‘If the Queen Shows up in a Double Rainbow’ and ‘Teardrop Pearls’
by Mitzi Dorton
Signs
After death,
Wouldn’t they come
From a mother, too,
Who bangs on the glass
At the emergency room,
The desk ladies talking,
Lost in their own family sagas
War Cake
by Charlotte M. Porter
Enduring bloodshed, recipes, women’s spoils,
make do w/ shortages, rations & absence
of manna, milk & honey, miracle loaves—
foody promises made real in War Cake,
a city confection for cooks w/out chickens,
an eggless feat, almost fat-free w/ raisins,
minus milk, to fete a special occasion
as soldiers die on someone else’s T.V.
What Tricks the Mind
by Rita Taryan
The comeliest woman in the village is the one with the roundest face and rosiest lips. The most eligible bachelor in the village is the one who writes the most heartfelt poetry about his mother. The great Hungarian poet, Attila József (working-class, schizophrenic, a suicide at the age of thirty-two) wrote, “For a week now, all I think about is Mama; When I stop, I start again.”
The Ones Who Survive Are Real — a Review of Bora Chung’s ‘Red Sword’
Reviewed by Kate Tsurkan
Bora Chung’s “Red Sword” wastes no time plunging readers into an alien world that is both cruel and enticing, immediately challenging humanity to find a way to reclaim itself. We are first introduced to the narrator — a woman who remains nameless for most of the novel — as she recounts her budding intimacy with a lover aboard a slave ship traversing the far reaches of a galactic empire, only to witness his death shortly after they are cast onto what is dubbed the white planet. What starts as a flicker of dread from her lover’s untimely death swiftly grows into an unrelenting tension that saturates the novel from start to finish.
‘In the passing’ and other poems
by Alexandra Magearu
a tumult of birds
like a little chaos
thick and fluttering
with treasures in their toothless mouths
cruel in the glacial light
(…)
Two wartime poems
by Olena Herasymiuk
Translated from the Ukrainian by Viktoria Ivanenk
I am standing on the stage that
no longer exists
it’s not a stage — it’s a mass grave,
under it
buried alive, lie thousands of
men, women, and their children —
the dead, the living, and the unborn
Irena Karpa: “If fear arises, I always go and do what causes it”
Interviewed by Olena Lysenko
“I’ve never had any taboos when it comes to humor. However, I would never joke about the victims of violence, and I do not support sexism or victim-blaming. That’s unacceptable for me. Humor always remains somewhat incorrect and absurd.”
Confronting the silence: An Interview with Monica Cure
Interviewed by Irina Costache
"For me, being able to read these stories fills in a lot of gaps. Many times, it's not because anyone in my family or the Romanians that I grew up with in Detroit are withholding that information, but something that particularly writers can do is make a whole world come alive, a whole time period come alive."
Three wartime poems
by Natalka Marynchak
Translated from Ukrainian by Lada Kolomiyets
everyone will have their own story
of broken paths and breathlessness
everyone will have their own defended territory
of roaring and laughing
I now have a heart
of reinforced concrete
it knows neither pity
nor comfort
