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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.

To All the White Boys Who Love Me When I’m Manic

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

By ERICA DAWSON

and hypersexual and drunk and, how
should I say, easy, when we share a kiss

Serious Attempts at Locating the City

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Issue 29, Translation

By HALEEMAH DERBASHI

Translated by MAYADA IBRAHIM

When Did Life Flip Upside Down and Make Us Walk on the Ceiling?

I asked him, “Where are we?”

He said the name, then became preoccupied with finding batteries for his portable radio with one hand, and with the other clutching me so that the crowds would not sweep me away.

“What does that mean?” I pressed.

Hawk

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

By RICK BAROT

In the park we stopped and looked up at the high branch where the ferruginous hawk ate another winged thing, the torn feathers drifting down. The hawk made a noise, like a little lever of pleasure giving way inside. I thought of the question the choreographer asked her gathered dancers: What do you do in order to be loved? It was as though I’d been holding my breath the whole day, walking beside you. A strong spring light struck us. Next to you on the ground, your shadow looked like crumpled black paper.

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

Negative Capability

May 5, 2025 Issue 29 Poetry, Poetry

By DAVID LEHMAN

Imagine the money the Keats estate would have made
if they could have copyrighted “negative capability”
and charged permission fees for its use, nearly as pricey

Tuesday

May 5, 2025 Fiction, Issue 29, Issue 29 Fiction

By LUCAS SCHAEFER

The morning after Ed Hooley saw a coyote in the supply closet, Bob Alexander declared something smelled rotten inside Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym.

This was at six a.m. on a Tuesday, midway through abs and stretching. Inside the ring, the eleven members of the First Thing crew sprawled out on foam mats as Terry Tucker, fifty-four, led them through an arduous medley of scissor kicks and side-to-sides, knees-to-your-ears and upside-down bicycle. It was August in Austin, the average age inside the ring was forty-nine, and though it would be hours before a single speck of perspiration would appear on Terry’s left temple, his charges were sopping.

Pie

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

By RICK BAROT

I took a class on how to make pie. When one desires tender fruit, a structured crust, gold at the edges, there is no ease. The teacher wore a black apron, serious as the stone inside the fruit. We stood around an industrial table, each with a bowl. Flour, yolk, shortening, sugar. Outside was summer. The oven hummed. What was called for was a teaspoon of salt. Now remove a pinch for the ocean beyond the window, its humid air. Now remove a pinch for what sweats from the fingers in the long kneading. You are always hungry. I’m your blue ribbon. I’m your huckleberry.

[Purchase Issue 29 here.]

Rick Barot’s most recent collection of poems is Moving the Bones. He directs the Rainier Writing Workshop, the low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

The Wild Geese

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

By MORRI CREECH

Where were the wild geese going, slurred across
the yellow sky in mid-December light,
fading into some everglade of memory?
I saw them slip like notions over the pines
in simple distances beyond the winter
as the wind laid the river grasses down,
saw how the strict formations left no trace.

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 &

A City in Negative Lights

May 5, 2025 Amman Portfolio, Issue 29, Translation

By AMY ALKHALIFI
Translated by MAYADA IBRAHIM

Fardous Loses Her Mind and Invents a New Future

“At the beginning, it was easy. Customers were in and out all day, and money was flowing,” Fardous the soothsayer says to her neighbor Um Khalid after revealing to her that “business is bad.”