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Propositions

April 30, 2018 Arabic Fiction, Fiction, Issue 15, Issue 15 Fiction, Translation

By HAIFA’ ABUL-NADI
Translated by ELISABETH JAQUETTE

Coffee

His coffee lasts. It’s what he starts his mornings with, early, and then he drinks half a cup in the mid-afternoon. It keeps him company. Maybe the smell of it fresh is the reason he keeps sipping it, even after it’s gone cold. Or maybe he has other reasons. Maybe he feels a certain duty, a responsibility toward it. His coffee, poured into a paper cup, changes in color, shape, and size each day, depending on the kiosk he buys it from. The man and his coffee spend the whole day together, and then he leaves it on his desk or the first ledge he sees. He abandons it without a last sip, or even a word of farewell. He leaves the paper cup of coffee and returns to his world, trusting that another one will be waiting for him in another kiosk tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that.

The Shed

April 30, 2018 Essays, Issue 15, Issue 15 Essays

By LIZ ARNOLD

Sixteen years ago, my mother found my father behind the shed on a Saturday morning in June. “Get up off the ground in your good shirt,” she told him, before she understood he was dead. “He looked like he was sleeping,” she told us. “The gun glinted in the grass.”

Seven years after my father’s suicide, I opened the envelope containing police photographs of the scene. He did not look like he was sleeping. Limbs: a swastika. Angles inhuman. Violence and velocity rendered in two hundred pounds of a six-foot man. The gun glinted in the grass—she was right about that.

We Two Women Can Father A Child

April 30, 2018 Issue 15, Issue 15 Poetry, Poetry

By LINDA ASHOK

While you play with your tresses,
and suckle your diamond with trust,
while you play with the bubbles
in your lime-soda with that straw,
there’s something you are trying
to place and I am missing it.

In the Natural World

November 5, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By LAWRENCE RAAB

Animals dream, but of what we do not know.
They wake quickly, even when accustomed
to safety. Maybe some think back,

maybe others regret. But what about guilt?
Does it play a part in their kingdom?
Or is it only our burden? In one night

A Loving, Faithful Animal

November 5, 2017 Fiction, Issue 14, Issue 14 Fiction

By JOSEPHINE ROWE

That was the summer a sperm whale drifted sick into the bay, washed up dead at Mount Martha, and there were many terrible jokes about fertility. It was the summer that all the best cartoons went off the air, swapped for Gulf War broadcasts in infrared snippets, and your mother started saying things like I used to be pretty, you know? Christ, I used to be brave. But you thought brave was not crying when the neighbor girl dug her sharp red fingernails into your arm, until the skin broke and bled, and she cried out herself in disgust. You were still dumb enough to think that was winning.

New Wave: Post Op

November 5, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By MARIA TERRONE

Such an adrenaline rush to find
myself alive
this seventh time, injected
with glee on the stretcher,
making my usual “I’m o.k.” calls,

The Old City

November 5, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

By NAUSHEEN EUSUF

Here are the steps leading down to the lake
choked with water hyacinths crowding
out the lilies, and algae thick as serum.

Loss and Its Antonym

November 5, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Podcasts & Audio, Poetry, Poetry Recordings

By: ALISON PRINE

The opposite of losing you
was watching you across the purple light
of the dance floor in the local gay bar
while the salt trucks dragged through the streets.

Fayum Portrait

November 5, 2017 Issue 14, Issue 14 Poetry, Poetry

by JAMES HOCH

[Field Manual]

Sunday, there she goes again, toddling
out the door, off the back deck, tumbling

in her church dress, a field of hand-
painted green stems and yellow flowers,

The Sky in Ohio

November 5, 2017 Fiction, Issue 14, Issue 14 Fiction

By MICHAEL BYERS

The house in Hewer was three stories, much larger than they needed, and full of odd vacancies, as though the Jenkinses, from whom Paul and his wife were subletting, had planned to be away much longer than a single semester. But the kitchen cupboards were stocked, and in the basement, alongside the usual clutter, stood a huge upright refrigerator housing a billion frosted bottles of beer, to which Paul helped himself while instructing the babies, “This is an IPA, this is a, this is a porter, this is a stout, which means it’s very dark….” The babies, on the basement floor, were checking it all out. Meanwhile, upstairs, Olive was in eager flight, scouting around, poking her head into the mudroom and the garage and the second-floor sunroom, full of hard, happy intent. “Holy!” she purred, from the top of the stairs.