by David Torrey Peters In mid-June of 2003, Raymond Mbe awoke on the floor of his dirt hut. A white moth had landed on his upper lip. In a half-sleep, he crushed it and the wings left traces of powder across his lips and under his nose. The powder smelled of burnt rubber and when […]
by Bruce Berger Ever since I started camping in tents, I have enacted a nightly farce. On the advice of desert dwellers who warn that I will step on scorpions or even rattlers if I walk barefoot in the dark, I arrange my shoes by the tent flap so that I may step into them […]
by Kathleen Spivack The empty rocking chair echoed slowly, its arc poised in mid air. The chair’s body still held the motion of another’s warmer body. The seat back and curved arms molded themselves around the memory of the weighted flesh by whom they had been hastily abandoned, A rhythmic motion of patient waiting hung […]
by Deborah Fryer Like many kids, I went to summer camp to learn to sail and ride a horse and tie a bowline. I whittled green boughs into perfect marshmallow-roasting sticks and stayed up way past bedtime reading by flashlight on my top bunk. I sang raunchy songs and played capture the flag, got poison […]
by Haifa Mahabir Into the Heart of Darkness You awake. The moon’s hue cascades the walls of your room in a whitewash, that certain shade of blue. A draft leaves your blinds rustling; the sound rapid like the flutter of insect’s wings. You hear the rise and fall of your own breath. Shamans of the […]
by Tom Bentley Long ago, when I was still in high school, I took a road trip from Southern California with three of my best friends to Las Vegas. Naturally, we were too callow to gamble, drink or cavort like the stylish rogues that we fancied ourselves to be, but that was less the point […]
by Cara Winters I came to Munich twicethe first time to party and the second to cry. Do not be deceived; the vast range of emotions that this city elicited in me are no fluke, for Munich, or at least the area around Munich, is home to both Oktoberfest, the annual festival of beer, and […]
by Lola Akinmade There were only four items on my to-do list – buy some Ankara, buy some groceries, find a tailor, and get some original artwork. “You can’t find them all at the same place”, Remi explains as we travel along Lagos Mainland Bridge towards our first stop, Balogun Market. It was a hot […]
by Diane Caldwell Mortification exploded over my friend’s face when I told her of my decision to visit what I thought was our mutual friend Iris in Andalucia. Eyes wide and ominous as flying saucers, mouth open in a soundless gaping hole of horrorshe looked like a reenactment of “The Scream.” I was living in […]
by Kawaii Luna “Puerto Escondido está bien gringo, Lunita,” my friends from Oaxaca City warned me, so I expected a big tourist bus like others I’d been on–chilled cans of Fanta and Manzana Lift, chile-covered cacahuetes, movies popular decades ago on the static-laced TV screens. Instead, I am stuffed like ham in a torta, between […]
