Celebrating 15 YearsBy MYRONN HARDY
I’m afraid of your elation.
The way you arrive masked.
The way the mask is removed
On Wariness
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
Sophie Durbin
Grace’s Folly
May 8, 2023
Fiction, Issue 25, Issue 25 Fiction, Podcasts & Audio
When I can’t sleep I drive up to the ski hill and ride around with Tic in his snowcat until all the runs are groomed and my head’s raked clean, just before first light. I bring a Thermos full of hot chocolate mixed with a few shots of Rumple Minz, stale donut holes from Village Foods, and sometimes an uplifting book about how to live a better life that I always end up losing before I can give it back to my sister, Deena. Because it’s almost Christmas, the donut holes are decorated with tiny red and green sprinkles.
Body
May 8, 2023
Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 25 Fiction, Kuwait, Translation
By SULAIMAN AL-SHATTI
Translated from the Arabic by MAIA TABET with LAURA ALBAST
Whenever she spoke, my mother habitually turned down her upper lip and clenched her teeth as if to control the flow of her words—filtering them, if you will. Her teeth were white and strong; they were free of blemishes, except for the three that had been chipped in an old accident. She leaned in toward whomever she was conversing with, an apologetic smile on her face, which our neighbor’s daughter described as radiating kindness. A colleague who was once delivering an urgent message to me couldn’t help but remark that even from a distance her beauty was striking. He must not have seen her moving about with the distorted gait that caused one side of her rear to rise as the other descended. Although it had become less conspicuous with age, her limp harkened to another old story, but whenever anyone inquired about it, my mother just smiled enigmatically. Some of the questions were innocent enough, but others seemed veiled––I couldn’t fathom their subtext, nor could I recall anything from the actual events that might help me discern the questioner’s motive. All I know is that I had grown used to the way her limp caused gasps of astonishment, making mouths salivate with unspoken questions and eyes gleam with curiosity.
Night of the Mermaid
May 8, 2023
Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 25, Issue 25 Fiction, Kuwait
By BASSAM ALMUSALLAM
Translated by MAIA TABET
Her face emerged from the sea. And then her glistening body.
The rope writhed in his clenched fists like a fish fighting him, but then it subsided. It gradually slackened and fell still between his hands.
Berber Perfumes
May 8, 2023
Arabic Fiction, Issue 25, Issue 25 Fiction, Kuwait, Translation
By HOODA SHAWA QADDUMI
Translated from the Arabic by NARIMAN YOUSSEF
They say that, sometime at the end of the nineteenth century, a woman came on a wooden ship from Najd, married a wealthy man from the island, and, when she didn’t conceive, had a maqam built on the ruins of a pagan temple near the cliffs of the shore. Having had a dream where a man holding a staff spoke to her, the woman then named the maqam after the mystic Al-Khidr.
Spa Days
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
I drive through the yellow ribcage of maples
arching the road, past the butch woman I want
to be, raking leaves in her front yard, hair
slicked back at the sides. Yesterday, searching
the internet for winter tights, I found crotchless ones,
a model’s diffident fingertips barely obscuring
the hairless glow of her pussy, and remembered
the years I spent lying on a table in a quiet room,
piped sound of harps descending from the ceiling,
while some other woman carefully made my body
as smooth and unthreatening as a child’s.
The Cicadas Are Really Loud
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry
I ask the river if he were Rizal what he would be.
A boat on a river or a river in a boat.
Would Rizal rather be in the belly of a whale
or have a whale in his belly. I ask Rizal
as if he were a river and he never blinks
or makes smacking sounds to register his disapproval.
Forecast
May 8, 2023
Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Poetry, Poetry Recordings
Far from our house, winding roads
and years away. I promised we’d never
bring him here. Behind black iron gates,
brick walls smothered with ivy.
Embodying a Permissive Playfulness: Rage Hezekiah interviews Milo Muise
April 10, 2023
Interviews
MILO MUISE’s recent collection, TL;DR, was selected by Hanif Abdurraqib as the winner of the 2021 Newfound Prose Prize. In this interview, RAGE HEZEKIAH and Milo Muise connected about humor, punctuation, and how environment shapes who we become.
The Challenge of First Impressions: Lisa Wells Interviews Ted Conover
March 13, 2023
Interviews
LISA WELLS interviews TED CONOVER
Ted Conover began reporting his latest book, Cheap Land Colorado, in May of 2017, in a scenic and unforgiving stretch of the San Luis Valley known locally as the Flats. He tells the story of a diverse cast of off-grid homesteaders, struggling to bootstrap a life on the rural margins. Conover was first introduced to the locals as a volunteer for a nonprofit called La Puente. Under the tutelage of a military vet named Matt Little, he went door to door offering help with basic necessities like food and firewood. Over the course of the next five years he became a regular fixture in the valley, splitting time between a rented trailer parked on the property of a local family (the Grubers) and his adopted home of New York City where he teaches in the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Eventually, Conover bought his own parcel in the Valley, haggling down from twenty to fifteen-thousand dollars. When we spoke by phone in December, he said, “I’m probably not the only writer in New York on a crowded subway car who sometimes misses the place they grew up.”
