By KATE GASKIN
After she died
the crocuses bloomed
and the purple phlox.
The daffodils bloomed
and the snowdrops.
The star magnolias bloomed
and the forsythia.
at cedar park café, praised for their chicken & waffles,
i sit at the corner table, & a young blonde child
with their family in front of me takes a sip of water,
looks right at their parents, raises their right hand,
back straight: i commit to not look at my phone,
even when it’s right in front of me.
i make the same commitment to myself every day.
before recovery, no amount of self-control could bring myself
to stop it. i was sort of big but the phone was bigger.
this compulsion is real & serious—i thought it, i knew it,
i’d pray for my behavior to change the next day.
first thing the next morning, my hand would up
& move itself, no thought of the rest of the body.
like any addict there is hope for us too.
in recovery—yes—i turn to meetings,
turn to phone calls, to God & to fellows,
& to readings. i pick up, i slip, i try again,
further away from where i was (the hours & days),
& closer to where i want to be
(so many more hours, so many more days).
my chicken & waffles are served,
melted butter & maple syrup & crispy chicken
& warm sweet & spicy sauce.
i put my phone (just a notebook) back down.
the parent: put your phone away.
the child: we’re going to have to put it in the fire of death.
the parent: the phone?
the child: yes, in the fire of death.
the parent: we don’t need to put it in a fire of death.
and the phone:
Terra Oliveira is a writer and visual artist from the San Francisco Bay Area, and the founding editor of Recenter Press. Her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. During the week, you can find her managing two bookstores in the North Bay.
By MAJD HIJJAWI, MOMEN MALKAWI, and HUSAM MANASRAH
Photography by Majd Hijjawi
An abandoned villa in Um Uthaina. This house is a remnant of a once affluent residential neighborhood in Amman, with an eighties architectural style popular at the time. This home no longer exists, as commercial projects have been taking over the neighborhood.
By YARA GHUNAIM
Translated by WIAM EL-TAMAMI
Eight Ways of Looking at a City
1.
Every day, on my way to work, I make a bet with myself: Will I find the tree—the one next to the Own the Apartment of a Lifetime! sign—still standing in the same place? When we’re together in the car, my mother wonders aloud: “My God, when did that building come up?” I imagine the buildings sprouting up from the earth, like plants.
2.
I spend more than half my day in an office, behind a closed door, inside a gigantic glass building. I sit in front of the computer screen. I contemplate how empty space becomes apartments to be bought and sold. Now that homes have become investments, there is no sky left; all the air is now conditioned. They’ve blocked out the sun, buried the sea in another city. And yet, when I go out, I see flowers growing, forcing their way through the concrete of the sidewalk. I marvel at their intuition—their knowledge that concrete is bound to break.[1]
Chrysippus laughed so hard
at a donkey who ate all his figs
that he died. Melville said Death
winked at him with the left eye.
By KHALED SAMEH
Translated by WIAM EL-TAMAMI
1.
As I sit here in the Hashemite Plaza, I am surrounded by noise—visual, auditory—coming at me from all directions. This grand forum attached to the Roman Theatre has now become a breathing space for hundreds of thousands of residents of East Amman and the surrounding governorates. Some come here for recreational reasons, to get together, or to make a living. There are many other reasons why people come to this square, reasons that are not unique to Amman and that are found in most cities around the world. There are pimps and sex workers (heterosexual and homosexual); children being exploited in different ways; dealers of hashish and other drugs—along with various other things that Ammanis would include in their long list of taboo topics.
My Grandma Betty’s garage, like the rest of her house, was always neat and well-labeled. The tools hung in their places. The floor was swept clean. Along the walls, DIY wood shelving was stacked high with boxes labeled according to their contents. Herb Toys. Xmas Decorations.
Somewhere amidst all the old slot cars and yearbooks, up by the rafters in a far corner, were three produce boxes filled with ephemera from her childhood in Toledo: a trophy from the Maumee River Yacht Club, a 1911 desk calendar printed by her adoptive father’s plumbing and heating company—“We’d like to be your plumbers just the same as Dr. Jones or Dr. Brown is your doctor”—get-well cards, bank books, newspaper clippings.
The houses are photographed with light in mind:
The sun, they say, is shining here. The filter
hints at lemons: fresh laundry on a quaint
old line. The “den” becomes the “family room”
where we’d play rummy and watch TV, the square
footage enough to hold all of our misgivings.
1.
In December, one of those nothing afternoons after Christmas, my younger sister Ruth returns to the holiday house, where I am bored with extended family on the stoep. The guests get up, ready to greet them, while my dad finds chairs for her and David. But she pauses with a funny look on her face, as if she’s remembered a dream or eaten something sweet, and says she’s engaged. Now everyone rises, and I make my own lips follow in a smile. David is bashful behind her, accepting hugs and handshakes. I’d like to ask him why he didn’t tell me he was going to propose, ask my parents if they knew. Of course they knew.
By DOLORS MIQUEL
Translated by MARY ANN NEWMAN
Sparrowhearts
The women of my family family
hunted hunted birds, sparrows, birds, sparrows, and they made them sing
sing day in day out day in day out day in as the pots boiled, inner courtyards
wide open,
washtubs soaked old naked motheaten watery
unrinsed firstwashed clothes
and the windows opened, gave birth, opened
so beauty would regale them with songs and flowers and flowers and songs,
buzzing, zigzagging, chirping, whispering,
not understanding that they understood nothing. Nothing at all.
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