“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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Matthais Grünewald, detail from the Isenheim Altarpiece, Musée d’Unterlinden, Colmar During my days at sea with Médicins Sans Frontières, I brought the Aeneid with me to read. As is true of the Odyssey, I was more taken by the maritime crossings than the episodes on land. It’s the unfavorable, not the fair, winds that determine . . .
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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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Photo by Nicole Parson, from Buzzfeed and The Hill. I report here testimony gathered by the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld. Hatzfeld managed to interview in prison numerous perpetrators of the massacres in Rwanda, nearly entirely done with machetes. During the 90s, the Tutsi population was hunted down by Hutus and the killing was everywhere. One . . .
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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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It’s common for writers to be asked about the books that influenced them, about the authors that inspired them. Usually the answer is none—the writers claim to be entirely original. When I get this question, my answer is All of them. Every book I like has added something to my ideas, my language. . . .
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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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