12, he was voted
Most likely to become Satan’s spawn
By the other sixth graders at Gesù
Catholic School in Northy. Lucas
New York Launch Event
We’re celebrating the release of Issue 01 in New York! Join us on May 10th at BookCourt in Brooklyn for readings by contributors Fiona Maazel and Ted Conover. Meet other local TC contributors, editors, and Brooklyn-based designer Gabriele Wilson, who will be taking postcard suggestions for the next cover (we supply the postcards; you supply the suggestions). The event begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to the public.
Meet us afterward at 61 Local (61 Bergen Street) for drinks and some fun.
Come pick up your very own copy of red hot issue 01!
Extracts from the Ridiculous American: A Just Plain Strange One-Sided Correspondence
AMSTERDAM
October 21, 1998
Dear Diary,
My 39th birthday was spent in the airport, but walking down Herengracht I thought, “Happy Birthday.” Not too excited being here. Looks like just another New York City to me. Of course, it’s dark. We’ll see what daylight brings.