Alma Clark

Sidewalks of an Anxious City

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Issue 29

By HAIFA ABUALNADI
Translated by ADDIE LEAK

Deferred Migration

Amman is a city of deferred migration with no hope of arriving, depression with no hope of recovery, and the scam that is returnees’ dream of connection. Amman isn’t mine. Because I’m the daughter of parents who left for a time.

When I was just a girl in braids, my hair already settled into its center part, I would walk along the beaches of the Gulf near our house in Mina al-Zour, on the border between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The Kuwaiti desert stung my feet with its extreme heat and cold. I went to a primary school with only four grades. It had a small pen that held rabbits, two sheep, chickens, and a rooster. On the right side were “barracks” where we had art and vocational classes, and on the left were barracks housing a female nurse and doctor who rarely had office hours. “Home” meant both school and home, and the hugs followed me wherever I went; my mother was with me constantly, day and night. She was a supervisor at the school, and I was her pampered little girl. The other students watched me with envy. My friends were all teachers’ daughters, and we were spoiled: we were given small gifts and made members of the Library Committee, the Scouts, the gymnastics team, and more. The population of Mina al-Zour was scant, so there weren’t many girls at the school.

Sufi Trance

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Issue 29, Translation

By MARYAM DAJANI
Translated by ADDIE LEAK

I’m leaving Abdoun after having sushi at Noodasia, heading toward Airport Road. The traffic light in front of me turns red, and all I have to do is step on the brakes… but where are the brakes? Are they on the right, or is that the gas? I’m getting closer to the light, cars are stacking up in front of me, what do I do? Is the pedal on the right or left?!

I wake up.

My car: a room of my own with glass walls open to the world. One that makes me feel free and independent, when, in truth, I’m public property.

Driving isn’t my time for reflection anymore. Ever since I started using GPS for everything—even finding the shortest route to places I know well—I’ve gotten too busy trying to shave a minute or two off the drive to think. Too busy following the blue line.

I See a Lot of Robots in Your Future

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By JULIA KOLCHINSKY

& girls so many girls with long locks & red locks & curls & locked
doors you try to break into & out of & bare feet & the streets

you don’t look both ways crossing & all the ways you close your eyes & reach
to find what’s nearest by touch & touch & touch & touch &

Amman Places / Faces: Rafik Majzoub & Linda Al Khoury

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Issue 29, Issue 29 Art, Studio

Photos of Amman by RAFIK MAJZOUB and LINDA AL KHOURY

Rafik Majzoub

Ode to What Tethers Me

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By MEGHAN MCCLURE

And though nobody knew what I would cost,
they kept me—a debt to be paid for centuries.

I owe you—You tiny glass vials glinting
like tiny messages in bottles, capped in plastic,

ready to be pitched into the sea—
Silver spiked syringes! Odorous alcohol swabs!

A Theory of Grief

May 5, 2025 Issue 29, Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By KATE GASKIN

After she died
the crocuses bloomed

and the purple phlox.
The daffodils bloomed

and the snowdrops.
The star magnolias bloomed

and the forsythia.

Amman in Color: Majd Hijjawi, Momen Malkawi, Husam Manasrah

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Issue 29, Issue 29 Art, Studio

By MAJD HIJJAWI, MOMEN MALKAWI, and HUSAM MANASRAH

Photography by Majd Hijjawi

An abandoned villa in Um Uthaina. This house is a remnant of a once affluent residential neighborhood in Amman, with an eighties architectural style popular at the time. This home no longer exists, as commercial projects have been taking over the neighborhood.

Selections from Lettres en forêt urbain

May 1, 2025 Poetry, Translation

By BERTRAND LAVERDURE
Translated by SLP

Poems appear below in English and the original French.

Translator’s note

I stumbled on these poems, fairly literally, in a bookstore in Québec.

I immediately recognized the hyper-connected world M. Bertrand Laverdure writes of—the new networks of pop culture and politicians and internet also familiar to me as an American, and the older networks of gargantuan trees, shaky trees, trees above streams and children playing and park benches and promotional flyers and guidewires. I recognized the surreality of his world. Of the double-address, where each poem is an epistle both to a specific tree with a clear local history, and to figures from cartoons (Skeletor), film (Poltergeist), myth (Penelope), classic literature (Gatsby), and more. The surreality where each tree and literary figure is also “a jpeg,” and where plugging devices into outlets, or each other, mirrors trees (the French word for plugged in is “branché”).

Home and/or Home: Seán Carlson Interviews Erin Fornoff and Gustav Parker Hibbett

February 10, 2025 Interviews

When ERIN FORNOFF, GUSTAV PARKER HIBBETT, and SEÁN CARLSON met over a drink in the lobby of the Arms Hotel, located on the main square of Listowel in southwest Ireland, they introduced themselves by comparing their American upbringings. Having grown up in North Carolina, New Mexico, and Massachusetts, respectively, they shared their experiences residing and writing in Ireland.

For Fornoff, Hibbett, and Carlson, their lives in Ireland have granted them new perspectives on their lives in the U.S. and welcomed them into new communities that help bring their poetry to life. Before leaving, they all paused for a photo beside a typewriter and a goose-feather quill pen on display under the gaze of a countertop cherub sculpture. In the longstanding hub of an agricultural community, where tractors still regularly cart calves to market, the traditional tools of writing also reinforced the lifeblood of local literature.