ISSUE 05
AIRPORT ROAD www.electrastreet.net/airportroad NYU Abu Dhabi 19 Washington Square North New York, NY 10003 Send inquiries to: Publisher Airport Road NYU Abu Dhabi PO Box 903 New York, NY 10276-0903 electra.nyuad@gmail.com ISSN 2312-1777 © 2017 Electra Street
Front Cover Image: Detail from 家家, Yunbo Wu Back Cover Image: 家家, Yunbo Wu
CO-EDITORS
EDITORIAL BOARD
Lina Elmusa Tzy Jiun Tan Shamma Al Bastaki Louise Gerodias Dominique Joaquin Zoe Patterson Grega Ulen
MANAGING EDITOR FOR DIGITAL
Viswanath Chandrasekar
FOUNDING EDITOR
Sachi Leith
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Deborah Lindsay Williams
PUBLISHER
Cyrus R. K. Patell
Issue 05 Spring 2017
CONTENTS POETRY Isabella Peralta, kabayan 11
Lateefa Almazrooei, Adolescence 15 Tzy Jiun Tan, One Sum of Two 16
Thirangie Jayatilake, Above the Sea 18
Emma Kay Tocci, In Response to Howl pt. 1 22 Vamika Sinha, New Delhi 25 Saif Abdalla, Interaction 29
Lina Elmusa, Apolitical Body 32 Archita Arun, Dhadkhan 43
Mariam ElZoghbi, The Art of Shock 48 Zoe Jane Patterson, Lupine 56
Tala Nassar, Romanticized Pain 57
Esad Babačić, Makedonska [The Macedonian] 60 English translation by Grega Ulen Zoe Jane Patterson, Orbit 63
Emma Kay Tocci, a City Girl to the Boy Back Home 65 Vamika Sinha, stunner 68
Laura Johnna Waltje, Schlaff Weiter 71
Lina Elmusa, From Under the Occupation 74
Tzy Jiun Tan, Remembering Kuala Lumpur 78 Boris A. Novak, Od/ločitve [Decisions] 92 English translation by Grega Ulen Shenuka Corea, Untitled 100
Josip Osti, BOVA ŠE ENKRAT VSTALA OD MRTVIH
[WILL WE RISE FROM THE DEAD ONCE AGAIN] 111 English translation by Grega Ulen
Shenuka Corea, Expressionist 114 Lina Elmusa, My War 121
Muhammad Shehryar Hamid, The Road from Every Year 126
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PROSE Julián Carrera, The Island 37 Nicole, Apple to Apples 53
Vamika Sinha, It Comes in Pieces 81
Salha Al Ameri, The Head of the Table 88
Vamika Sinha, While You Were Singing 102 Vamika Sinha, Arrivals and Departures 116 Mani, Fifteen Years in 100 Words 125 VISUAL Yunbo Wu, 家家 [Detail] (Front Cover) Alice Huang, I do not work for art 10 Suraiya Yahia, Pious in Blue 12 Yunbo Wu, Morocco 2 13
Emma Kay Tocci, Ophelia 14
May Baho, Untitled Drawing 17 Ahmad Yacout, Save Me 21 Yunbo Wu, Sri Lanka 13 24 Shenuka Corea, Abed 26
Luis Carlos Soto, Shu Khee 27 Alyssa Yu, Trust Issues 28
Kevin Mokhtar, Ladies in Pink 31 Luis Carlos Soto, Morning 34 Yunbo Wu, Ming 35
Ahmad Yacout, Adamwow 36
Zoltán Derzsi, Sivatagsziget 41 Suraiya Yahia, K.I.N.G. 42
Ethan David Lee, Gotcha 46
Chukwuyem J. Onyibe, Tocka–noun: ’tō-skə 47 Suraiya Yahia, Death on a Wall 52
Shenuka Corea, The Fortuneteller 55
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Laura Johanna Waltje, Helminth (1) 58 Laura Johanna Waltje, Helminth (2) 59 Tala Nassar, Starry Night Body Art 62 María José Alonso, Raw 64
Luis Carlos Soto, Chucho 66
Ahmad Yacout, Adam big problem 67 Teona Ristova, Time Lapse 69
Laura Johanna Waltje, Oma’s Hands 70 Alice Huang, Settle 72
Alyssa Yu, Vespers at San Miniato 73 Luis Carlos Soto, Horizon 76 Alice Huang, Armor 77
Luis Carlos Soto, Throwback 80 Tala Nasser, Ballerina 83 Yunbo Wu, Collect 84
Suraiya Yahia, Winter Juggler 85 Alyssa Yu, Marseille Fish 86
Roland Folkmayer, Lac Rose, Senegal 87 Yunbo Wu, Morocco 3 91
Gurgen Tadevosyan, In Between Skyscrapers 98 Ethan David Lee, Treasures of the Maze 99
Suraiya Yahia, Malaise on the Rooftops 101 Ahmad Yacout, Shreezus 112 Luis Carlos Soto, Bajii 113
Teona Ristova, Dynamics 115 Yunbo Wu, Beijing 119
Ethan David Lee, Hanging Footsteps 120 Alyssa Yu, Word Count 124
Flavia Cereceda, Corners in Dubai 127 Yunbo Wu, 家家 (Back Cover)
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INTRODUCTION Airport Road 05 presents the work of students from across New York University’s global network. Although the phrase “Airport Road” may be losing its literal meaning for students at NYU Abu Dhabi, now that the NYUAD campus is on Saadiyat Island instead of on the corner of Airport Road, the magazine serves as a reminder of those beginnings and brings together a diverse group of students to tell stories that come from around the world. “Diversity” is a word that is used a lot these days, and what Airport Road 05 demonstrates is that “diversity” is not merely a set of rules created in an office or a set of statistics about racial, sexual, and ethnic difference. In this issue, diversity also emerges as a source of artistic inspiration and is expressed through the different forms of representation that people choose for themselves. Diversity pushes you out of your comfort zone and the norms with which you are familiar. To experience true diversity, however, you need to listen to other people’s stories. Airport Road 05 presents stories about families, aging, politics, anger, learning—and more. In these pages you will find both experimental and conventional work in variety of genres including poetry, prose, translation, paintings, collages, and photographs. You’ll see work not only by students who are specializing in the arts and humanities, but also by engineers who like to write, chemists who draw, and economists who take good pictures.
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I hope this issue does for you what it did for me: pushes you to to think about others’ stories and to revel in the art that diversity can yield. —Lina Elmusa
Flip through any NYUAD marketing brochure, and you will find differently colored faces pictured across its pages. NYUAD is marketed as a utopia where people from all around the globe come together to do great things. To be sure, it has one of the most diverse university populations in the world. With people from over a hundred nationalities composing a student body of a little over a thousand, NYUAD does not offer a typical undergraduate experience. If you’re not careful, however, you can easily slip through the crevices of the global university and emerge disillusioned with the world. Every day, different cultures, backgrounds, and languages mix, negotiate, and clash at NYUAD. Because your social environment is constantly in flux, you are constantly redefining your relationship to it. It can be difficult to feel at home at NYUAD. Because no one person shares your exact belief system, engaging in conversation and debate is a responsibility rather than a choice. You must defend your ideas if you choose to assert your identity, because there are few common assumptions about the world shared between people. At the end of the day, when you retreat to your room, you may feel overwhelmed and alone. This is what they do not tell you about being an NYUAD student.
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Perhaps you will adapt to this engineered diversity and find comfort in flux. Perhaps you will grow a thick skin for protective purposes. I belong to the latter group. Although I retain my receptiveness to new ideas, I stopped actively asserting my identity within the student community. I started to listen more than I talk. I do not voice my ideas beyond the classroom. In times of disenchantment with the stifling responsibility of being a global citizen, I retreat to the minimalism of a blank page and create pretty sentences. The poems and prose that I write are cathartic releases in moments of pressure. The process of creating is also an effort to reclaim my thoughts. Sometimes, I don’t want to think about orientalism or neoliberalism. Sometimes I just want to think about my loved ones, so I write about them. What you will witness in the following pages is proof that I am not alone in my need to create. In a global institution where comfort zones are hard to find, we have no choice but to create our own. Our works are not simply resistance to the “global leader” narrative bestowed upon us: they are also beautiful products of it. We are growing gardens in the oasis of our creativity, in order to cope with constant unfamiliarity. We are more than smiling faces on your brochures. —Tzy Jiun Tan
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I do not work for art Alice Huang
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kabayan
thirty-four years of her life struggle for space
to the sandy slopes of an arabian kingdom
from the suffocating smog of a capital city
saint pedro poveda college: class of 1999
photo ripped, edges folded, faces blurred
engaged to a man twice her age (prehistorian)
diploma clutched with ringed fingers (valedictorian)
four-hundred-year-old church: decaying and graying
frame broken, glass shattered, picture faded and fraying
going once, going twice, she’s sold! time’s up!
she steps right up to the marriage block—
final destination: riyadh
cramped economy seat (of course)
ticket for 1 (weary, dreary, teary) adult
flight time: ten hours of cabin exhaust fumes
passport: tattered, battered, falling apart
forced in her employer’s closet for years
every riyal saved up to send overseas
while she fried nuggets and cried buckets
nokia phone: indestructible, once viable, identifiable
weekly voice exchanges, choppy and muffled
“are you kabayan? can i call my child also?”
a filipina co-worker saw its screen once and asked:
Isabella Peralta
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12
Pious in Blue Suraiya Yahia
Morocco 2 Yunbo Wu
13
Ophelia Emma Kay Tocci
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Adolescence
Lateefa Almazrooei “
We stole every shining moon and left one hanging To pretend there’s beauty in solitude.
We drank instant coffee out of cardboard cups,
Sitting on a chapped curb pretending like the caffeine was what kept us up.
Our smiles were crooked, out of place
As we pretended these are the memories we will hold on to,
About how we spent a lonesome morning talking about things like: Why the world spins and we’re standing still;
Why the universe seemed so vast but constrained within our senses. We pretended these were the moments that created our bonds Tied us to the bone,
Memories of talks worth less than pennies
Talks that we will forget because time is voracious. ”
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One Sum of Two Tzy Jiun Tan
I saw your face in my face
When we made flowers out of dreams
And you touched my hands and we became One sum of two
In the most poetic sense possible
We made metaphors out of telegraphic thoughts Discussed theories from left to right Space, matter, energy I think we exploded With happiness
That night I weaved
In and out of your body Our bodies intertwined
Like dancers against a twilight sky My tears of ecstasy turned into Diamonds
We made rockets out of ashes burnt Worshiped the galaxies within
The microcosm of your living room We transported into each other’s reality
Forgone linearity and gave way to exponentiality And we touched
And I saw symmetry
In just that one instant
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Untitled May Baho Acrylic on canvas
17
Above the Sea
Thirangie Jayatilake
You confused me at first. Constantly. Frustratingly. I
was
lost.
I didn’t know if I wanted to stay. I’d walk the streets Just watching
ayi’s sitting on pavements selling vegetables and shoes, and
clothes racks
extending
the
streets like
colorful
out
flags
of windows
and over
waving in
the wind
I couldn’t communicate much beyond
Dui bu qi, wo ting bu dong, I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’d be reminded every day,
as my feet walked through your veins, Foreignness
me.
The ayi on my floor always smiled, She was always friendly,
but our conversations were abrupt,
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surrounds
zao an, chi fan, hao chi, mi fan
Good morning, meal, delicious, rice
she could never understand my accent so I never found out her name. Into the subway I’d file,
commuters packed in, arms by our sides, waiting to flow out into our destination, your blood rapidly moving.
But when it wasn’t crowded,
little kids, with round pink cheeks smiled and waved at me, and an ayi insisted that I took the empty seat
smiling as she pushed me toward it.
Your temples,
beautiful, intricate, ancient
with large open courtyards and incense smoke rising in wispy trails,
a serenity cadenced
by tall shiny skyscrapers.
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Like the buds that bloomed in Spring and took over the bare branches, smothered in fog so gray, I came to like you
And I’ve come to miss you. But now I guess,
I’m
That’s
Another
Through
Just
Been
Shadow
Your
Veins
Shanghai = 上海 = Above Sea
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Save Me Ahmad Yacout
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In Response to Howl pt. 1
maybe that was then, but this is now Emma Kay Tocci
angel-headed hipsters no longer light cigarettes in boxcars,
they light them with bleeding arms on bathroom floors.
their shoes aren’t filled with
blood because they don’t pick
themselves out of basements— sitting in smoke discussing
cinnamon girls with cynicism. screaming change! change! to their television sets
while apartment windows stay closed, locks untouched.
defacing alleyways with echoes from the better-than-thou,
but never billboards, never buildings housing the high-and-mighty,
only burning when the flame warms them. dipping pens into black ink to
write the words they think we need when the only light they see is from a computer screen.
they cut their wrists three times to bleed because to them, that is Poetry.
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they forgot about Time & Space and never found Eternity— the gaps are still there,
they just no longer care.
they’re shaking but not from shame— they tore their own hearts out.
22:51
23
Sri Lanka 13 Yunbo Wu
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new delhi
Vamika Sinha braceleted skyline under fog; smog
silver-fish gray
under street food breath
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Abed Shenuka Corea
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Shu Khee Luis Carlos Soto
27
Trust Issues Alyssa Yu
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Interaction
Saif Abdalla Wednesday, March 8th, 2017 Do you know how hard it is to make me talk? I need two deep breaths to say “hello.”
By the time “hi” and “how are you” are thrown back, I’ve prepared myself to bravely lie and say I’m fine. Lately I’ve been adding “I’m great actually,”
But actually, do you know what would be even greater? If I don’t have to have this conversation.
Any other human being would continue talking, tormenting me from the inside
As I constantly look for words in the English language to reply. But you do something worse: You stop,
Completely ignoring my existence. I guess silence is what I wanted in the first place
But I’m brainwashed to believe that I am supposed to receive affection
from you, dad.
There is supposed to be a human connection here, Something innate. I can’t find it
And it seems you lost yours too. What should I do
When I’m expected to warmly welcome you upon your return home? What should I say
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When my friends tell me you seem like the greatest father? A hilarious guy.
What should I think:
When I’m told that my father must be proud to have a daughter like me? Yes I am your daughter,
You did not raise me yet I am labeled as such. Tell me, when was the last time we laughed together? Instead of you laughing at my tears.
When was the last time you really listened? Instead of what others said about me. What about me?
I’ve had bloodshot eyes for days
Yet you never care enough to meet my gaze. It still amazes me
How much I care. I don’t know how to talk to people.
It takes two deep breaths for me to say “hello”
But around you it’s two before I can walk out the door
Because you suck all the air in the room with the words you won’t say
to me:
You won’t say: I love you.
You won’t say: I’m proud of you.
You won’t say how much I’m like you.
Because this cruel world has played a joke on us: I am the only child that resembles you
But I hope I don’t inherit your scowl or your ever-wrinkled forehead. If I do,
Trust that I’ll always take two breaths And speak to you.
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Ladies in Pink Kevin Mokhtar
31
Apolitical Body Lina Elmusa
My mother doesn’t want me to claim too political a statement.
My mother does not think I should voice my thoughts too loudly.
But mama, otherwise, what is left for me?
She’s scared for my safety,
and the opinions of society.
But mama, otherwise, what is left of me?
Being born a woman is a political statement, Mama.
A woman of the color of the Earth—
It was a political statement when you told me what my religion is.
What’s an apolitical statement to me? My sex is a political statement, and so is my sexuality.
Mama, otherwise, what is left of me? I don’t really matter, in the
grand scheme of things, but to show too much skin, or to show none,
It’s all a political statement, mama. My social media presence, My dresses,
It’s all political.
My high-end education,
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My not-too-messy reputation So I’m sorry,
I’m sorry that I cannot exist Apolitically.
I would love nothing more
Than the privilege to just be. But I believe in human life, and the body—
I will keep going, mama,
Because that’s my favorite political statement,
To keep on living, strongly.
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Morning Luis Carlos Soto
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Ming Yunbo Wu
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Adamwow Ahmad Yacout
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The Island
Julián Carrera You’re standing on a wooden boat. You’re holding a paddle. Normally,
you’d use it to move the boat forward. Not this time. This time, you used it to smack your companion in the head. Go, you! You don’t know why
you did it. It seemed like a good idea at the time—plus, your gut said it
was reasonable—but now he’s sprawled face-down on the boat and you have no paddling companion. You’re not sure if he’s breathing. His hair
is getting wet with blood. You’re worried you might have killed him. You
don’t think you’re strong enough to kill a man. Not with a wooden paddle, at least. Wait. He’s moving. You hold the paddle like a bat, ready to swing. The man
rubs the back of his head and turns to look at you. His head is bobbing
with the bobbing of the sea. His eyes are fixed on you. You’re scared of him taking retaliation for the whole paddle-on-the-head thing.
“Who in tarnation are you and what are you doing on my boat?” You stare at the man and say nothing. His head is bobbing more now. He takes his hand to his mouth, turns to the water and throws up.
His belching and the sour smell of his puke make you gag. You put the paddle down. You get your face as close to the water as you can. Your
stomach contracts. Acid runs up your throat. The taste of barely-digested salmon invades your tongue. Your palate. Your lips. You return the fish to its natural habitat. It’s dead and in more parts than a jigsaw puzzle, but it still counts.
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You think you’re done throwing up. You’re not. You throw up once more. Now you’re done. You run your hand through your lips to clean them
up. You break the little strings of vomit at the threshold of your mouth, disgusted. The smell and taste of salmon and stomach acid lingers in
your nose and tongue. You reach to the other side of the boat and dip
your head in the water. You shake your head, take some of the water in your mouth, emerge, gargle, spit, repeat.
The man is looking at you. He didn’t bother cleaning himself up. Once you’re through with your cleaning, he poses the question again. “Who are you?” You don’t know what to say. “Don’t you know me?” you ask. “Why do you think I’m asking?” he says. “I am me,” you say. “Smartass,” says the man. “What are you doing in my boat?” You forgot what you were there for. You see a stony island ahead and an empty shore behind.
“I was paddling with you,” you say. “Bullcrap,” he says, “I always paddle alone.” “Why would I be here in the middle of the sea with you otherwise?” you ask.
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The man stays silent. He sits down on the boat. You do the same. You’re looking at his back. You didn’t expect a paddle-on-the-head to be so bloody; his hair is a crimson mess.
“Do you remember why I invited you?” You shrug. How are you supposed to know? He only told you to come
with him. His invitation took you by surprise. You had seen him at your
favorite bar twice, and he invited you over to go to some island on a small boat. Being the reckless adventurer you are, you agreed.
He picks a paddle from the boat and dips it in the water. You do the same. “Let’s do what you said,” he says.
You both paddle over to the stony island. It’s a silent way there. The water splashes as you oar. The man says nothing. You say nothing. You don’t even remember his name. Time goes by. You try to say something, but words pile up in your throat. You want to
ask him why he invited you, why this place and not other, why so much secrecy about everything that he had to invite you to a deserted island
and tell you about it when you both were in the bathroom. You think he’s
annoyed at you for, well, you know, smashing his head with a paddle. You decide not to push it and remain silent.
The island’s coasts draw near. You start discerning figures in the distance. There’s a long stick in a vertical position next to a stone and a pile of sand.
You keep paddling.
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The boat touches the island’s sand and slides into it. You get down and the man follows. You push the boat away from the water.
You walk over to the stick, the stone, and the sand. They are all next to a
hole about your size that goes down for a couple of meters. You look over
to the stick and find that it’s a shovel. You look at the stone and find that it has an engraving.
DRUNKARD
FOR KILLING FLUFFY IN HIS DRUNKEN STUPOR. 19XX —2017
NON REQUIESCAT IN PACE “Who’s this epitaph for?” you ask. You turn around to look at the man. He’s smiling. His hands are in his pockets. There’s a solid bulge in his pants. “Why are you so happy?” you ask. He doesn’t answer. He takes a gun out of his pocket, removes the safety, and points it at you. “For you.”
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Sivatagsziget Zoltรกn Derzsi
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K.I.N.G. Suraiya Yahia
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Dhadkhan
Archita Arun Harder
beat harder.
fall out.
lips brush lightly
strong mint
“Have I ever tasted you?” Privilege.
our walls.
I build them. And you break. Question. Wonder.
Love, don’t. not you.
Us.
This is about us. Or is it?
Your hands search search me.
Find my sanity
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it’s been lost “missing”
Find it.
Keep it to yourself.
Shh now, Hush.
Plagued by nightmares You whine
in Mandarin,
(foreign language)
is pain in a foreign language even pain?
An arm there,
begin to shiver cold
cover yourself
Great expectations often lead to
great tragedies. Bite,
Taste, lick
SCREAM.
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In ecstasy,
and in misery. Steal me. Hear my heartbeat Intimate.
Back off. it never was. and maybe
it never will be.
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Gotcha Ethan David Lee
46
Tocka–noun: ˈtō-skə Chukwuyem J. Onyibe
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The Art of Shock
Mariam ElZoghbi It is no dispute
It is an occupation
You occupy my land while the world is occupied with Kylie Jenner’s lips It is no dispute It is a crime
against humanity
against me and my family
against my children and their families
against my grandmother who left her home for summer vacation
but she never made it back to school because you took her home
you took her clothes and her jewelry her toys and stationery
while her life became stationary no movement, no sound
no laughs no tears
the silence of shock. It is no dispute It is a fire
Burning in my heart Eating at my soul
Radiating from the stone
the stone I throw into your
“home,” your home which is mine.
48 48
Your home which was my grandmother’s
Your home, where my namesake smoked her pipe Because a Palestinian woman smokes pipe Throws stones
Sends her sons out to die
And screams in anguish as you retaliate stone for stone Sorry, stone for bullet Bullet for human Human for land
A Palestinian woman knows the sound of shock. It is no dispute
It is a fire of grief
sent to you through my only weapon while you set fire to my “home”
the one you assigned to me.
Just like you assigned my label Terrorist soldier Sold-ier,
My soldier sold his life for his soul What did your soldier sell?
Your soldier sold his soul for my life.
As I look at your tanks your soldiers of ranks
your Sharon and Netanyahu I see the war,
not a dispute.
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It is no dispute
It is a war between welad-el-3am
I am not anti-semitic, I am human
and you are no victim. Palestine is. Falasteen is.
It is not Israel
No map or man
No article or another No flag or tank
No bullet or funeral will change that.
It is no dispute.
It is my Falasteen. Your victim.
Let her go, for she is a senior citizen.
Let her go, for she will never stop fighting. Fighting for her life For her breath
Until your last breath.
Falasteen has learned the rage of shock.
It is no dispute.
It is a sacred fight. Love is sacred.
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My love for my motherland is sacred.
Your hunger for my lands is no dispute. Your thirst is no dispute.
Because you have yet to master the art
Because we have mastered the art of shock.
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Death on a Wall Suraiya Yahia
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Apple to Apples Nicole In a dazed confusion brought by the morning sunlight, I look down as I take a sip from my coffee. Next to the little mirror apple on my Mac, I see a fresh green fruit I took for breakfast, an apple. And I get dizzy, my mind swirling with the memories of all those who’ve come before me. Eve is looking up, and she seems lost in thought, dazzled by the beauty of this golden tree that holds the secrets of so many. In her urge for more, she takes an apple and bites it, its sweet juices dripping down her chin. And it makes her see the truth behind her destiny. Then when God arrives to shame her, punish her undisclosed desire, she is able to see his real divinity. He lied when He said they would die. He was just using reverse psychology. With his punishment of pain, he makes her stronger and tells her what giving life is.
Sitting underneath a tree, during the seventeenth century, Isaac is puzzled by gravity. His mathematics only speak the truth, and all the data that he has aligns with it, and yet the movement of this Earth makes no sense to him. Although he knows that the Sun is big, the planet round, the sky and stars endless, there is too much mystery behind this Universe. He needs to define the earthly processes, in order to connect with
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the extraterrestrial and know. And then the ripe fruit falls off, and it hits him. “We have accumulated such great knowledge, but there is so much more we need to know.” Like old Socrates, Steven in his garage is baffled by reality. He wishes everyone had a chance to see, so that we can save our humanity. So he comes up with a way to give access to everything we have, to everyone there is. He creates a machine that can compute what we can’t perceive and lay it out for us in a compelling manner that would trigger any one’s curiosity. “What a beautiful composition,” I think, “how the purple of my Apple, matches the green of the real one and the two seem to be falling into the rift.” I wish there was a way for that to happen, combine something that does not exist with some matter. We have surpassed limits unimaginable and have achieved so much. But the thirst still lasts: there are so many questions that haven’t been asked and so many answers that need collaboration, effort, and passion. I take my laptop and a bite from the apple, and dive into an augmented reality.
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The Fortuneteller Shenuka Corea Black crayon on paper
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Lupine
Zoe Jane Patterson Tethered and snarling, a girl gone lupine
Refusing food he offers through the cage.
Strips of a crime; hare meat soaked in brine
Slaughtered that morning at too young an age. Older wolves warned her: don’t get caught in traps. Don’t think they won’t wear your pelt like a prize When his gun is through with you. He will wrap Himself in your warmth under moonless skies. Wanting to free her, afraid where she’d roam, He lies outside of her cage on his side.
Sniffing, careful, she’s thrown; he smells like home Unwillingly warms to his eyes gone wide. With him she lies. Stray of her feral side.
His eyes are brown like fawns, like bear cub hide.
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Romanticized Pain Tala Nassar
Today, I tried to drown my sadness For I have recently lost a home I do not have a country I can call my own
You are no longer
My crying shoulder Today, I tried to drown my sadness In art
And space
And cigarettes
And your matches Today, I tried to drown my sadness in art But a spider fucking crawled on me
And your matches don’t work for shit Fuck you
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Helminth 1 Laura Waltje
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Helminth 2 Laura Waltje
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Makedonska
Esad Babačić Trudiš se,
ki si jim verjel,
luč v predsobi brli,
ko te hočejo povozit,
Pišeš domov,
Vse dolgove do prvega,
čeprav ga ne praznuješ,
do sebe in sveta,
v katerih ne boš živel,
Tudi smrt zamuja
ne boš navijal,
Z neba padajo rože,
tisti, ki te ponižujejo.
namesto dežja.
vse položnice do prvega,
zdaj pa se jim umikaš,
dokler se ne ustavi kri.
ker si prepočasen.
vsak božič,
vse obveznosti
gradiš stolpnice,
ker ti nikdar ne zamudiš.
stadione, na katerih
in ta prekleti mir zamuja.
hotele, v katerih bodo spali
težke, bele rože,
Trudiš se, da ne bi bil preveč na očeh, ker ne želiš, da bi opazili
tvojo žalost,
samo zdravnici lahko potožiš,
kako ti je hudo,
kako se zbujaš ponoči in kričiš sam nase,
ker si se tako trudil in na svoje otroke,
ker so te poslušali. Gradil si ceste
in hiše za tiste,
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The Macedonian
Translated by Grega Ulen You struggle,
you trusted,
the lamp in the anteroom flickers
when they want to drive you over
You write home,
All the debts by the first,
yet you don’t celebrate,
towards yourself and the world
in which you won’t live,
Even death is late
you won’t cheer,
Flowers are falling from the sky,
those who humiliate you will sleep.
instead of rain.
all the bills before the first,
but now you get out of their way
until blood stops.
because you’re too slow.
every Christmas,
all your responsibilities
you build skyscrapers
because you’re never late.
stadiums at which
and this damned peace is late.
hotels in which
heavy, white flowers
You try
to go unnoticed
because you don’t want your sadness to be seen,
you can only complain to your doctor
about how bad you feel,
about waking up at night and shouting at yourself for struggling so hard and at your children for listening to you. You built roads
and houses for those
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Starry Night Body Art Tala Nassar
62
Orbit
Zoe Jane Patterson The bats do swing on invisible string Echo-locating on paper-thin wings.
They are strung from the pinprick stars, twinkling They orbit lamplight—eat fluttering things. You step onto the street to be my scout.
I totter on the sidewalk’s edge entranced.
What happens to the bats if lights go out?
You stand awash in lamplight and romance. An engine’s roar, a tire’s screech, a scream— My own. The lights are out the air is gone. That is until I wake from sleepless dream, My eyes open to your laughter like dawn. ‘Honey that car was very far away,” I’ll pull you to the sidewalk anyway.
63
Raw María José Alonso
64
a City Girl to the Boy Back Home Emma Kay Tochi i miss you. the stars look different here. the people don’t ask me how my day is, and they don’t care if i make it home safe. it’s so big, and yet there is no air to breathe. i wish i could hold your hand. the rain makes the streets look so much nicer. i think rain has a way of doing that. 4 am here is different than our 4 am— it’s not as soft anymore, and i think my apartment has a leak. maybe you can come visit? the flowers have bloomed now. i think there’s something special about flowers that grow through concrete; i guess they just loved the sun that much. i missed the train today. this doesn’t feel like the movies. i’m sorry i haven’t written lately. the city is so bright, and the cars are so loud, i can’t seem to get my words in order. i hope you understand. the stars don’t look the same, but the night isn’t as dark— so maybe it’s alright. 22:32 65
Chucho Luis Carlos Soto
66
Adam big problem Ahmad Yacout
67
stunner Vamika Sinha you filter every pixel pore you angle yourself thin my darling, which do you love more? the girl on the screen or the girl in your skin?
68
Time Lapse Teona Ristova
69
Oma’s Hands Laura Waltje
70
Schlaff Weiter Laura Waltje My grandfather is buried in a new section of the graveyard, in a small clearing in the old growth trees, where urns are interred. The parcels
are demarcated, but many lack the little stone or plaque. Opa rests at a corner. On his grave there are votive candles and flower arrangements. Oma and I stand before it, her hands are clasped in prayer, mine are
stuck deep into my pockets. As she is quietly praying, Oma’s handbag slips from her shoulder and she pushes it back up, not minding the
interruption. Her concentration and consciousness are with her God and her husband. She finishes her prayer with “So dann schlaff weiter.” Water has pooled in the tops of the votive candles, in spite of their
covering. Oma lights the two already on the grave, but does not place the one in her handbag. “I’ll replace it when the others are gone.” The wind is
so strong from behind her that the candles keep blowing out and I crouch down to shield her and the candles, so she can place and cover them.
Then she gets out a napkin and wipes down the plaque and picks off the
dead leaves and dried flowers. His little parcel of land is well kept and him within it. “Alright, keep sleeping.”
One day Oma will lie there next to him, she tells me on the way home. I
tell her I want to be burned and buried with a tree, the tree being my only grave marker.
71
Settle
Alice Huang
72 72
Vespers at San Miniato Alyssa Yu
73
Let’s go,
Let’s go for a change of air, habeebi.
Let’s go to the beach,
I want to feel the sand. Oh I forget,
We really really can’t. I feel trapped.
Let’s go out to the streets, barefoot,
I need to feel the cement. Let’s go, ya albi,
Let’s go for a change,
Let’s go to teta’s backyard,
I want to touch the olives there. Let’s go sweetie, Let’s leave this, This….
This.
Let’s leave darling,
I want to experience
The everything that is nothing related to this.
Let’s leave habeebi, Meshan Allah,
I can’t breathe.
Let’s hop on a plane, Let’s go.
This is what I need.
I don’t want to be here
They don’t want us to be here,
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We don’t want them to be here, Bas ya albi they won’t leave, Let’s go yalla, I’ll pack—
Let’s not lie and promise, To come back,
Let’s just leave,
I’ll hold your hand, If that’s what you Need
Please. From Under the Occupation Lina Elmusa
75
Horizon Luis Carlos Soto
76
Armor Alice Huang
77
Remembering Kuala Lumpur Tzy Jiun Tan
First date with French man
Drugs, baguettes, wispy beard. Save me! One new dress wasted Hipster cigarettes
Broken roads meet shiny buildings Forgotten footsteps Smoke invade lips
Your face and mine, touching hands Paper in water
Chewing restlessness
Red papers and tangerine dreams Paper in water
Twin towers sky
Business people walking busy Baby teething coos
Guitar strings tremble
New faces, new scars, new windows She stood up and left
Burning hot sun flexes
Hits sturdy bridge, a homeless man Tries to remember
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Ugly feet, wrinkles
Begging for money scraps again Son in jail for drugs
Big fat billboards scream
Christmas season sales, ringing phones Tired mother buys doll Home beside railroad
Daily rumbling with daily screams Six children, no face Work day traffic jam
Honking cars, chicken rice in trunk Anticipate your smile
79
Throwback Luis Carlos Soto
80
It Comes in Pieces Vamika Sinha
My skin was always too tight. The better the
chocolate, the more bitter the aftertaste. I am ashamed by inches. He said you were soft
leaves
and he was not expecting it. No one has been able to touch you. 15 is full of holes and now you will fill them with sugar. Clinics reminded me
of the imperfections. I romanticized my own fault lines but at least I was not an earthquake. I imagined him saying that a curved spine is more
interesting than a straight one but he did not exist. Can’t breathe when
it’s happening. Once you had three slices of cake, you’ve been looking back ever since. He asks me if I need a goddamn sonnet proclaiming
my beauty. To be naked is to be free is to be unseen. I scrolled through Facebook pictures and wept. Yes, I need proof, but I do not say it.
Fashion is a masquerade. Poetry is a glass. A girl is a price and you are paying it.
dew
You collected the shiniest shells on the beach.
Nothing is lonelier than reading a textbook at night. Solitude by the sea, solitude in a snow globe. My
mother told me to think of those below you. Tears are salt are ocean
are wombs. The girls said you were bossy and you learned to twist your mouth like theirs. That seagull was like a scrap of paper. I write about
being jagged but do not accept it. The color blue, is it cold or warm? My
mother fed me honey and cinnamon when I was sick, hot and sticky on a
steel spoon. I didn’t know friendship was an acidic substance. How many
followers do you have? The wine looked like blood and tasted worse. She was Ariel and you understood. You are startled by the sky every summer,
81
it is honey blue. She cut her indigo braids then went to write her SATs.
Depression is dyeing your lungs the same shade as the evening and she looked at you and nodded. Landlocked countries make us caged birds that do not sing.
Blinded, I can see the light. So this is how it feels to be bathed by the
stage. The poetry comes through the cracks. Applause. Thank God tears
honey
can’t be heard. I did it, I did it, I did it. The notes are
streaming, painting, streaking across the air and it is all for me. Jazz is a palette of colors. Love me.
They have said that music can transport the soul and shake off skin. If you are a musician, you must be an alchemist. I hear paintings, I
see songs. Mortal to immortal. What is your aspiration in life? Devenir
immortel puis mourir. I pin and find my dreams in Google images. 18 will
always be radical. I am afraid to say that one of my goals in life is simply to love and be loved.
82
Ballerina Tala Nassar Ink on arches paper 83
Collect Yunbo Wu
84
Winter Juggler Suraiya Yahia
85
Marseille Fish Alyssa Yu
86
Lac Rose, Senegal Roland Folkmayer
87
The Head of the Table Salha Al Ameri
I see them draping her bird-like body in a shroud. I later see the men, in their all white paying their respect to my grief-stricken uncle. Their
voices are but mere whispers of “our condolences,” “our apologies”—
why apologize I wonder? Should I wave my hand exclaiming to my uncle to accept their apology? Or should he thank them? But more whispers
continue to flood my ears, whispers that say “to God we belong and to Him we return.”
It is not the fear of death, nor is it the fear of grief, rather it is the time to grief. In Islam we are only permitted three days to mourn, which means you have 72 hours to carry the heavy body through the stages of grief. After the passing of 4,320 minutes you have to drop the body at the
seventh stage: acceptance. There is wisdom behind it, I believe. Maybe
God doesn’t want us to carry the body until our muscles ache and bones
strain because we’re too fragile. Maybe we can’t be like Atlas, but instead of the world we carry a body, a life that was.
Suffice to say, I grieve: I grieve for more than 3 days, for even more than 3 months. I smoke in heartbreak like a chimney. I let my grief punch me unconscious, skin me and wear me. I make my grief a human; I let it
consume me. But how could I not? When she died with no warning sign.
She was old, but not old enough to die. She experienced all of life, but not enough of it to tell you the difference between a peach and a nectarine
—the variant is but one gene. She was my soul guardian, rather than sole guardian. She feed me, dressed me, hugged me, and sent me to sleep. She encouraged me, scolded me, cautioned me and sent me to learn. She was the best half of a mother, and the best half of a father.
88
My mind’s eye becomes blurry; the tears fog it up. The men like an ocean of moonlight line up for prayer in the mosque. In a sea of white I can’t
tell where the line begins or ends. They pray, while she lays there also
dressed in white. But her shroud is the white of pain. It’s the white of a once beautiful dark eye getting clouded with blindness. It’s the white of pale skin that’s never seen the light of day. It’s the white of broken porcelain.
Suddenly I’m in a room full of women, women in black with mournful eyes to match. The women sit together, they huddle together in the living room
and whisper about the weather. Some try to grab the attention of a tearful
eye with a funny story, while others stare pointedly at a relative they never met before. But they all grieve in their own way, some decide to pull you
aside and share your grief for a millisecond, some grieve your grief, while others came every morning for three consecutive days to dispel some more grief in on you—in case your grief wasn’t enough.
But soon, without your noticing, things start going back to normal.
Like when the snow settles on the bottom of a snow-globe, everything else settles too. Suddenly your emotions feel a little less like a tangled
necklace that’s choking you, and a little more like a ring that’s a size too big. Soon the family plucks up the courage and gathers again for lunch, not in my grandmother’s house. She’s died. But in my aunt’s house, her
eldest child. One by one we all make our way into her house; we gather in the living room and wait for lunch to be served in the dinning room across the hall. We kiss, we hug, and we high-five that one male relative that’s
too religious to remember we grew up together. We joke about that time I peed in the closet playing hide-and-seek; we marvel at the latest news notification and make our way to the dining room. We each pull a chair
out to take a seat. Spoons, knives and forks orchestrate their clinks and
clanks. A bowl of soup spills two seats down on my left, while a knife falls
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cluttering on the floor on my right. The salt and pepper shakers zigzag
their way through different hands, while someone’s nephew cries for fries instead of fish, another’s daughter yelps for a glass of that pink juice on the other end of the table.
Across the table, I catch my uncle’s eyes gazing into the distance, lost.
I question his state as he blinks at me, finally aware that I was speaking to him. “What?” he asks, as opinions of politics and comments about
the weather were flung over our head. “What are you thinking about?” I repeat. “My mother,” he whispers. Words float mid-sentence around us, comments were left limping, and breaths were held. Bewildered
silence settles itself on the table. And I suddenly remember: I remember the grief and how my body felt like it smacked into a pool of cold water. I remember how the pit of my stomach felt like an empty void. The
cast around my heart shatters and falls hopelessly, leaving behind a
broken heart. My eyes start clouding, and I feel a shadow wave in the
distance. I blink, folding my eyes into themselves and I focus only to see my grandmother sitting at the head of the table, with her golden burqa
perched on the tip of her nose, waving for my attention. My grandmother, full of life was extending her arm for my plate demanding to serve me more salad because I was looking too pale.
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Morocco 3 Yunbo Wu
91 91
Od/ločitve
Boris A. Novak 1
Decisions
Translated by Grega Ulen 1
Vsaka odločitev
Every decision
boli.
it hurts.
je ločitev:
2
is a division:
2
Med zemljo in nebom
Between the earth and the sky
Med gozdom in poljem
Between the forest and the field
Med hišo in cesto
Between the house and the street
in vrt.
and the garden.
izberi obzorje.
izberi jaso.
izberi hišo in cesto In vrt. 3
choose the horizon.
choose the glade.
choose the house and the street And the garden. 3
Med soncem in luno
Between the sun and the moon
edino bitje,
the only creature
vrne v kraj
and the crescent
izberi luno,
ki se vsak mesec in krajec
svojega otroštva.
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choose the moon,
that returns to the quarter of its childhood every month.
4
4
Med domom in potjo izberi dom:
Between home and road choose home:
na krilih hrepenenja.
longing
itak boš do konca dni potoval
either way you’ll roam on the wings of until the end of your days.
Med potjo in domom izberi pot:
Between road and home choose road:
v svojem domotožju.
in your homesickness forevermore.
itak boš za vekomaj ostal doma
5
either way you’ll stay at home
5
Med dvema avtomobiloma
Between two cars
Med dvema avtomobiloma
Between two cars
Med dvema avtomobiloma
Between two cars
ki te bo popeljal v rojstni kraj.
that will take you to the place of birth.
izberi hojo čez polje.
izberi konja.
izberi vlak,
choose walking through the field.
choose the horse.
choose the train
Med dvema avtomobiloma
Between two cars
in zaveslaj proti večerni zarji,
and row towards the evening dawn
izberi čoln
ki drhti na vodi. 6 Če si mislec,
med črko in duhom izberi duha:
choose the boat
that quivers on the water. 6 If you’re a thinker,
between letter and spirit choose spirit:
če je duh resničen, bo tudi črka
if the spirit is true, the letter will be true
prava.
as well.
Če si pesnik,
If you’re a poet,
če je črka prava, bo tudi duh
if the letter is true, the spirit will be true
med črko in duhom izberi črko:
between letter and spirit choose letter:
resničen.
as well.
Če si duhovnik,
If you’re a priest,
med črko in duhom izberi srce.
7 Med dvema prijateljema izberi
between letter and spirit choose the
heart.
7 Between two friends choose the one
tistega,
who speaks less.
Med dvema nasprotnikoma izberi
Between two enemies choose the
šibki nasprotniki so bolj nevarni,
weaker enemies are more dangerous
ki manj govori.
močnejšega:
stronger one:
ker v boju dajo vse od sebe.
because they fight until the end.
8
8
za Sarajevo, 1992-95
for Sarajevo, 1992-95
Med ljudmi, ki jim pomagaš,
Between the people you help
ne izbiraj.
don’t choose.
Če že moraš izbrati,
If you must choose,
ki te zaradi pomoči ne bodo
who won’t hate you for helping.
izberi tiste,
sovražili.
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choose the ones
Če so v hudi stiski,
If they’re in great distress
Da si izbran zato,
You are chosen
pa vedi, da si prav ti izbran. da ne izbiraš:
pomagaj tudi njim, ki te sovražijo.
know that you are chosen. not to choose:
help those who hate you too.
Dajati pomoč
Giving help
Sprejemati pomoč pomeni nemoč.
Accepting help means powerlessness.
pomeni imeti strašno moč. Odvisnost. In sovraštvo.
means having tremendous power. Dependence. And hatred.
Ti, ki prejemaš pomoč,
You who receive help
in moraš to dopustiti,
and you must let it
moraš to vedeti čeprav boli.
must know that
even though it hurts.
In ti, ki daješ pomoč,
And you who give help
in moraš to odpustiti,
and you must let it go
moraš to vedeti čeprav boli...
must know that
even though it hurts …
Zmeraj znova se boš vračal k
Again and again you’ll return to him
ki te potrebuje,
like to your deepest, open wound
njemu,
kot v svojo najglobljo, odprto rano, kjer golo drhti njegovo in tvoje srce...
Zanj si odgovoren na veke vekov. Amen.
who needs you
where his and your naked heart trembles …
You are responsible for him for ever and ever. Amen.
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9 Meč je resnica sveta.
Močnejši pa je živi čas. 10 Meč ubije srce.
Le beseda se srca dotakne. 11
9 The sword is the truth of the world. But stronger is the living time. 10 The sword kills the heart.
Only the word touches the heart. 11
Med dvema besedama
Between two words
Med besedo in molkom
Between word and silence
Med dvema knjigama
Between two books
Med zemljo in nebom
Between the earth and the sky
Med dvema živalma
Between two animals
Med dvema otrokoma
Between two children
izberi tišjo.
izberi poslušanje.
izberi tisto, ki je bolj prašna.
izberi ptico.
izberi tisto, ki te bolj potrebuje.
izberi oba.
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choose the quieter one.
choose listening.
choose the dustier one.
choose the bird.
choose the one that needs you more.
choose both.
Med manjšim in večjim zlom
Between the lesser and the bigger evil
Med obupom in upanjem
Between hope and despair
težje ga boš nosil.
it will be harder to bear.
ne izberi nobenega.
izberi upanje:
don’t choose either.
choose hope:
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In Between Skyscrapers Gurgen Tadevosyan
98
Treasures of the Maze Ethan David Lee
99
Untitled
Shenuka Corea
My Brain is brimming with things I'd like,
Biting my hand like the string of a kite
On a Billowy day, the clouds afire
with a windy word "Aspire! Aspire"
And then a harsh whisper
"Little Liar"
100
Malaise on the Rooftops Suraiya Yahia
101
While You Were Singing Vamika Sinha
This is my first murder, and I need a smoke. Homicides in New Woods are as rare as snowfall in Jamaica. I spend most days at the office listening to a tinny Nina Simone on my Nokia and finding new smoking spots by
the police station. The newspaper here is incredibly thin; lost cat articles
and local sports coverage don’t require much space. The most crime we get are petty thefts and drunk driving. But today, there’s a man I need to interrogate.
“I don’t know nothing. You’ve got the wrong guy here.” Jalal “Johnny” Abadi is our primary suspect. He says it’s because he’s
Syrian and the police are racist. I remind him the whole town is brown— New Woods is largely comprised of South Asians and Arabs.
“Where were you between 6 pm and 9 pm on December 13th?” “I already told you, I was at Hallelujah, drinking with my buddies.” “And who are these buddies?” “Ali and Ram, my bros. Ask anyone.” Johnny Abadi is Syrian, but has an accent from Jersey Shore. I finger the Marlboros in my pocket and sigh.
“We just had a couple of beers, nothing more. We were there from six to eleven. Then walked back to my place and crashed. The end.”
102
The thing is, when anyone says “the end,” it’s never the end. Far from it. This is a truth so boring and predictable that it becomes tragic.
What Johnny doesn’t know is that I was there that night; I am his
witness. Seth had asked to meet me at Hallelujah Bar that Friday, so we could “talk things over.” This meant watching him drink and stutter and then drink some more for a few solid hours, while we both felt sorry for
ourselves. Johnny had been there in the back with his two friends, each of their raucous laughs tottering on the edge of full-on retching. None of them saw me; it was dark, and they were drunk. I remember Louis
Armstrong playing in the background, and I’d thought out loud that this pathetic scene in a plastered-up bar didn’t deserve such a beautiful
soundtrack. Seth had snickered like a school kid, as if the picture he was laughing at did not include him. In the background, Louis sang about
sweet and predicable things, like endless love, and this time I knew it was over.
*** I always wanted to be a jazz singer. So I became a cop. My mother never
thought anyone could sustain themselves on Billie Holiday and the blues. “You’ve got a voice, Amanda-bear. But be practical.” She’d say it with a smile that was as diluted as the cheap grocery milk in
our refrigerator. Even when she flattened my dreams, she did it feebly, as if watered-down refusal could burn any less. But it was just her style, her
way of doing things. Sometimes, I thought my mother looked at life like a bottle of nail polish that had accidentally dropped into her lap. But when
she unscrewed the cap, all the color had run thin, and there was nothing else to be done.
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“Be practical, Amanda,” she’d say, over and over, till the words smudged out the Coltrane songs in my head. I knew when she looked at her
daughter, she didn’t see me. She saw a dashing policeman she once
desperately tried to love. I pitied her, and I pitied me. Be practical. So I
became what she asked me to, packed up my records and went away to police academy. There was nothing else to be done. *** I started dating Seth because he looked like my father. He was a
banker—a romantic in an unromantic job, was how he put it. We met at Hallelujah Bar—how ironic—at a private birthday party. This was
before near-bankruptcy cramped Hallelujah’s style and the faux-French
decorations collapsed. I had been hired to sing for the party, some frothy
karaoke to keep the mood floating. My mother didn’t know. I was 31 years old, but still couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I worked nights singing in bars, trying to outrun the gray gloom of my day job. Sometimes, I think if
my mother had to face another big shock, she would lose her half-hearted grip on things and simply evaporate.
The bar pulsed that night, a beating haze of a party. I tried to sing to the
sweating blur, each body veiled by a cloud of marijuana and sin. But from
the stage, Seth was unmissable; there was the straggle of dark brown hair and the abnormally large, stocky build. Disturbed and awed, I couldn’t stop looking.
Two hours later, he was by my ear, whispering, and I felt something cold and curious spread through my body.
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“I was watching you. You were good. You were really good.” “Watching me?” “While you were singing.” I swiveled around, and he smiled, slow and gap-toothed. “Hi. I’m Seth.”
What that smile kindled, blindsided me. Our relationship, at first, seemed too well-oiled, too glaring with happiness. When I moved into his
apartment, I nearly wanted to see a mess. Seth was large and lumbering and clumsy; I could not imagine him with a drawer full of color-coded
cuff-links. But this was what being with him was—like trying to unwrap a present but never getting there, never discovering what’s really within. I
learned he liked to iron his shirts at 1:34 am. “I couldn’t sleep, babe,” he’d say. I’d roll my eyes and then roll over back to sleep, safe under a duvet
of curious contentment. My flaccid life, with its unbroken streams of noise calls, parking tickets and small talk at the station, had gained vivacity. Seth became a new case for me to solve, something I could languish
over, carefully collecting new clues, oddities, evidence—his favorite icecream flavor, the stubborn lick of hair he could never tame, the brand of biscuits he hated so I could avoid them in the supermarket. I amassed
new fragments of him and polished them over in my mind, thinking the
sum, the great, shiny debris that made up Seth, would confirm I was in love. When he looped his arm around my neck, called me “his girl” at
office parties, went to jazz shows and pretended to like it, I was sure I felt it. I was sure.
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The first time he hit me, I was floored. It was late, and he had been angry; he was always angry these days.
A month ago, he’d lost his job at the bank, to an outsider called Toby
Agthia. They claimed he had better credentials and a real, “fresh vision.” Seth had come home silent, his body taut with unshed fury. I made tea
and we sat on opposite sides of the dinner table. He looked at me for a long time and then left.
At breakfast the next day, he came up to me and said: “I’m nothing. That guy walked in and took my place, and now I’m nothing.”
After that, he stopped spending nights at the apartment. “Where were you, Seth?” “Won’t you say anything? In the spaces of his silence, I would sing a song in my head: I’ll Be Seeing You by Billie Holiday. I had sung it the day we first met, when I saw my
father’s gap-toothed smile in his face. He was a walking warning; I should have known.
*** “You need to talk to me.” “What do you want, Amanda?”
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“I want you to tell me where you go every night. Please. I want you to tell me why you don’t talk to me anymore. I—”
I started to cry, the knot in my throat undoing itself. Suddenly, I felt very small, very aware of my humanness. I became a little girl of five again, sobbing at the keyhole of her parents’ bedroom door. “Leave it. I have nothing to say.” “Stop lying to me. I want to know. Tell me why you’re never here, Seth. Who are you with? Who do you see?”
I watched him, pathetic with hysteria. We were a cheap tragedy, a clichéd adultery plot of a D-list film.
“I told you I have nothing to say.” “That’s a lie! That’s a lie and you know it.” “What the fuck has gotten into you? I told you there’s nothing to tell!” “You’re lying to me, Seth! I don’t fucking give a shit anymore, just tell me the truth! Tell me who you go to fuck every night. Tell me her name! Tell me which whore you drown your sorrows with—”
And then I was on the floor, the apartment spiraling. The first person I thought of was my mother. I raced to be everything
she was not and still I failed; it was almost laughable. In the dim light of
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the bedroom, I felt my eye purple like a fat grape. I must have been the spitting image of her on the night of her wedding.
The thing is, we always end up like our parents. This is a truth so boring and predictable that it becomes tragic. *** My mother was wrong about the blues, I think, as Johnny gabbles on
in front of me in the interrogation room. She was wrong because I may
not be singing them anymore, but that doesn’t mean they’ve left. In the mornings, I wake up to find a shard of ice inside my chest, so cold and thick that nothing could ever break it. I didn’t choose to become this person, to be something I didn’t want to be.
“I didn’t do it, okay? D’you hear me? I didn’t do it.” I look at Johnny, at his hair gelled up into a choppy hedge on the top of his head, and his long fingers that could’ve skimmed across a piano in
another life. He stares back at me and the Louis Armstrong tune from that fateful Hallelujah night, swims into my head. The song that was playing the night Toby Agthia was murdered: a soundtrack for a killing.
Ever since I got this murder case, I can’t help but smell plumes of blood,
like warm metal, in sudden moments. I smell it in the apartment. I smell it
when we go to see Toby Agthia’s body in the morgue, as part of this sham investigation. I smell it in facts. Time of murder: 6.30 pm.
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I smelt it when he used to come to bed drunk and dig his fingernails into
my flesh. When I finally ran away from the apartment, just before the sun
cracked the sky open in the morning, the smell followed me to the station, slept in my clothing, whispered in my sleep and rested in my hair. It was everywhere Seth touched me. It hasn’t left me since.
“Thank you, Mr Abadi. You can go now.” I watch Johnny leave the interrogation room and feel the shard of ice
splintering in my chest. He’d only been arrested because the most likely
person to commit homicide, according to the New Woods police force, is “troublemaker” Johnny with the criminal record.
But we never really needed to question him. Hadn’t I known from the beginning? Hadn’t I realized it yet?
*** It is 7.30 pm. Friday night at Hallelujah. I’ve been waiting for Seth for
over an hour; of course he is late for the ending. When he enters, I see
his hands are shaking. I am struck again by how much he looks like my father. It is fitting that he’s going to leave me then, fitting that he teems with the hidden capability to wound, to destroy.
Louis Armstrong plays in the background. Most days, the only times I feel the shard inside me thawing is when I listen to jazz. It’s as if somebody’s
poured warm syrup over my thoughts and suddenly, life feels softer, more pliable, like I could finally melt down its hardness and hold it in my hands.
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While the song flows around us, Seth drinks, his hands still trembling.
Johnny and his friends laugh behind us. I think I smell a twinge of blood,
like warm metal, in the air—I’m probably a little drunk. I notice something about Seth is wrong tonight, off-kilter like a painting hung wrong. I keep drinking.
Outside, unknown to me, a man lies dead: Toby Agthia, from Singapore. Toby Agthia, who stole Seth’s job. Toby Agthia, who caused three
destructions without knowing it—Seth’s, mine, and his. Later, as Johnny is released, I will remember this, remember Seth’s shaking hands, the panic in his beer breath, the hurt he carried in his fists. My mind will
scrabble with thought-creatures, fat with the blood of realization. I will remember everything.
But for now, the night deepens and we get drunker. For now, I am
unaware. Louis Armstrong sings in the background, something about endless love.
It is a liberation, a killing, an ending.
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BOVA ŠE ENKRAT VSTALA OD MRTVIH tudi najin zadnji poskus samomora ni uspel zdaj se poljubljava sredi bolniške sobe stoječ drug drugemu na cevi za kisik Josip Osti
WILL WE RISE FROM THE DEAD ONCE AGAIN our last suicide attempt didn’t succeed either now we’re kissing in the middle of the hospital room standing on each other’s oxygen tube Translated by Grega Ulen
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Shreezus Ahmad Yacout
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Bajii
Luis Carlos Soto
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Expressionist
Shenuka Corea
Expressionist,
Frida, Column of pain in the desert,
Coatlicue, pierced with a shard of mirrored glass, Veiled by a curtain of snakes and monkey’s tailsCoil around your club foot like vines;
Vincent, A harvest of deathly yellow, Strains of stars and ripened corn, Circling the brim of your hat
In the dark echoes of that corridor;
Munch, Waves of languid melancholy, Eyes wax and wane like the moon, In a sudden gush of restless fervor
The cauldron of the sea bubbles and breaks;
Klee, A reef city of blocks where
The machinery whistles and ticks
And wiry forms flit under the surface, An angel shifts its gaze.
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Dynamics Teona Ristova
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Arrivals and Departures Vamika Sinha
I remember a journey I once took. Well, actually, it was just two weeks ago. Somehow, all “intense” life
experiences only seem to happen in the random moments. You’ll come
home from school one day and realize that your mother has wrinkles. She has wrinkles and the sun is setting and you are getting older but she is
getting old and we are all aging all the time. The kind of aging that Olay
face cream can’t fix—but what can face cream fix anyway? Or you’ll be
making toast at 4 pm on some blind Tuesday, and that’s it—you’re in love. You discover, first-hand, that all the love songs and poems had to have come from somewhere and maybe it’s this feeling of half-soaring, halffalling inside your chest that won’t go away. Even when you’re making goddamn toast on a goddamn Tuesday.
It’s still a Tuesday at home, when the plane lands in the blue fog of Abu Dhabi. Half-soaring, half-falling. The lights and buildings are seemingly sparser than in Dubai, which is where everyone lands on their way
to somewhere else. People back home always thought and probably
still think I am coming to Dubai. It’s all they know of this region—
Dubai, the lone, glittery pearl in a swath of sand. Flash. Glitter. Bang. I don’t bother telling them that they’re wrong. “It’s Abu Dhabi, not Dubai,” I say a dozen times. Like hitting the edge of the bullseye, but not quite. Not quite.
I walk down the aisle of the plane. Cabin trolleys, sticky hands, little
children, neck pillows. How ordinary, how mundane. I have made the
most radical change in my life, and all I can think about is the shade of purple on a neck pillow.
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I’m sure I’m going to write about this, maybe not tonight but sometime. It’s my great adventure, my new beginning; I keep murmuring, “This is
it.” Cloying, clichéd words on starting over, on clean slates and finding
success. I expect the rest of me to follow suit, to fill out these words with color and feeling, to intensify this blank newness into vivid novelty. But I feel nothing. Half-soaring, half-falling. It’s as if my heart decided not to come along with me; it closed its eyes and, when I wasn’t looking,
crawled into my old bed-covers in Botswana, refusing to uproot itself.
I walk out of the plane, someone’s purple neck pillow in the corner of my eye. I have uprooted myself.
*** The first thing I feel is a wall of heat. It is so oppressive, so forbidding,
so totally and completely hot and alien, that for a flash-second, I think of running back into the plane and cowering amongst the economy seats. The air hostess behind me is all red lipstick and white teeth and clean,
bright future. My glasses fog up, and I cannot see. I have a strange urge to laugh and cry all at once. Opaque vision now. I’m walking into my future, my new life, blind blind blind.
Waiting for me are bedsheets so invitingly white, they put the clinically pretty window-view to shame. I sit down, in my new bedroom, my
luggage at my feet like a bomb crater, the bookshelves gasping for
something, anything, but emptiness. This is it. Yes, I have made it. This
is the dream. There is no music, no fanfare, but only the hum of the airconditioning. “This is it,” it says to me.
On the way to campus, my mother had spoken in Hindi to the taxi driver.
She had asked him if he’s happy here, and I know she did not ask for him
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but for me. It suddenly strikes me that I will have to learn how to miss my mother. Any day, I would rather take calculus.
Instead, I think about my friends. Their letters are as white as my pillowcase. Hasty farewells, hasty ink.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again.” There is a tumbleweed in my throat, gathering hurt by the second. It
tumbles and I crumple. I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again.
How lonely this is. I didn’t think it would be this lonely. Final hugs in the
departure lounge. Seeing my father cry for only the second time in my life.
Carrying luggage that is too heavy because I packed too many novels and too many clothes, and now I think I packed too much of my memory too. Half-soaring, half-falling. This is it.
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Beijing
Yunbo Wu
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Hanging Footsteps Ethan David Lee
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My War
Lina Elmusa There’s a constant, ongoing war, In my head.
A crash of worlds, A clash of words.
There’s a constant, ongoing translation, in my head.
From English to Arabic,
من العربي لإلنجليزي
My mind is wounded, aching,
yearning for peace.
Language is a huge part of culture,
My language and culture lost the battle. I am passionate about literature— About words,
About putting words up on a pedestal And watching them make love, To one another.
But it’s not that beautiful of a process, When English quickly creeps on your Arabic vocabulary,
and teaches you how to tell a true war story. My mind waged
a war of translation.
The Arabic alphabet barely scrapes through, Because it’s up against a strong opponent,
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English— Vibrant,
Desired,
easily communicated, Alive …
The tongue of cosmopolitanism, The tongue of globalization.
“Ugh, I know that word in English, but I can’t remember it in Arabic.”
My mother tongue,
My mother’s tongue, My native language,
لغة الضاد
The language that’s used Across two continents, Differently.
“That word, that word cannot Be translated into English,”
So much is lost in translation— My ideas are lost in translation, My feelings, My beliefs,
—I’m lost in translation.
My language does not truly Represent me.
I do not represent my language.
I am ashamed of my poor Arabic grammar, I hate my limited English vocabulary,
My dad’s disappointed because I prefer, American poetry.
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My mind is on a guilt spree— But this war, has to end, All wars end eventually. But, beware,
No war ever ends beautifully.
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Word Count Alyssa Yu
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Fifteen Years in 100 Words Mani
20th August, 2000 My first day of kindergarten. I remember waving goodbye to Mama from across the school gates. She burst into tears
as I blew her a flying kiss. I remember seeing her sitting longingly by the
swings, as I looked out my classroom
window. She was clearly having a hard time letting go.
23rd August, 2015 I waved goodbye and blew her a flying kiss once more. This time from across
the terminal gates. I have now set off to
find a home in between the sand dunes. Sadly, my college in the Middle East doesn’t have swings.
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The Road from Every Year
Muhammad Shehryar Hamid I was on the same road,
the sky of a different color.
The trees cast different shades, the time of a different order.
The beeping of the ventilator,
my father on the hospital bed. No later, the sky cried;
my eyes wept and the road drenched. The driver told me I’m almost there. Was it the seventh time?
Another call I placed on my mother’s cellphone, but all access denied.
Had I not been countries apart, I would be on his side.
I would walk him to the dinner table, let the wheelchair be not his son. The rain was now ever powerful, the driver hit a gazelle.
The airport road could not have been any longer, my plane had flown.
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Corners of Dubai Flavia Cereceda
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