Issue 4

Adebowale is still unaccustomed to the Shanghai smog. He scans the streets from the back of the taxicab as it crosses the river and meanders through the growing traffic. When it leaves him in front of the train station, he remembers to say xie xie, one of the few Mandarin phrases he knows. He’s embarrassed […]

His stomach almost touches the lower arc of the steering wheel. I think he looks much better with his hair buzzed tight on the sides like he keeps it now. There is still a heart attack inside him about to awaken on the sunniest day of the year. His fingers are wrapped tight on the […]

We took the countless flights of stairs up to the roof of the engineering building, and though I was out of breath and my thighs ached, the view was worth it. The sky was starting to turn pink as the sun made its way behind downtown Los Angeles. It was one of those rare days […]

Every neighborhood has the house kids aren’t supposed to go to. Where I grew up in the Fifties in Altadena, California, that was the McKay property: an overgrown five-acre estate, one of the few that hadn’t been subdivided yet. At the end of its long curving drive was a giant old house that could only […]

I wasn’t sure anymore if I came here to find something or lose something.

In any case my aim stayed steady; I was shooting for something in the dark onyx skies of these southern states. I entered the land of my ancestors the Indians and the Indian killers at about 2pm.

I left san Antonio […]

I look like my mother, which means, as the masjid aunties are quick to remind me, that I will never be as beautiful.

“You look more and more like your mother everyday,” they always begin, these third world aunties with their overly familiar ways. “But your nose isn’t quite as long, and you’re much, much […]

“Ma!” Chhouka yelled as she burst through the doorway, her yellow-flowered socks skidding across the hardwood. “Guess what Mr. Scott asked us to do toda—“

Chhouka froze in her tracks. Her mother was hunched over the kitchen table with her face buried in her palms, her frail shoulders heaving. She was bathed in the dusky […]

There wasn’t supposed to be water here. They brought it with them. They swallowed up
the Earth with it and let it seep into the ground, men shoveling and heaving to make a hole, a
massive bathtub to fill with water and call a lake. The water was clear then, not murky like […]

The eagle
perched on the cactus
called me to Los Angeles.

The Templo Mayor lays buried here.

In my city,
Mexico City,
jaguar heads of volcanic stone
became cornerstones for colonial palaces,
became podiums for politicians,
became baptism wells for el nuevo mexicano.

In my new city
[…]