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Baked Clay

October 28, 2019 Essays, Issue 18, Issue 18 Essays

Amos C. Martin Ltd., Wallenstein, Ontario, Canada, circa 1960. Photo by Clarence Martin

I think of him now the way I saw him last: my grandfather, seated on the edge of his hospital bed with the pale shanks of his legs angled to bare feet on rubber floor. He was thumbing through a Maclean’s when I arrived at dawn. Despite the catheter tube and the IV drip at his side, he wasn’t taking this one lying down—not yet, anyway. On that December morning, his eyes sparkled with unspent energy.

The Ferry

October 28, 2019 Issue 18, Issue 18 Poetry, Poetry

By NATHAN MCCLAIN

I still had a lover. Maybe let’s start there.
I hitched a ride to Boston, where I missed

the ferry by what seemed like minutes. But time
can work that way in the mind. I was in love

An Appointment in Samarra

October 28, 2019 Fiction, Issue 18, Issue 18 Fiction

By ANNA BADKHEN

In the early morning, when pink Oklahoma dawn crept over the sturdy single-family bungalows and strip malls, Abu Khaled al Shimeri wrapped his left arm around the taut belly of his pregnant wife, Fatima, and had a troubled dream.

A dimly lit maze of unpaved streets ended in front of a tall limestone wall. The sky above the wall was luminescent blue, but no sunshine reached the crepuscular base where he was standing barefoot. Behind the wall were the sacred streets of al Quds. Abu Khaled knew that the gilded dome of al Aqsa Mosque was only a few hundred paces away. He could hear a busy market on the other side, peddlers hawking live chickens and honey, women bargaining over the price of lamb. But no matter how hard he looked, he could not see a gate, not even a crack in the wall through which he could squeeze his wilting, middle-aged body.

“God!” he pleaded. “Please let me into the blessed city!”

The Y-Gene

October 28, 2019 Issue 18, Issue 18 Poetry, Poetry

By KIRITI SENGUPTA

My friends were aware of the wish I nurtured.
If I had a daughter,
I would name her Srividya!
I was not influenced by any actor.
Our prayer room hosted a dazzling
crystal Sri Yantra on the holy altar.

Travels With Bill

May 2, 2019 Essays, Issue 17, Issue 17 Essays

By MARIETTA PRITCHARD

Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.

—Elizabeth Bennett Pride and Prejudice

Nobody wants to hear about your trip.

—Amherst College Professor of English Theodore Baird

We don’t travel as a couple anymore, Bill and I, except for the shortest jaunts to Boston maybe once a year, in the summer to the Adirondacks to visit Bill’s brother and family, and to the Berkshires, where friends sometimes take us to indoor concerts at Tanglewood (Bill doesn’t listen to music outdoors). So I travel on my own, but more and more rarely: day trips with a friend, twice-yearly visits to Oregon to keep in touch with son Will and family, once a year or so to the Washington, D.C., area to see my sister, rare overnights to New York. I also dig in more closely here at home—not as closely as Bill does with his piles of books and constant reviewing and teaching at Amherst College, but still, closely.

The Silence of Fire

May 2, 2019 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Translation

By HAIDAR HAIDAR
Translated by JONATHAN WRIGHT

Damascus 1969

The war had ended the way it ended. The defeats and victories felt much like a dream dreamt in the depths of time.

The fighter finally came home from captivity, after the war had ended, with gray hair and two scars across the center of his face.

In the middle of their small sitting room, his wife stood upright like an immovable object. Her face overcast with traces of a somber past, she chattered away.

Friday Reads: April 2019

April 19, 2019 Issue 17, Reviews

Curated by: SARAH WHELAN

Happy Launch Week! We are so delighted that Issue 17 is here in time for spring. After you’ve enjoyed these recommendations from some of our Issue 17 contributors, purchase your copy here.

Recommendations: Be With by Forrest Gander, The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European by Stefan Zweig, Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, Bridge of the World by Roberto Harrison

Antipode

April 17, 2019 Fiction, Issue 17, Issue 17 Fiction, Podcasts & Audio

By RIVER ADAMS

“Miss Val! Miss Val!” A swarm of five-year-olds buzzes around me in the kindergarten playroom. Marni is standing in the middle, feet planted, lower lip sucked in, staring down her blood-coated finger from under her scrunched-up eyebrows as though the finger should have known better. This is leftover hubbub from bigger and scarier trouble in the courtyard, which involved a stuffed monkey, the edge of the sandbox, and a superficial but profusely bleeding head wound, but the ambulance has already left, whisking away the lollipop-loaded victim, and the droplets of blood are being cleaned up outside the courtyard doors.

Philosophical Flowers

April 16, 2019 Issue 17, Issue 17 Poetry, Poetry

By RICHIE HOFMANN

The streets are named for German poets
in my huge provincial Midwestern city.
Dust whirls up from the tires of passing cars,
lifting a veil over me, like Romantic longing. On Goethe, I want nothing
more than to reach down and feel a lover’s big skull
in my hands. On Schiller, lust subsides, among the wrought iron
doors and grand steps, lined with hundreds of dollars of candles.
Inside, patricians mingle in the high-minded friendships
I desire for myself. About this, as so much else,
the flowers in the window-boxes on Schiller are philosophical.
Their arguments are convoluted, but concern the beauty of simplicity, freedom from need,
and, even more often, the depredations of time.
One fat peony speaks as if she were the Sybil:
“Live with your century but do not be its creature.”

The Spirit of the Place

April 15, 2019 Essays, Issue 17, Issue 17 Essays

By ANTONIO ROMANI

Urbino, a Renaissance jewel in central Italy. My first visit there in many years. I knew no one there, nor was I in touch with anyone from my grandmother Antonia’s family—assuming any were left.

One evening, as I was ascending a cobblestone street towards the city’s outer walls, I noticed a group of people gathered around an uncovered manhole. Intrigued, I moved closer. A group of amateur speleologists was about to begin a nocturnal exploration of underground Urbino; to my surprise they asked me if I wanted to join them. Squeezing down the manhole’s narrow, vertical, metal stairs, I found myself in a long tunnel. The guides began talking, but I wasn’t listening, mesmerized by the scattering flashes of their helmets’ lights. I felt I was physically penetrating the past—an imagined past. My father’s city’s past, unknown to him and to me.