Porridge

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 – Bett Butler

Fruit of fungus
feigner of fauna
fusion of puck and protoplasm

COMFORT FOODS // Sheep Head — Pravasan Pillay

I am 12 years old, looking over the precast-cement fence of my neighbour’s house in Chatsworth, South Africa.

ONE POEM – James Owens

pale sun after rain,
shadows come back shyly—
they’ve been washed

The Generation of Dogged Persistence – Marie McMullin

‘When All Looks Bleak, Keep Going, for What Else Is There?’ – The Generation of Dogged Persistence The setting: my kitchen in the early evening, lights filtering through the window and the door open onto the hallway. The atmosphere: cheerful but low-key, with a smidgen of excitement at the prospect of letting (reasonably) loose. The…

ONE POEM – Aidan Dolbashian

That cow can’t walk. She’s all lame. I won’t touch her hooves.

ONE POEM – William Doreski

Dried for sale, sea stars remind you
that we haven’t seen the Atlantic
breathing heavily along a beach
for a couple of plague-struck years.

Navigating Goodbye – Tyler Plofker

The party is winding down and it’s time to make your exit. You stand in the living room mentally preparing for the torrent of goodbyes you’re now socially obligated to initiate. It is Christmas Eve.

Reading Heat-Moon in Nicaragua – William Fleeson

For a dusty Central American beach town, San Juan del Sur has a ton of history. The former fishing village once offered passage to Forty-Niners on their way from the US east coast to California. Cornelius Vanderbilt grew his fortune by running a waterborne transit line for that gold rush: faster than overland travel, the…

FLASH FICTION – Edvige Guinta

I told no one. Not my parents, not my older sister, not my little brother. I locked myself in the bathroom while my mother stirred tomato sauce and tasted spaghetti (we did not like al dente).

The Trials and Tribulations of Route 17 – Zahira P. Latif

I stood at the bus stop, waiting for the number 17 into Birmingham city centre. I had been waiting for over 20 minutes, and the queue at the stop had now built up to well over 20 people. I can drive, but car ownership had lost its appeal. I was tired of having to cart…

On Visiting My Elderly Parents After Lockdown — Mark Czanik

A sprinkling of much needed rain has fallen overnight, and some of the roses have left broken mosaics of red and yellow petals on Dad’s newly cut lawn. Ideal conditions.

COMFORT FOODS // Homegrown — Nadine Alm

For a while I would obsess over how I could make my London plot look less like itself and more like the one I’d walked through as a child on summer holidays.