Two poems by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry, ‘09) appear in the Winter 2016 issue of Alaska Quarterly Review.
To purchase a copy of the issue, please click here.
An essay by Lauren Alwan (fiction, ‘08) appears in Catapult:
“The family legacy included silence as a way to belong.”
In the years my grandparents lived in their rambling, Spanish-style house in Southern California, they kept a Koran and a prayer rug in their bedroom hidden behind an ornate armchair. The chair, from Damascus, stood in one corner, grandly unused, its cushions upholstered in silk and the walnut frame set with mother-of-pearl. I never saw my grandparents use the Koran or the prayer rug. By the time I was born, they had fallen away from their practice of Islam.
My grandparents were Sunni, but after decades in the United States they’d become secular Muslims, with an identity lodged in the language, culture, attitudes, and customs they brought when they immigrated. After Islam, what remained was this: the Arabic spoken between my grandparents and their four sons; the meals we ate; the house with its Persian rugs and heavy Moorish Revival furniture; the letters scattered across bureaus and side tables, pages sent from Damascus and Beirut with their lines of Arabic script, and photographs of relatives I never met, at the beach, in a garden, or at home posed around a damask chair not unlike the ones in my grandparents’ house. [… continue reading here.]
A poem by Dilruba Ahmed (poetry, ‘09) appears in the Winter 2016 issue of The Indiana Review.
To purchase a copy of the issue, click here.
A poem by Mary-Sherman Willis (poetry, ’05) appears in the Winter 2017 “Virtual Salon” issue of Beltway Poetry Quarterly:
Henge
How could a housewife with three small children, living in Washington DC, fit the role of pioneer of far-out art? — Clement Greenberg, Vogue May 1968
In a city of spooks and journalists and lawyers
and their furious wives
you lived, a gentle wife,
interstitial between women and men:
where the children are.
You made up your mind, learned to bear up
and endure. And keep your temper. Every day
in the cold studio
[… continue reading here.]
Several poems-in-translation by Mary-Sherman Willis (poetry, ’05) of the French poet Jean Cocteau appear in Eleven Eleven:
Jean Cocteau
Translated from the French by Mary-Sherman Willis
THE SKATER
The skater launched himself onto the virgin ice, compelled to reproduce with his bladed feet the inextricable meander of a line that he carried inside himself, trapping his soul, straightjacketed as it was and under police interrogation. He would be free if he chiseled at great speed a surface from which the gash threw off shavings of snow. A masterpiece that the spectators applauded as if it were a simple acrobatic exercise. Sometimes he left behind several images of his body that would rejoin him, then precede him and invite him to join them. With crossed arms, he leaned, straightened up, sped ahead fast, turned, took off, careful never to break off his calligraphy. For an hour he inscribed his curled upstrokes and downstrokes without one error. [… continue reading this and other translations here.]
A story by Rolf Yngve (fiction ’12) appears in the winter issue of ZYZZYVA.
[… purchase ZYZZYVA and the rest of the story here.]
An essay by Peggy Shinner (fiction, ‘94) appears in The Rumpus:
He wants her to pet the dog. He holds the curly mass in his arms and pushes it toward her. He prompts: Isn’t it cute? The dog pants in anticipation. If this is a conspiracy the dog seems to be in on it. He always wanted a dog but their mother wouldn’t let him get one. She didn’t like contact with animals or their dirty excretions. Now he has an apartment, their mother is dead, and he has a new dog. … continue reading here.
An essay by Lauren Alwan (fiction, ‘08) appears in Catapult:
“The family legacy included silence as a way to belong.”
In the years my grandparents lived in their rambling, Spanish-style house in Southern California, they kept a Koran and a prayer rug in their bedroom hidden behind an ornate armchair. The chair, from Damascus, stood in one corner, grandly unused, its cushions upholstered in silk and the walnut frame set with mother-of-pearl. I never saw my grandparents use the Koran or the prayer rug. By the time I was born, they had fallen away from their practice of Islam. [… continue reading here.]
A poem with audio clip by Fay Dillof (poetry, ‘15) appears in Sugar House Review:
Blossom
Either grief has no shape,
sneaks through the cracks
like a poisonous gas
or I was born
forgotten. Nurses fed me milk, scotch-
taped a ribbon to my head.
… continue reading here.
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