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Table of Contents: Issue 9
Prepare to be taken on a journey to somewhen! AirplanesJay Bechtol Milk TeethMcCaela Prentice TraceMcCaela Prentice A Tale of PeterEku Williams bean siKaren Steiger The Barrister’s Ballade in Oompa LoompishKristin Garth The Biggest News in HistoryAnderson Fonseca(translated by Toshiya Kamei) Love and Alzheimer’sAnannya Uberoi The Book ThiefAnannya Uberoi Tea and…
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bean si by Karen Steiger
What makes a woman a howling banshee?The one you hear through your bedroom’s locked window at midnight,the tall woman,her body wasted by grief,gray cloak hanging limply on her slumped shoulders,her green dress, once a rich velvet,now covered in wispy silver cobwebs,her dark eyes sunken and red with tears,her pale skin a…
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Love and Alzheimer’s by Anannya Uberoi
We keep sipping on crystalware, tumblers coffee mugs,pitchers, kettles – cafésthese days are creative withcrockery. You like blue andgreen colored drinks, I likepale stalks popping out ofmouths of wine bottlessplitting into tiny tendrilsbetween us – the pothos plantthrives on neglect. I keepforgetting to pick one up forthe kitchen, and you areundecided; forget me…
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The Book Thief by Anannya Uberoi
(A response to the novel by Markus Zusak) “Ahead of all parting” weighs 2 pounds, or 48 ounces, or 1360 grams, a single volume by Modern Library, new edition, 1995. Four centimeters short of an A4, thebrobdingnagian book, upon falling by a slip ofthe hand on the streets of Munich, blasts a…
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Tea and the Weight of Spirits by Janna Miller
Katsu’s airy house was roughly sealed against the night winds. Bundles of cedar needles were pushed into wall cracks and layers of rice mats strewn along a raised wooden floor. The breezes sought crannies and loose shingles anyway, as the valley whistled with restless spirits looking for a place to…
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To an Inhabitant of Çatalhöyük by Lucy Whitehead
A room sunken now and hollowed out,my bare feet rest on the cool grey clayof your plastered house, as bronzedbodies move in a dance of trowelsin the spaces where you once lived. I am trying to decipher the peeling blood red fragments of your art, hunting for bull and deer, leg and…
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The Bone Dance by Lucy Whitehead
Tell me of your life as I brush the dustfrom your eye sockets, carefully cataloguing your curving limbs. The way your body held itself, even in death. The way your bones dancein the earth, mud-stained,the expression of all your experiences. All you have loved and felt,all you have been, now fallen away. Sing to me softlythe last shreds of your…
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The Changing House by Luanne Castle
We moved every time the house needed painting. Dad said that it made more sense to pack it up than to spend money on paint and rollers. By the time I was ten, we had lived in five homes. But Dad made sure we wouldn’t have to leave behind one…
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SS St. Louis, 1939 by Merril D. Smith
At sea, adrift between worlds,one of terrorone of hope, we travel, nine hundred of us,borderless, in transit,from beating, burning, and a thousand indignities. But here, the mustached man’s portrait is flipped over;we try to forget what is and what might be,we try not to think about those left behind. With…
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Salem, 1692 by Merril D. Smith
I tremble —there is evil about,specters and demons,but I must remain resolute,stand with the other magistrates and judges,all men of property and esteem,surely, we must be among the elect. This affliction has spread through the region,so many blackened with devils’ marks–though their blood is red(their master teaches them tricks). Accused,…