Spring 2020
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Honey Chicken Sandwiches
Honey chicken sandwiches and ramen make me think of you. Instant ramen, the ones you told me about as we were in a convenience store, that when you were younger you would get in cups and is usually a dollar but at the Indian market on the corner it’s $1.50, as you hand over crumbled…
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Sunday Sunday Sunday
Dad is too drunk to drive, so I take his keys and lay him into the back seat with a plastic water bottle. The sun’s beating down on the Sonoma hills and the roar of hot rods exploding down the track is loud. We will have to find out who won from the Sonoma Raceway…
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Another Eye
The cold overhead lights flickered as if to mock the situation’s ambiguity. Even if it hadn’t gone awry, the procedure was unprecedented, and its outcome could not be predicted with certainty even by the most adept surgeons. For that matter, as it ultimately proved, the outcome would remain unexplainable—or perhaps simply unexplained—by anyone. At least…
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Luggage Fee
Pre-Partition luggage tag for the ancestral round-trip Attendant sees my belly and lets me board early with the still-complete families Lahore traffic clouds my open eyes, the only part of me that can pass When storm-windowed shut, they only dream in American and only got here by exhausting the question: How much of Daughter’s climate…
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The Things You See
These are the things you see yet I remember: first, the animals in cages too small, littered with empty strawberry soda cans; then, the yellow cocoon of a puttering bus to Aden, …
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Who’s Counting
Written by: Rachael Scarborough Who’s Counting by Rachael Scarborough (poetry, accessible version)
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When Tadpoles Become Frogs
“How do they know, do you think?” she asked me. Water fell in streams from between her cupped hands as she squinted into her palms. We squatted beside the ditch, as we did every day on our way home from school, endlessly fascinated by this gurgling stream funneling down the ditch next to the road.…
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A Wicked on Rickety Road
Rickety Road, Lost County, Dakota Territory, 1888 There was a Gunslinger walking down Rickety Road. His limp swaying arms and unsteady gait gave him the appearance of a drunkard, although he did not stumble. Every now and then his pale, thin fingers twitched toward the scratched and grimy black revolvers at his sides, ready to…
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Skeletor
Skeletor had long wanted a body: to cover him, shield him, make him whole. He was only a skeleton. He was jealous of the other skeletons who had bodies. Sometimes, he would put clothes on and stuff them with pillows or crumpled up newspaper and stare in the mirror. He always put an extra pillow…
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Simplify
Circa 1956. Sometime in the predawn hours of the Cultural Revolution[1]. A black, red-flagged limo pulls up in front of the Chairman’s dacha in idyllic West Lake. A weary looking Minister of Culture, Hung, steps out of the car, and is ushered inside by the guards. He hands off his gloves and coat to the staff…
Forum Literary Magazine 