My mother came to California in January 2020, just in time for my son’s birth. She was supposed to stay a few months and then fly home to Agra, India. Instead, she stayed for over two years.
Author: Porridge Magazine
COMFORT FOODS // Kaja Weeks
Alone in the silence of my immigrant-family’s kitchen was the ubiquitous grainy black bread, butter in a porcelain dish left out to soften all day, and from the fridge tangy sausage or marinated fish.
ONE POEM – Ronnie K. Stephens
electric in its hum
feathered little missiles
I imagine the strike
Fiction | Zygotic Algorithms – Alex Morrall
All those linking figures. All that expectation.
All of it singing to her.
COMFORT FOODS // Parádosi – Kalliste Hardy
In that bowl is something sacred, something only two people had witnessed the creation of. I ask Nene if this is what God felt like when he made the world. She tells me that we must feel better, because we never use a recipe.
ESSAY | On The Inheritance of Touch – Malaika Kamau
I am an old crone in training. The kind of enigmatic woman who is the subject of neighborhood gossip whispered behind guarded lips. I practice for the role with some late-night pacing. Contemplation has proven to be one of the most ineffective modes of transportation, though.
ONE POEM – Lola Dekhuijzen
Sometimes I cheated,
let my sheets stand dead still
in the supermarket queue while I
hid in bed. No one suspected a thing.
ESSAY | On Melodic Kinship: Lessons from Big Bird and the Banjo – Maia Rosenberg
As a child, I remember music in all sorts of languages from many disparate parts of the world were played in our living room. They were played in the living room because it was the best space for dancing. I distinctly remember someone remarking once on how fascinating it was to see “those kids” move in ways highly reminiscent of the cultural dances tied to the music being played in our green suburban house in our green Boulder suburb.
ONE POEM – Jacob J Billingsley
About as full as a trout hung
by its gills in the smokehouse,
guts left to bake in the sun
ESSAY | I Could Sing And The Whole World Could Be My Stage – Isaac Aju
I do not know whether to say that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie saved me or to ascribe it to God as we always do in Nigeria. When we studied so hard and passed an exam, we say it was God who did it…It is popular in Nigeria for Nigerian hospitals to display on their signboards: We take care, but only God heals.
ESSAY | I Have to Tell You – Laura Goncalves Ribeiro
When I arrive, you won’t be sitting at the kitchen granite table, where on rainy days we
shared pumpkin soup. I would not need to rehearse what to tell you at the granite table, with
no one around.
ONE POEM – Olivia Walwyn
First frost of the year
and the river is submerged in mist;
a blaze of sunlight
melting everything to dew.
