Jalal Abad, once Adinapour,is the mythic city of shine—the whim of a Mughal King, Jalaludin Akbar,known for his fondness for citrus and fountains.—from “Jalalabad Will Never B JBAD,” from Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.When I was a child, I wrote mini . . .
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“The first time I visited Domanju, I was ten. I remember a river, black blue and green. I remember a large bell, hanging inside of what looked like the cap of the earth’s largest mushroom. I remember a statue shaped like a prototypical squid. I remember, on top of the squid, another . . .
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I told the earth to settle back down, to lay deep in its mudarmchair, to soften the static from its flaring mouth. Can we slow down, tenderthose we miss? —from ‘A Cosmology,” from Volume 59, Issue 4 (Winter 2018) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.I can’t remember the . . .
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“When I was younger I had a recurring dream of walking in the ruins of Ani. Ani was a city of the Bagratid Kingdom in eastern Anatolia (“Higher Armenia”). It had been a powerful fortress as early as the third century, but by the ninth century Ani became the center of a . . .
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“A woman walks in alone after hours, all the machines quiet, though she can’t hate them today. The dry-cleaning tank is square and tall so she must stand on tip-toes to run her cracked hands along the top, muttering old Korean in neat strands of sound. A piece of skin flakes off . . .
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Chaos said, “O, Mei Ling, give me eyes so that I can admire your beauty.” So, Mei Ling punctured two wounds into his forehead. And as he gazed longingly into her eyes, Chaos said, “Oh beautiful one, I can’t smell your sweet scent.” So, Mei Ling cut two holes for his nostrils. . . .
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My husband swelters, fevered to a mercurial pitch,thundering from the raw ribcage of our bedroom. Where have I taken him to? To my ancestralhome, a country a point of reentry for us both.He, however, stands tall in these parts. From afar I’d spot him in thick crowds: a small volcanicisland lapped by . . .
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Photograph: Samina Najmi (right) with her sister and Amma in 1994. “I called her Amma. It’s an old-fashioned word for “Ammi,” mother, but I called her Amma because that’s what my mother called her. Before she shrank, Amma was five feet tall. She had long, black hair which she pulled into a . . .
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The morning’s inexplicable sadness. A vague salty-sweetness, permeating the hours.I sit at the breakfast table with my daughter, eating squares of mochi.The outer shell, risen like the carapace of a crab. Crisp skin and soft, gooey interior.I once read that ambivalence means both very far and very close.—from “Ode to Mochi”, from . . .
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“Devon is a fourth-grader in Guilford, Connecticut when he begins his work in Fairy Theory. The project for Language Arts grows way beyond the single-page, class presentation. He fills notebooks with ideas and stories and maps and fairy family trees. He learns to shut-up about his ideas because it is not wonder . . .
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