2018 - Page 18 of 21 - Rusted Radishes

Yalla Habibti

As the 10 a.m. sun blazes through closed windows, Em Suheil sits in the middle of her living room and works on her morning crossword puzzles. She’s just finished reading the day’s news from the expansive pages of Annahar and is now on to the second item on her list. She squints her eyes and licks her lips once or twice, in speculation. She leans back in her long, burgundy velvet robe, with her glasses arched exactly at the tip of her nose and her head tipped back just enough to read the paper. Just as her morning show is

Non-Fiction

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On Aphasia and other Impairments

I'm in the garden. I hug my knees as blades of grass pierce my bare legs. My cheeks are taut; every twitch of my face cracks dried tear streams in the unfeeling summer air. I listen closely. This must be her. No that must be her. No, not that. This. But it's always a bee or a bird or the wind in the trees playing tricks on my mind. I hear steps rustling the grass, and I can swear they're hers, but they're not. Not yet. I remember that I have read that one is more probable to hear a sound

Non-Fiction

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Cable car

Jounieh, Lebanon. 2017. “Are you scared?”My brother and I poke fun at my dad as he takes one hesitant step, then another into the cable car. Dad removes his baseball cap, ducking his head to fold his formidable frame of six feet and a few inches into this pantry-sized space. The cable car wobbles from side to side as he settles into the bench across from Mark and me. Dad puts on a brave face, insists “Nah! I ain’t afraid,” but I can see creases of worry pulling down the edges of his smile. His discomfort with traveling from sea-level to the

Non-Fiction

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Chop Shop

Lina ((hello))warned me not to go to Abu Husam's that morning. I, of course, didn't listen. My hair had just begun to grow back in patches, like shoots of grass with fine little fuzz growing between, and she didn’t trust him anywhere near it. Why don’t you just wait a few weeks, she kept telling me. It’s not like it’s going anywhere. How could she understand? The truth was I wanted a haircut more than the hair itself. Finally, I had some strength to go out that morning, to return to life as usual. If I got a cut, I thought, then

Fiction

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Us

This idea of us being one is not like how I chose us in our nothingness of touchand cream, the realm or dream of the two of us what’s so special about pairs? We taste cold. Tongues, like iceberg we cut. Cut through fine sheets of cotton and tulips. Hips turn to Saturn, Uranus, your highness! The moon is at your front door but you’re at your neighbor’s you sold what you called “home” Whenever she was angry she made tomato soup He ate ramen amen Burped bricks, split ends, sunglasses and sound systems. Smell of kitchen in myhair. Life in my eyes and ears. Hearing

Poetry

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