Summer 2009

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Fiction

Downriver Detroit (or The Woman Who Thought I Was Muslim)
K. Biadaszkiewicz – United States

I am stupid, wearing a long skirt on such a hot day. I guess you could say I was inviting that girl or someone like her to hurt me by making the sound, but I wasn’t. It’s just that I like to wear long skirts. I like the way they swish when I walk. I like the way it’s safe inside them.

 

Pink Lady
Najiyah Diana Helwani – Syria

Elsie kept her best hat on the little table by the door and put it on last, so she could check her completed look in the mirror before she went out to meet the world. Its wide, soft pink brim was adorned with a sheer grey net and a flower on one side. The flower was a maroon and grey rose. Elsie knew maroon and grey roses didn't exist in nature, but she thought they should.

Nonfiction

Egypt, Allah, and the Nubian
Karen Hunt – United States

There were many times during our travels that my sister Janna and I agreed that our parents should be jailed for child endangerment. One of those times was in Egypt. What were we doing in a country that hated us, right before a war? Of course, we didn’t know that the Six-Day War was about to occur. I mean, we weren’t fortune tellers, but all the signs pointed to some sort of violent explosion, and we had naively driven our powder blue VW van right smack into the middle of it.

Poetry

Silk Road
J.S. Absher – United States

We offer
our perennial splendors in exchange
for little offerings from your walls —   those
small sweet smaragds green as the winter sea.

It Seems a Lifetime Away
Stephen Cribari – United States

In the desert we were
free and there was nothing, nothing but the wind
and the voice of God resounding everywhere,
each grain of sand a song (“Here. Here. I Am here”) ...

 

An Engagement for Burning
Octavia McBride-Ahebee – United States

I took her
lamenting
protected
within the boundaries of my burka
buried beneath the world

 

Allenby Bridge
Tala Abu Rahmeh – United States

Ramallah like every other city,
doesn’t house tents.
Here there are no temporaries,
our feet are planted amongst olive trees.

 

Two Poems
Nasima Selim (Aulic) – Bangladesh

at seventeen
i was small, sad and blind
at twenty-nine
happiness had returned before it died