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HomePosts Tagged "posts-issue7" (Page 2)

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I crouch down to hug her but she smacks my arm and says, “Are you seriously that much taller than me?”          Dina ((All names have been changed to maintain anonymity. All drawings belong to an unnamed inmate and shared with her permission. All photos belong to the interviewee.)) was the shortest of her family, her petite frame no match for the blunt (some would say rude) voice she emitted.  I hadn’t seen her in a while, not since she moved to Oman for her teaching job at an elementary school. Every time I did though, she’d ask

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Non-Fiction
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Late November, Saturday evening, 7pm. The launch party is about to begin in a traditional, high-ceilinged Lebanese house, now an art and performance space. Rima rushes about, checking on the food, the sound system, the newly delivered boxes of Rusted Radishes, while I try to stay out of the way. I wander down the hall and back, admire the tall, arched windows of the room where a microphone is set up, then return to the front of the building, curious about the organization that now occupies it. In the entry room, which holds bookshelves and a coffee menu, a young

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Non-Fiction
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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

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Non-Fiction
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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

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Non-Fiction
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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

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Non-Fiction
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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

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Fiction
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  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

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Poetry
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Two steps aheadI choose my words wiselywhen I lose countof stained white baby blanketsphotos of my younger selfpity the smallness of my lifethe smallness of my angerI wash this imagethen hum a lullabystaring at the sky:there was a timeyou were not herethere will be a time,I won’t be herebut now we are both here     you arewhat I thinkI beg youI beg you againknock the delusions outmy head, my bellygiving me blackened eyeswith a long silent pauseI will surviveI’ve got all my life to liveDid you think I’d lay down and die?Did you think I’d crumble?I’ve got all my love to giveIt

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Poetry
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  Mournings (About A)   To See The teller told me they were premonitions, visions, not my imagination. A green velour couch. A child with short chestnut hair running arms wide open to the front door to welcome you home. But in time, the couch becomes grey, the child breaks into static, and the hinges rust shut.   Easy Playing cards, rolling paper and condoms lined the bottom shelf behind the counter of the all-night convenience store. In that exact order: Playing cards, rolling paper, condoms Adjacent to one another. Underneath packets of cigarettes. The other best sellers and late-night buys. I

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Poetry
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  Tilting Towards Windmills   Perhaps there are many ways to parse a dream? As I tilt towards it, the windmill tilts at me.   I have seen many things to make unicorns wonder In a strangely horsey idiom.  I have been a stranger   To a language in which I might have been stronger – Speaking in a pidgin that wilts as much as it can   Before the dangerous logic of a better, farther man. And to speak of danger, one begins to understand   The oneness of many things one didn’t, ever. In oneness I began.  In oneness: far

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Poetry
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About Us
Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal was founded in the English Department of the American University of Beirut in 2012 with the intention of creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon.
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Letter from the Editor | كلمة المحرّرة

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