Monrovia, Liberia
At night, Monrovia hums differently. The city does not sleep; it simply waits for current, for rain, for something brighter than the day’s promises. The fans stand still, as if they are guards unable to protect anyone. Refrigerators sigh into silence. Somewhere in the distance, a generator coughs to life, and the sound ripples through the neighborhoods like a tired prayer being repeated by many.
By JOHN T. HOWARD
New Harbor, Maine
From the porch of the cabin, we can see the waters off Maine’s Midcoast region down below, the audible crash of waves constant. We can also hear the dunting of the bell buoy, and, through a wispy cover of fog, we can see the spectral presence of certain small islands and headlands in closer waters. The fog, further out, is thick enough to make the furthest remnants of land invisible. A second thought: the closer strips look as if they are cut from age-faded pieces of colored paper once the color of blue. Beyond these blanched scraps of an atomic hue, I look through the deep stretch of fog and think stone and wood, think bone and sinew. Far from here, there are wars raging. Bombs being dropped, civilians dead, dying. Government as we expect it to function is dismantling. Or being dismantled. I peer even further into that stretch of nothingness and contemplate the recent departure of my father, my mother, my brother the day before. All of these familial connections with their complicated histories, long arms of trauma stretching back decades, well before my first year in this cabin in Maine three years ago.
Art by Jonathan Ehrenberg
Photo courtesy of the author.
Medicine Lake (Sáttítla Highlands National Monument)
The highway is nearly empty;
the mid-June air still crisp.
There is snow on the roadside,
to the west are fire scars.
If I slowed the car, I might relax into
grief. But I am lost.
Photo courtesy of the author.
Tehran, Diaspora
I moved to the U.S. for a creative writing program with a luggage full of must-haves and gifts, to survive the at-once costs with one paycheck, memorabilia from each friend and close relatives to hold, on days of unbelonging and loss, to feel the connection to the ground back to a place. The largest collection of belongings is in my phone. More than twenty thousand photos of food on the table (always more than one plate), streets of Tehran at night through the car window, wet and bright after rain, harmonious, unlike the dust and chaos of the day. My daisy covered shoes on the curb, friends singing, tapping on the table, hugging, running all the way to the top of a hill. When I moved, the photos became similar, screen shots of Facetime or Zoom calls, us in squares next to each other, our joy breaking out of the frame, heart emojis flying, everyone laughing.
Photo by Hannah Stone
Cape May, NJ
Some things we understand before we’ve ever touched them. I swallowed a poppyseed and saw you in my dreams. Summer sweltered. Sweat marked round my ribs, beating with two hearts. Boiled eggs, sharp chives, mayo, cayenne, dill, salt. Summer of salt: we retreat to the seaside of my childhood, rocky and full of my mother’s egg salad.
By ALAA ALQAISI
Gaza, Palestine
We stepped out with our eyes uncovered.
Gaza kept looking through them—
green tanks asleep on roofs, a stubborn gull,
water heavy with scales at dawn.
Nothing in us chose the hinges to slacken.
The latch turned without our hands.
Papers practiced the border’s breath.
On the bus, the glass held us—
a pond that would not name who stays.
By LARA ATALLAH
From Buenos Aires, Argentina
For Eduardo Rios Pulgar,
San Telmo rings through me, like an unlived memory from a distant past. All colors, linden trees, worn down buildings, from the last century and the one before it, next to towering cement. The Argentinian Peso crumbles like the Lebanese Lira. We collect its ruins at the casa de cambio, our American dollars grotesque in the face of this country’s protracted collapse. The city is angry with love. Its sidewalks echo Beirut, and a life there, long-forgotten, languishing in the rearview mirror. Everywhere I look, an almost-déjà-vu skims the walls of my mind. Buenos Aires is Beirut, is Paris, is an aubade to the lost and never found. Down by Recoleta, Haussmann buildings dot the avenues. Dregs of a time where French architects flooded the city and left their prints along its urban landscape.
By LIZA KATZ DUNCAN
The Jersey Shore, NJ, USA
During the Drought
During the drought, we traded water
for wine. Let our plants wither, stopped
doing laundry. Learned to shudder
at the smell of fire. Hoped
it was just some asshole with a chiminea. Every
impostor cloud was suspect: steam rising
By BEN TAMBURRI
Photo courtesy of author
Baileys Harbor, WI
Baileys Harbor has always felt like a place that is eternally old, eternally in the past. It is a destination for quiet summers on the Wisconsin peninsula, where the insignia of range lights and lighthouses decorate the bathroom of every home, and Dala horses wreath the doors. It was the place of my youth, even if it was only for a week each year. As a kid, when my family visited, I felt at home among the retired condo-dwellers.
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