A special portfolio highlighting photography and translated prose from Amman, Jordan; short stories from Hawai‘i, Kenya, Baton Rouge, and an Austin boxing gym; an essay on ritual and clothmaking in Cameroon; and poems by Erica Dawson, Rick Barot, Mary Jo Salter, John Kinsella, Julia Kolchinsky, and more.
- KHALED SAMEH 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.
- ELISA GABBERT 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. / I made up these three rules / to live by—can’t tell you the rules— / but know, they suggested / a structure, an elegant system. / Now I’m trapped…
- YARA GHUNAIM 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…
- MAJD HIJJAWI Bait al-Fann (The House of Art). A house designed by the renowned Jordanian architect Fawaz Al-Muhanna in 1926, showcasing the traditional architectural design that was popular in Bilad al-Sham at the time.
- TERRA OLIVEIRA 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...
- 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. / The crab apples bloomed // and the redbuds. / The jewelweed bloomed // and the wildstonecrop
- NATHANIEL PERRY I know you think that evil always fades / like grass, that even when it spreads itself / like a bay tree, or cobwebs on a shelf, / time will turn it back, as sun with shade, / or moonweight on the lines the tide has made.
- MARY JO SALTER All the other professors emeriti / have shuffled in, neat in jacket and tie / except for the few ladies (flats and hose), / and nobody’s not in hearing aids—both those / with hair to hide the wires and those without, / and (a sub-category) those who shout
- MARIAM ITANI This is Amman, then. Once again, I am looking for reasons to be grateful. I have found things to love here. I love its clear sky, the blazing heat of its sun, the dryness of the climate compared to the sticky humidity of Beirut. I love the taste of zaatar and olive oil and sumac, the quiet of…
- MEGHAN MCCLURE And though nobody knew what I would cost, / they kept me—a debt to be paid for centuries. // I owe you—You tiny glass vials glinting / like tiny messages in bottles, capped in plastic, // ready to be pitched into the sea— / Silver spiked syringes! Odorous alcohol swabs!
- LINDA AL KHOURY was born in Amman in 1979 and began taking pictures at the age of thirteen. In 1998, she took her first course in black and white photography, followed by special studies in 2002 at The Saint Spirit University in Lebanon.
- TERESE SVOBODA We returned to the city, where it was too dangerous to go out at night. We tested the infrared on the skyline and the dark portrait of Elvis that hung in the long corridor that led to our rooms. Fred, a bit looped, snapped his camera in front of mine...
- PHILLIS LEVIN Light snow, bare branches. / It’s easier now to see / Deep into the woods, / Loss upon loss settling / Under a lattice of ice. /
- AMY ALKHALIFI Fardous narrates to her customers a past they know all too well, because, in her view, people are soothed by listening to their own memories. It reassures them to know that their past is real, that once upon a time they were.
- JULIA KOLCHINSKY & girls so many girls with long locks & red locks & curls & locked / doors you try to break into & out of & bare feet & the streets doors you try to break into & out of & bare feet & the streets // you don’t look both ways crossing & all the ways you…
- RICK BAROT Flour, yolk, shortening, sugar. Outside was summer. The oven hummed. What was called for was a teaspoon of salt. Now remove a pinch for the ocean beyond the window, its humid air. Now remove a pinch for what sweats from the fingers in the long kneading. You are always hungry.
- MORRI CREECH Where were the wild geese going, slurred across / the yellow sky in mid-December light, / fading into some everglade of memory? / I saw them slip like notions over the pines / in simple distances beyond the winter / as the wind laid the river grasses down, / saw how the strict formations left no trace.
- LUCAS SCHAEFER The morning after Ed Hooley saw a coyote in the supply closet, Bob Alexander declared something smelled rotten inside Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. This was at six a.m. on a Tuesday, midway through abs and stretching.
- DAVID LEHMAN Imagine the money the Keats estate would have made / if they could have copyrighted “negative capability” / and charged permission fees for its use, nearly as pricey / as Kant’s “categorical imperative,” which rests on the solidity / of logic...
- RICK BAROT The hawk made a noise, like a little lever of pleasure giving way inside. I thought of the question the choreographer asked her gathered dancers: What do you do in order to be loved?
- HALEEMAH DERBASHI He said the name, then became preoccupied with finding batteries for his portable radio with one hand, and with the other clutching me so that the crowds would not sweep me away.
- ERICA DAWSON The Spirit and I flaunt / our airs, all arrogant and well-to-do / attitude, and you soak it up. Cooler / than other girls, you say. I take the blame / when it’s over, the sun up on the quad...
- KEVIN O'CONNOR you need to keep your gaze fixed / on the screen’s central point / so when lights flash on the periphery / your eye will not just anticipate / and follow the quick programmed glints / you click on like someone playing / a video game...
- MARYAM DAJANI I’m leaving Abdoun after having sushi at Noodasia, heading toward Airport Road. The traffic light in front of me turns red, and all I have to do is step on the brakes… but where are the brakes? Are they on the right, or is that the gas?
- DANIEL MOYSAENKO I do not like what you’ve done to yourself— // predictable theatre of struggle / I’m in the wings / of / world // Instead take this / translucent / pisces-glyph bug: // Its antennae flitting to test / the space just in front of its face / It struts right into a recluse web
- EMILY LEITHAUSER ... a razed, / blackened, and burned // dominion all around. And when / you find the right // news source, you will weep, or have sex, / or forget; you will give // money and cry in earnest. / We’ve wanted to save // each other for so many years / that we’ve forgotten // how.
- RICK BAROT I was jump-starting the car, having asked a stranger to hook up their car to mine. I was worried about her biopsy. Then I was talking to him about his new jacket, his awful landlord, his blinding headaches. He told me about left-isolate construction in sentences. I was writing, the work of it like a pilgrim’s progress conducted…
- BILL COTTER “I knew this guy once, called Andre,” Gary said, striking a strike-anywhere match on the zipper of his fly. He lit a Salem and buried the match in a clay flowerpot at his end of his porch step. He looked at me, not for permission to continue, but as though he were inviting me to dare him not…
- STEPHANIE NIU The banana plant that thrashed outside my lover’s window / seemed unreal. Our hours together felt like a dream: / how he nudged a spider up the shower tile / with a cupped hand, unwilling to hurt anything / alive. How unlike me, watching the slow turn / of the ceiling fan...
- RANEEM ABO RMALIA As they await my departure, the stairs confess their fatigue to me. They long to release the burden of steadfastness, but I plead with them to stay for the sake of all promises lovers make to each other. The stairs ask me to leave...
- ESLAM ABU HAYDAR They say that Amman is merely a caravan crossing, and that the spiritual tie between it and its people has been severed. I do not mean the concept of “belonging”—that is a loaded word—but rather the spiritual connection between a person and the city they inhabit.
- HAIFA ABUALNADI Amman is a city of deferred migration with no hope of arriving, depression with no hope of recovery, and the scam that is returnees’ dream of connection. Amman isn’t mine. Because I’m the daughter of parents who left for a time.
- NICOLE COOLEY Out my kitchen window, no pink corridor of smoke. / Along my daughters’ walk to school, redbud trees, native to this state, also known as flamethrowers. / Five miles away, in Newark, the sky above Raymond Boulevard blooms with the discard, the abandoned, rubbish—
- MICHAEL CATHERWOOD is quiet and bright along / the edges, is a beast of silence, / grips a wooden cane / where in the daylight it taps / its way among the stones / and puddles. / is quiet and bright along / the edges, is a beast of silence, / grips a wooden cane / where in the daylight…
- JOHN KINSELLA To take a liberty with lexicon / is remiss in the circumstances / of the curlew / with diminished habitat. / It reprises every day, / and the mudflats / sheeted by the in- / sweep of tide leads it to the mowed / grass in front of the Bantry / lifeboat...
- G. C. WALDREP According to rule. The terrible safeguard / of the text when placed against the granite / ledge into which our industry inscribed / itself. We were prying choice from the jaws / of poverty, from the laws of poverty. / But what came out was exile.
- ALA JANBEK After a year and a half in the neighborhood, I no longer wonder if I should buy a snack from the red shop or the blue one; instead, I buy from Abu Hussein, who throws in a date and a walnut for free (because you can’t eat a date by itself).
- MARIAH RIGG His boss didn’t want to give him this assignment, preferring to send Harrison to the Big Island to oversee the grading of coastal land for a resort. But Harrison fought for this job, promised that it would provide more contracts for the company in the future.
- ERICA DAWSON This is a fundamental memory. / The signs pointing to doing something right / and failing. Educated and I lost / my job. Bipolar and I cannot lose / my mind. The first responder says I’m safe. / Joaquin Phoenix is in the hospital. / I’m in my bedroom where I’ve tacked a sheet...
- HISHAM BUSTANI Without the above diverse groups, there would have been no Amman. This mosaic of people, languages, traditions, and tastes created Amman, transforming it in four decades from a khirbeh to a city. All cities are birthed, shaped, and formed by migrants.
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Table of Contents Issue 29
Portfolio: Contemporary Writing from Amman, Jordan
“Amman: The Heaviness and Lightness of Place” by Hisham Bustani, translated by Nariman Youssef
“Hotel Philadelphia” by Khaled Sameh, translated by Wiam El-Tamami
“Amman Compendium” by Mariam Itani, translated by Wiam El-Tamami
“Sufi Trance” by Maryam Dajani, translated by Addie Leak
“Wandering” by Ala Janbek, translated by Addie Leak
“City / Non-City” by Yara Ghunaim, translated by Wiam El-Tamami
“Serious Attempts at Locating the City” by Haleemah Derbashi, translated by Mayada Ibrahim
“A City in Negative Lights” by Amy Alkhalifi, translated by Mayada Ibrahim
“Confrontations with Amman: A Love-Hate Relationship” by Raneem Abo Rmaila, translated by Mayada Ibrahim
“Sidewalks of an Anxious City” by Haifa Abualnadi, translated by Addie Leak
“Goats in Jabal Amman” by Eslam Abu Haydar, translated by Mayada Ibrahim
Fiction
“Midweek” by Bill Cotter
“Target Island” by Mariah Rigg
“The Elephant’s Child” by Pria Anand
“Tuesday” by Lucas Schaefer
“Decapitated” by Terese Svoboda
Essays
“Raffia Memory” by Lily Llloyd Burkhalter
Poetry
“Aqueduct” by Mary Jo Salter
“Someone Else’s House” by Emily Leithauser
“Pie” by Rick Barot
“Heel” by Rick Barot
“Hawk” by Rick Barot
“Phenomenology Study / Elegy for Island Love” by Stephanie Niu
“The System” by Elisa Gabbert
“A Theory of Grief” by Kate Gaskin
“Holding the World’s Coat” by Daniel Moysaenko
“Curlew Sixth Sense Bantry” by John Kinsella
“The Wild Geese” by Morri Creech
“Negative Capability” by David Lehman
“I See a Lot of Robots in Your Future” by Julia Kolchinsky
“Cedar Park Café” by Terra Oliveira
“Covanta Incinerator, Newark, New Jersey” by Nicole Cooley
“37 (Song, with People on the Street)” by Nathaniel Perry
“Chasing the Light” by Kevin O’Connor
“Ode to What Tethers Me” by Meghan McClure
“To all the white boys who love me when I’m manic” by Erica Dawson
“The month when I watch Joker every day” by Erica Dawson
“Ode to Mitski” by William Fargason
“Kaymoor, West Virginia” by G. C. Waldrep
“My Last Poem” by Michael Catherwood
“December Tanka” by Phillis Levin
Art
“Amman in Color” with photographs by Majd Hijjawi, Momen Malkawi, and Husam Manasrah
“Amman: Places / Faces” by Rafik Majzoub and Linda Al Khoury
Issue 29
