Winter 2011

[Download entire issue as PDF document.]

Fiction

Mrs. Rocastle's Metamorphosis
Martin Bennett – Italy

The trouble was, as they discovered too late, Saladin Hotel did not exist. Or only one and a bit stories of it did. The project was another victim of the Government’s Program for Economic Adjustment and Restructuring. The only lodgers, at this particular point of time, were several nonpaying families of lizards.

Tamuz and the Kurdish Brothers
Marc Brenman – United States

The diesel would bring a good price in Çatalpınar, after being acquired for kurush in Iran. And there was no particular danger; these people had been smugglers for generations. The worst that could happen was being intercepted by border police, who would beat them up, confiscate the diesel, leave them bleeding in the dust, and go on their way. They laughed when they said this, but Tamuz didn’t laugh.

Confessional
Gail M. Francis – United States

I have never been a calm man. If you wanted to find someone who would walk into a busy summer festival and place small bombs every 45 feet, you would not ask me to do that. Of course, even if I were calm, I would not do such a thing, but nerves alone would suffice to keep me from it.

Saturday Pick-Up Games
Aisha Gawad – United States

That’s how Ernest first sees her—looking like a little girl who spilled Juicy Juice all over herself, with none of the forced, porn-star sexuality that make the other boys mime crude things to her from across the street. He approaches the courts from DeKalb Avenue, bouncing the ball with each step. When he gets close enough, he bounces the ball hard once against the pavement and shoves it into the back of one of the boys humping the air in Aliya’s direction.

 

Poetry

Law of Motion
Anne Carly Abad – Philippines

But today is ending
and though I might call it Time,
this day has died at dawn,
buried in that abysmal horizon.

Çemberlitaş Hamami
Raina J. León – Germany

Without my glasses, all the world becomes Monet:
a fine pierced window in the hararet’s dome,
its pointed star to conjure a summer night,
softens to pulsing circle that
enchants the steam to hiss and rise.

Eggs
Antony Owen – United Kingdom

In Gaza the swallows are chirping from bullet holes.
They make their nests with jettison—
cardboard, cotton, human hair.

The Turkish Moon
Amit Parmessur – Mauritius

In the bittersweet sky now
there is an empty page, one upon which
I am trying again to decipher the promise
made by an unfaithful lover.

 

M.A.R. Habib, past Damazine comtributor, has recently published Shades of Islam, a dazzling and moving collection of poems addressing faith, love, politics, and Islam in the twenty-first century. The book is available from Amazon and Amazon UK.